Some MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Mini Models Will Become Obsolete Next Month, Lose Apple Repair Support (9to5mac.com) 142
An anonymous reader writes: Apple will add certain MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini models to its list of vintage and obsolete products starting next month, which means the products will lose official Apple repair support through the company's retail stores and authorized resellers. Kicking in on December 31, 2016, the MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) and MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011) will become vintage and obsolete in all markets where applicable, while the Mac mini (Early 2009) and MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009) will become obsolete worldwide on the same date.
That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Six years is a pretty good run an all. That said, I do wish they would actually update the 2011 17" MBP with the nifty matte screen and the upgradable memory and hard drive bays. Oh, an ports.
A professional machine.
Sigh.
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I wouldn't mind them having those features in the 2017 models. I'd say, keep the "MacBook Pro" line, but rename it, and then produce a true "pro" line of machines designed for photographers, musicians, and others who will pay the cash for a machine that has the reasonable ports for the job, so one doesn't have to carry a backpack full of dongles and hubs with them everywhere. I would say the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 are becoming more "MacBook Pros" than what Apple offers.
Maybe Apple could at least fix the M
Re:That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say, keep the "MacBook Pro" line, but rename it, and then produce a true "pro" line of machines designed for photographers, musicians, and others who will pay the cash for a machine that has the reasonable ports for the job, so one doesn't have to carry a backpack full of dongles and hubs with them everywhere.
Why should they bother doing this? It'll just cost them more money to have more machines in their line-up. They can just do what they're doing now, keep the number of options very small, to increase profit, because all those people you mention will just buy the port-less machines anyway, plus the overpriced adapters to go with it. Sure, they might complain, but so what? They're not going to forgo buying a Mac.
I would say the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 are becoming more "MacBook Pros" than what Apple offers.
Nope, because they aren't Macs, so all those Mac buyers aren't going to even look at them.
Maybe Apple could at least fix the MBPs, so if one uses by accident more than one USB-C device that charges, some e-fuse doesn't blow, preventing anything from charging the battery (as per a YouTube vid showing someone using multiple chargers... result, the MBP just stopped charging for good.)
Why should they bother fixing this? Are they losing any sales due to this? Of course not. So there's no point in lifting a finger to fix it. I really don't see the problem here. If some people manage to mess up their MBPs this way, then they'll just have to buy new MBPs (or pay $$$ to get Apple to repair them), which simply increases Apple's profits even more.
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 are becoming more "MacBook Pros" than what Apple offers.
People buy macs because of OSX. This is because Windows, even today, is still horrible.
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You know, some people say this, but give absolutely no evidence for the assertion. I use a Windows desktop and 2015 Macbook Pro daily (as well as Linux on servers) and honestly prefer Win10 to OSX. The file explorer is much more intuitive for me, it handles multiple displays much better, and obviously there's whole gaming thing.
I think some Mac fanboys probably haven't used Windows since Win 95, and still think it behaves as badly. It's like me comparing Win10 to OS9 (which was truly terrible - I had to suf
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Actually I bought an IdeaPad Yoga 13 from Lenovo, so you could say I switched to Windows because I use it more than my old iMac 27 mainly because I can take it anywhere ... I liked Windows 8 and 8.1 although not as much as OSX ... Now I am switching back to a MBP with TouchBar because although I like Windows 10 too (I upgraded), Microsoft (and Lenovo too) can't fucking get their act together!
1) Coming back from sleep takes between 0 to 10 minutes for no apparent reason!
2) Windows genius UX designer decided
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4) Updates sometime reboot the computer while you are working (too hard to test?)
That can happen even with Windows 7 on a desktop, but at least you can (usually) reliably disable automatic updates with Windows 7. Enjoy your Redmond spyware!
my old PPC macbook pro 17 that lasted me 2 times what the Lenovo did
They were just called "PowerBook G4". I had two of them and one of the first Intel models, all with the "Aluminum" case. They were freaking horrible. I don't know what was worse, the optical drive going out of alignment with the slot in the case (have to field-strip it to eject a disk), the crappy latch (won't stay closed), or the metal surface that
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but I have never failed to be annoyed by the "tap to click" feature (enabled by default in mouse emulation mode, so you have to install a driver to turn it off!) giving rogue clicks.
