This week Apple updated its list of supported Macs, labelling several more models “obsolete” – a move that one computer repair specialist described as a “sales tactic designed to frighten” customers.
A host of models were added to Apple’s obsolete list in this week’s update, including the 2016 MacBook, MacBook Pro models from 2015 and 2016, and 2015 iMacs.
Apple adds products to its obsolete list when the company “stopped distributing them for sale more than seven years ago.” The company says that it “discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, and service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products,” the only exception being batteries which can be available for as long as ten years.
While Apple is far from alone in retiring products, and indeed offers support for its products for longer than many other manufacturers, the use of the word “obsolete” raises eyebrows for products that are often still perfectly functional.
Last year, for example, I wrote about how I used Linux Mint to breathe new life into a 2013 iMac, which is still in daily use as an entertainment center in our kitchen today.
Computer repair expert, Lee Grant, who writes about sustainability for PC Pro magazine in the U.K. (a magazine for which I write), says that kind of language is used deliberately to discourage customers from clinging to ageing hardware. “Whilst they certainly may be deemed obsolete by Apple, the reality is that these are working, functional and needed bits of tech,” said Grant.
“Telling a customer that something is obsolete is a passive-aggressive sales tactic designed to frighten them,” he added. “Sure, to some people a ten-year-old machine may seem unworthy of their attention, but the planet is rapidly becoming a greenhouse and it’s partly because we’re churning through electronic devices.”
Others in the reuse industry are more sanguine about Apple’s choice of language. Ben Higgs, owner of Hoxton Macs in London, a company that sells refurbished Apple kit, describes the use of the word “obsolete” as “unfortunate terminology.”
“Rather than it being an actual, definitive term that it will actually no longer be usable or no longer have any value,” Higgs added, devices that are deemed obsolete are actually “more than usable.”
Apple hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
Harder To Reuse
Whether or not the term “obsolete” is designed to alarm customers, there is agreement among the recycling experts that Apple is making it harder for third-party companies to refurbish its kit.
A series of measures introduced over the past few years, including the T2 security chips and activation locks, make it harder for refurb companies to take old Macs from customers and resell them.
The T2 security chip, for example, makes it more difficult for customers to install alternative, more lightweight Linux operating systems that can make old Macs run more nimbly than macOS. “You can continue to run macOS on these vintage devices, but the lack of app updates will cause the portcullis to come down with a bang at some point,” said Grant.
For Higgs and Hoxton Macs, the biggest obstacle is Apple’s move towards serialization, where the company effectively prevents components from one machine being used in another. That means, for example, if you’ve got one Mac with a broken screen and another with a faulty processor, you can’t combine components to create one working machine, meaning both are wasted.
“We think that’s pretty unfair, because it makes it a lot more expensive to repair a device,” said Higgs.
With serialization, customers’ only repair options are to go through Apple, an authorized repair outlet, or to use Apple’s new self-repair facility, where customers are supplied with official components. But as Higgs warns, these “parts are, unfortunately, extremely expensive, so you’re looking at around £700 ($930) for a [MacBook] display. Whereas, if you used a display from a device that’s failed for other reasons, then the cost of that display would have been perhaps half of that figure, or maybe less than half.”
Apple published a white paper this summer, called Longevity by Design, which laid out a roadmap for once again allowing repairs with used parts, but Higgs fears it’s not going to be a return to the old days of simply being allowed to swap any component in a Mac, arguing it’s likely to be a “strictly controlled process.”
In the meantime, lots of perfectly usable hardware will indeed be rendered needlessly obsolete.