You're the only other person I've ever met who also hates tap-to-click on touchpads. As far as I can tell, we are the only two people in the entire world who don't like this "feature". Everyone else I've talked to thinks I'm crazy because I disable it.
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For my own computers, I normally use the trackpoint instead (which means I make sure to only buy laptops with trackpoints, namely Dell Latitudes). I do use the touchpad for scrolling though, but that's about it.
The problem is when I'm expected to use someone else's computer, usually to fix something. Total pain in the ass.
Good to know there's 3 of us out there though!
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They lost me as a customer. I used Macs for decades, but I've switched to Dell Precision for my desktop, and when my 2010 MBP dies, I'm sure as hell not replacing it with a Mac. The transition is a pain in the arse, but I'm not wasting my money on the crap they call pro models these days.
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Informative)
As much as I mourn the loss of USB-A ports, it's not quite the case that you need a bunch of dongles. USB-C is pin-compatible, and what you actually need are different leads. USB-C to USB-mini, for example.
Unsubstantiated claim of seriously broken USB-C support.... or, maybe, it's actually more like this [stackexchange.com]
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Re:That's nice (Score:4, Informative)
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Really? Do y'all only wear your clothes once and buy new cars every year?
I know you meant this as sarcasm, but...
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all of which are older than 6 years old, and running OS's that are more than 6 years old
hey it's me ur, um, cto. would you please open that email i just sent you so we can, uh, apply some server patches for you? kthx
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I wouldn't hold MS as some sort of an example of support as none of the last 4 are more than 6 years.
Yes you can pay for extended support that goes past these dates but that's a different animal altogether.
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You don't have to pay for extended support out to ten years, and sometimes longer. (Microsoft guarantees a minimum of ten years, but has lengthened the extended support period for some OSes.) You have to pay after that, as you currently do if you want support for XP or Vista.
Basically, mainstream support means that the OS continues to get some new features, new versions of bundled Microsoft software like the web browser, and support for new hardware. Extended support means that it doesn't get those things,
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all of which are older than 6 years old, and running OS's that are more than 6 years old (Windows 7 for the workstations)
So, your bashing Apple customers while running an unsupported Windows OS!? baw haw haw...
Windows 7 is still supported until 2020 [microsoft.com]
"Extended" support. Which means less support, not more, in case you are confused.
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Basically, extended support means no new features. (It also means no new versions of Microsoft web browsers but the major third party ones usually continue to offer new versions until the OS goes completely out of support.) Bug fixes, security fixes, antivirus updates, and the malicious software removal updates continue. Users can still safely use systems that are on extended support.
Microsoft offers a minimum of ten years of support of each OS release, though updating to the most recent service pack is req
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W7 (Score:2)
Just got a new laptop off the company. 3 year lease. W7. Yeah, they'll support us. They do that.
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My £500 laptop is still happily trucking on, at a good clip, with one battery replace and a SSD upgrade (surplus part after a desktop upgrade) doing what I need it to after 8 years... only thing I wish it had was USB3 ports.
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Take your WLAN card out and install a mini PCI express USB 3.0 card.
Hopefully it'll fit and you can find a way to run a cable out of your laptop.
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And so are these macbooks / mac minis. What's going to happen to your eight-year old laptop if its mainboard breaks? Same thing as the macbook, you'll get no joy from the original manufacturer, and you'll hit ebay for a kockoff or new-old-stock replacement, and you'll be happy.
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Re:That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)
That will never happen. :-(((
Sadly Apple no longer gives a fuck about us professionals -- you know, people who use their computers day in, day out, for creating content. They would rather everyone use iPads for consuming content.
Why?
Before Jobs passed away Tim Cook was responsible for getting Apple's supply chain down from months to days. Apple doesn't want to be holding onto millions of dollars of inventory just sitting there taking up space. This means they remove options and "dumb down" the machines so there is only 1 (or very few) parts. Tim Cook has continued this obsession that it actually has become counter-productive. You can't upgrade a MBP to more then 16 GB of RAM because the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard? WTF.
Apple also has a hard-on for wireless. My current MBP (Mid 2014) [apple.com] has a whopping 7 ports (2x USB, 2x Thunderbolt, 3.5 digital+analog audio, 1x HDMI, SDXC card) and I LOVE it because I use all of them. Apple TV gen 4 removed the audio port because they want everyone to use WiFi streaming. It doesn't take courage to remove an audio jack on the iPhone, they are a bunch of cowards. Gee, oh look, 2 out of 3 "solutions" are wireless [macworld.co.uk].
It is a far cry from the days of Jobs when he actually cared about building not only a cosmetic computer and a functional one.
i.e. When is the Mac Pro [apple.com] going to updated?? It has been over 1075 [macrumors.com] days!
The only thing Apple cares about these days is making money whilst they whore our their brand. Apple would rather sell over-priced "Beats" garbage headphones to ignorant customers rather then make quality products for the power user. Those days are LONG dead.
It is hard to argue against "Oooh, Shiny!" when all they care about is profits.
Apple is Dead.
Long Live Apple.
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Steve Jobs need to be resurrected to bring Apple in shape like he did last time. :P
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You can't upgrade a MBP to more then 16 GB of RAM because the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard? WTF.
No, you can't upgrade a MBP to more than 16 GB of RAM because it uses a low power type of RAM that is limited to 16GB. (Well, it is soldered on but there are no 32 GB RAM units that could be soldered on.) I can't find anything to argue with in the rest of your post.
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I'm not sure that Apple is ever going to update the Mac Pro. The new Macbook Pro falls far short of what some high end users want; even more than the ports, the lack of an option for more than 16GB RAM or a truly high performance GPU are problems and suggest that Apple has abandoned high end design professionals. (Sorry, the Radeon Pro 460, the fastest available GPU, can't even match a GTX 1060, let alone the GTX 1080 that you can get in some Windows laptops.) The Mac Pro is pretty much a system that is ONL
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Apple will feel this fact in a recession.
Apple was so successful during the Great Recession that Republicans complained about people dropping their extended unemployment benefits on new iPhones and Macs. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple is even more successful during the forthcoming Trump Recession.
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No, they won't. As the other poster pointed out, during the last big recession, (R) politicians were bemoaning that people were spending their unemployment benefits on new Apple gear. Apple lovers would sell their children if they could to pay for new Apple stuff. In the next recession, I expect Apple to be just as profitable as now, with people going to great extremes to gather the cash for their Apple addictions, including going to all-Ramen diets, starving their children to death (literally), moving i
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The XPS has "identical form factor"? Ha! where is the unibody?
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The "professional" part of the MacBook Pro is just the console is pretty good for SSH'ing into a Linux box...
Which you'll need to do because Linux doesn't support the graphics card.
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Six years is a pretty good run an all. That said, I do wish they would actually update the 2011 17" MBP with the nifty matte screen and the upgradable memory and hard drive bays.
This is my current MacBook Pro. I'd replace it in a heartbeat if they released a new 17" matte screen. I don't really care about the upgradable memory or Hard Drive, as I usually order mine maxed out when I do.
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I got my Late 2011 15" model almost maxed out, but it was no longer sufficient. I replaced the memory (now 16GB instead of 4GB) and replaced the hard drive with an SSD. It's slower than new machines, but only for CPU heavy tasks; for the rest it runs very smooth. Having the possibility of replacing some components adds to a machine's value, to me at least.
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My Dell 2006 laptop is still going strong (with a self-applied memory upgrade, disk upgrade, and battery swap).
My 2012 Macbook Pro has had several annoying graphics issues I have not been able to do anything about due to the total pain in the ass steps to required even to try to self-repair anything on it.
Not to mention that the new replacement MBP is a fucking disaster for any actual "Pros" who made the mistake of buying the previous generation (which was goddamn great HW, if unreliable as shit).
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I would be happy to see an up-to-date version of my Late-2011 17" (bought in mid-2012 and still going strong), with the replaceable RAM (32GB this time, please!) and full 2.5" SATA. I still don't need that Retina crap (producing a Retina screen that large was probably one of the reasons they killed the 17"), but I would be fine with with SSD and SD card slots instead of the optical drive and Express Card slot. And I am even willing to wait a year or so for Intel to finish making mobile versions of their new
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"Some people just refuse to think before hitting submit, I guess..."
With that, you obviously do too
Re: That's nice (Score:4, Informative)
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They could have trade-in programs, w/ the replacement being heavily discounted. The price premium of the obsolete boxes should more than cover the discounts
They have such a program. It's called ebay.
Now go tell DELL you want a discount on your new computer because you have a 2 year old DELL. I can hear the laughter from here.
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I actually have a friend that states he always gets a discount from Dell when he uses a line that he's a long term Dell customer and wonders if they have any discounts for that.
Now whether or not these were discounts readily available regardless, I don't know.
DELL always has some discounts - that's why you can never be sure what any of their models will cost tomorrow. He doesn't get them because he buys new shit every year, he gets them because he asks what discounts they have right now. Just ask him if he ever got an discount on exactly the machine he wanted to buy. Or if he ever waited a few days an still got the same (or better) offer for the same machine.
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What are they supposed to do, buy all the parts manufacturers including Samsung and Intel?
Which is exactly what vendors who provide long-term support do. That is, they stockpile spare parts, they don't buy the manufacturers.
Some people just refuse to think before hitting submit, I guess...
Thinking before posting certainly hasn't stopped you, I see.
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What are they supposed to do, buy all the parts manufacturers including Samsung and Intel?
Which is exactly what vendors who provide long-term support do. That is, they stockpile spare parts, they don't buy the manufacturers.
You claim that DELL, HP and others each have a storehouse with CPUs, hard drives etc. all at least 7 years out of production.
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You don't actually need a warehouse of old hard drives. You just replace the drive with a current model. Same for optical drives for the systems that have them. You do need a stock of older CPUs and memory, though.
When a product really becomes unmaintainable (or unmanufacturable) is when an entire class of component goes out of production. That's why Apple had to stop making the iPod Classic, despite the fact that some people still wanted to buy them; nobody was making those miniature hard drives any more.
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You don't actually need a warehouse of old hard drives. You just replace the drive with a current model.
Sure. Unless the interface changed too much for it to work,
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Fortunately, the SATA interface standard has been stable for a long time. Most computers built during the time period we are discussing use it, and drives are still readily available. There were enhancements in going from SATA 1 to 2 and then 3, but they are backward compatible. It's true that you might be forced to install a larger disk drive than the one that originally came with the system because smaller drives are no longer made, but the customer is unlikely to complain.
At the distant edge of the relev
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Fortunately, the SATA interface standard has been stable for a long time. Most computers built during the time period we are discussing use it, and drives are still readily available
Sure. But we are talking about reality here, not what should be. Not to mention that you conveniently ignored the "etc." part.
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actually they DO. When a machine is about to crest the 3 or 5 year mark, Apple re-evaluates inventory. California (and other places?) have extended consumer protection laws that require them to keep a deeper stock of parts. So all remaining inventory generally goes to CA-only repairs. Parts they have way too much of are sold off and will appear elsewhere. At 10 years, CA laws even admit "you need to buy a new computer now and quit trying to repair that ancient piece of junk".
Some parts that turn out to
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What are they supposed to do, buy all the parts manufacturers including Samsung and Intel?
If they can't get parts to fix it because they aren't being fabbed anymore, they can't fucking fix it, can they?
Some people just refuse to think before hitting submit, I guess...
So that's why they run on with years old designs selling at premium prices? They buy up all the parts at once and go through them til they run out then buy a new batch and call it a new design. Is that how it works? I guess the designs are so strict and locked down that there's no such thing as an equivalent part.
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Please point out an "equivalent part" that can replace a 2nd generation Core i7. Hint: the only ones are other 2nd generation Core i7s, which Intel discontinued and no longer manufactures.
Go ahead and try to get an equivalent ThinkPad T520 repaired. Guess how far you'll get with that.
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mainly (Score:1)
Hardware, sure. But mainly what breaks is software anyway. Batteries for the laptops. And there are plenty of vendors for the replaceable battery designs like the 17" macbook pro (you bought one with a conformal battery, you bought planned obsolescence, deal with it.)
Apple could do a much better job. They could stop leaving hugely broken OS versions behind them, only to put out yet another version with new breakage, like 10.12, which :frankly: sucks. Sorry, Frank. The 2008 8-core mac pros, for instance, are
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Well, no, but it would be nice if the batteries could be replaced, or the OS and other software updated to a more recent version. Third-party and counterfeit batteries for a favorite laptop are ... discomfitting. As is finding that my version of a Safari browser can't ever get an upgrade so my bank will talk to it.
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I can still get parts and service for a PC over a decade old. Crapple is shit.
Replacing the motherboard with something roughly the same size doesn't count.
Not important (Score:3, Informative)
Tim Cook said himself that PCs are dead and people should buy iPads.
The Mac mini has not been upgraded since 2012, which is proof enough that Apple doesn't care about making computers anymore.
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The trouble with all this is they still need people to create the content for iPad users to consume. Web content can be published from Windows/Linux easily enough with just some testing on target devices, but they still need a viable app development platform. If they alienate developers badly enough, no-one will want to use a Mac even to develop for iOS. What do they do then? Release tools for targeting iOS while developing on Windows or Linux? Part of their sales pitch has always been the "whole ecosystem"
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The Mac mini has not been upgraded since 2012, which is proof enough that Apple doesn't care about making computers anymore.
Yep. There is the 2014 Mac mini, but with the quad core options going away and RAM getting soldered with no justifiable reason (form factor didn't change a bit), it doesn't really count as an upgrade. So the Mac mini has not been upgraded since 2012 indeed :P This is quite annoying as my 2011 mini is starting to get rather old.
Obsolete? (Score:4, Informative)
will become obsolete worldwide on the same date.
I have a 2006 MacMini. With iMovie '06 it's still the best front end to a Firewire camcorder I've found. The latest kdenlive dropped Firewire import.
For basic video editing it still works rather well. Transcoding is slow so I export everything in .dv and convert it on a faster machine.
Doesn't seem very obsolete to me.
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>I use legacy software, hardware, and ports, and transfer my data to another computer to transcode it
>hardware in question is not obsolete because I am comfortable gimping my own workflow
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Using it to import even older Legacy stuff. Turns out people put a lot of video on VHS. A Firewire VHS deck is still the most dependable option. Every USB RCA 'digitizer' I've found is made by companies long out of business, has lackluster Windows support to begin with and flat out refuses to work with Linux.
dvgrab works on Linux but you can't view the tape as it comes in. And as I said kdenlive dropped all firewire support with their latest version and the bug is labeled as "won't fix". So please oracle o
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Re:Obsolete? (Score:4, Informative)
That's not true at all. Linux has no file locking, so you can quite easily view the video file in real-time as they're being created and extended. A simple tail -F VIDEO.DV | mplayer - should work, though adjusting cache sizes might be necessary for some formats.
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https://github.com/umlaeute/v4... [github.com]
If kdenlive supports v4l2, this might help. I don't have a dv cam to test this with, but the module builds just fine on my x86_64 kernel 4.8.11 system. All I did was clone with git and type make. Your distro might even have pkgs for it.
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>I use legacy software, hardware, and ports, and transfer my data to another computer to transcode it
That's an amusing point to bring up in a thread about a company that's widely criticized here for being too aggressive with dropping legacy ports.
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will become obsolete worldwide on the same date.
I have a 2006 MacMini. With iMovie '06 it's still the best front end to a Firewire camcorder I've found. The latest kdenlive dropped Firewire import.
For basic video editing it still works rather well. Transcoding is slow so I export everything in .dv and convert it on a faster machine.
Doesn't seem very obsolete to me.
That's fine--it's just not what Apple means when a product becomes "obsolete," which is a term they use to denote hardware for which they will no longer supply official parts for repair, generally those that were discontinued more than 7 years ago (or 5 for "vintage" products, which means almost the same thing except that there are still parts available in certain circumstances). In many cases their software/OS updates still support these machines, and you're obviously welcome to keep using them as long as
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as opposed to Windows 10... (Score:2)
which I have running quite comfortably on a 10 year old PC with an extra DIMM or two of RAM...MacOS is nice and Apple HW is good stuff but the whole myth of Apple HW lasting longer than PC is just that, a myth.
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Apple HW is good stuff but the whole myth of Apple HW lasting longer than PC is just that, a myth.
My 2006 Black MacBook is strong running strong with Mint Linux. You can even run Windows 10 on it (see video link).
The 8-Bit Guy: Is it Obsolete - The Core Duo MacBook?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJw8aSxEFwQ [youtube.com]
recalled units? (Score:2)
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So what, why is this even a story? (Score:2, Insightful)
Products go EOL all the time, 2009 isn't a bad cut off year. It is 2016, and those computers would be cheaper to replace than to fix.
Is someone going to complain that the Apple ][ is no longer supported? No one in their right mind is going to say yes. On a small scale it would be OK due to old infrastructure that will not change for another 30 years because the systems have to meet a set of requirements that are not standard.
It doesn't make good business sense to support products at a mass scale for long pe
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Not every story has to be an outrage, this is simply information for an audience who uses technology.
It's informative, but that's about it. But does it really have to be any more than that?
Te bollox (Score:2)
My 3yo laptop is actually a very useful piece of kit, and according to the supplier who has just attempted to replace it with some more modern POS, he needs it back to sell to someone else. I deduce from that it has a market value>>almost nothing.
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It's 2011, not 2009. Photography is a serious hobby of mine and as somebody who does all their Lightroom work on an early 2011 17" MBP, I'm not impressed. It's still a really decent machine, and LR doesn't perform noticeably better on my 1 year old work 15" Retina MBP, and in fact quite the opposite due to the screen size. These older Macs are certainly not obsolete from this user's perspective.
BTW, I'm typing this on a late 2007 15" MBP, which is also a good machine, although I wouldn't run LR on it any
Defining Vintage vs. Obsolete (Score:2)
New: New.
Current: Still being sold.
Supported: Supported by a vendor or reliable third party.
Old but useful: Hey, it runs and it's doing something productive.
Obsolete: No practical use except as a pile of parts, nobody else wants it, *may* have non-negative scrap value if there isn't anything hazardous in it
Vintage: There is a sucker out there who thinks it may become collectable someday.
Collectable: Apple I, single-digit-serial-numbered original Macintosh 128K, etc.
Software kills Macs (Score:2)
I have a 2010 Macbook Air and it still functions but each successive OSX "upgrade" to the software has made it slower and dumbed it down to the point where it is pretty much useless.
I finally bought a Chromebook which, even though it only has an ARM processor, is much faster and more responsive than my MacBook. I have it set up to switch to Linux (using Crouton it's just a hot key switch) if I need to do some programming or any bash stuff. (Of course, it was much cheaper... and it's much better... even has
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Holy shit your modern computer is faster than your six year old computer?
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Yes! And it cost a lot less and I can do more with it...
What is really interesting is that it has a relatively low performance ARM processor combined with ChromeOS and gives much better performance than my old Intel based Mac. I guess the old Mac would still be just fine if I hadn't "upgraded" the OSX software. Each update seems to have progressively crippled the performance of the Mac. I guess it's bloat and feature creep. Too bad Apple couldn't have kept the OS simple. I don't really appreciate the new UI
Great (Score:2)
I own a few Mac mini (Early 2009) and once they are no longer supported by Apple, they are subject to a full refund should they fail under the local state laws. There have been many rulings involving full refunds for non-supported white goods with one example of a $400 washing machine failing a few years after the warranty with no ability to repair it and the ruling said something along the lines that "the device was expansive and people expect it to last much longer than the warranty period" with ordered a
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Gotta call bullshit on this.
No court in its right mind is going to force a manufacturer to repair or refund a failed item that's "a few years out of warranty" without the customer having been the victim of some sort of fraud (which a random out of warranty failure is not). That would be an excellent way of killing small businesses, and not a few large ones (or at least driving them out of the area).
Unless you want to tell us where you are, and provide citations for the cases in question?
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This happens to be in the state of Victoria in Australia but other states here also have strong consumer protection laws that basically say you can't be selling an unfixable product at a premium and not support it. The same is true for much of Europe as well and the few US states that haven't battered down their consumer protection laws.
Meanwhile in NYC Louis Rossmann smiles. (Score:2)
Only Official support has been dropped. They can still be fixed for a price.
Apple are doing what they have done every year... (Score:3)
Apple are doing what they have done every single year - retiring old models from their supported lineup. Film at 11.
Every year, a range of Macs pass through the range of support status from "Supported" to "Vintage" to "Obsolete"
Vintage products are those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago. Apple has generally discontinued hardware service for vintage products in most regions other than the state of California and Turkey.
Obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than 7 years ago. Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products through Apple.
https://support.apple.com/en-a... [apple.com]
After 13 years I'm slowly moving away from Apple (Score:3)
I added Apple to my hardware selection of Linux boxes back in 2003.
I like Apple hardware and the new MB Pro is very neat. The huge touchpad, the awesome keyboard and the retina display are are all very neat things. However, after getting an iBook G4 back in 2003 (cheapes Subnote available at the time), a Mac Mini (cheapest mini PC available at the time) a few years later and an MB Air in 2011 (only ultrabook available at the time (the class "Ultrabook" didn't even exist yet), my new machine will be an generic netbook without any OS preinstalled. I'll install linux on it, as usual with non-Apple hardware.
Why?
While Apple is quite neat, I'm increasingly wary of the Apple golden cage and their lock-in. Apple pay built into the new MB Pros doesn't help. Also, Apple products arent' so stand-alone innovative as they used to be and the prices have risen. My new machine, coming this week, will be a 300 Euro Netbook with a quadcore CPU and 10 hours of battery time. Vis-a-vis a minimum of 1700 Euros for the new MB Pro that's just to huge a gap to justify the expense.
Another prime reason for me to get an OS X machine has disappeared: I used to do professional Flash development. Since Flash is basically dead and it is the first and last prorpietary non-FOSS technology I've ever invested time in, there is no reason for me to keep a system around that runs the Flash IDE. Linux is as flaky and obscure as ever, but it hasn't gotten worse and Java (for my Jetbrains IDE) and Web (for everything I develop today) work just as fine as with macOS.
Homebrew and other FOSS macOS projects such as iTerm are very neat too, but I still trust compling on pure FOSS OSes more. On my MB Air I'm still running Maveriks, and brew starts complaining about the outdated compiler. Since the MB Air is a little to weak for El Capitan, I'm slowly getting stuck between a rock and a hard place with this.
I might get an MB Pro again some time in the future, but it would be more for kicks than anything else. They build nice machines, no doubt, but Linux for Pros and ChromeOS for n00bs cover 99.99% of the markets needs and costs roughly a 5th. And with Linux I'll be in control until the day I die. Or at least longer than I would be with Apples neatly bound hard- and software packages.
My 2 cents.
Too slow to update (Score:2)
When people are making external graphics cards [techrepublic.com] to connect to your laptops, you're not updating your laptops often enough.
Re:History will repeat itself (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, Apple had a true professional market not too long ago. Then they started acting like they knew better than the professionals and started making software and hardware that is not suited to meet the professionals' needs. So the pros went elsewhere.
At one point, the only two games in town for non-linear video edit were Apple and Avid. Then they dumbed down Final Cut Pro and made sure that it only runs it's best on inferior hardware. This has allowed Adobe Premiere back into the game, because they decided to go all-in with CUDA and Nvidia.
Re: (Score:2)