Went looking to replace the battery in my 2015 MacBook Pro and see that Apple considers the computer to be “obsolete” and no longer sells services or replacement parts. Says the computer can only be recycled!
This “old” system features a quad core Intel i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and both an Intel GPU and a NVidia GPU (dual GPUs). With that processing set, it is blindingly fast for processing images in photo editing software, or for editing videos.
Unfortunately, this is the third time I have encountered Apple’s rapid product end of life. Apple ends support, including parts, in 5-7 years, says their official statement on their web site.
I once had a Macbook that became unsupported (no more OS updates) after 3 1/2 years.
I had an iPad 2 (early model) that was effectively bricked by an Apple software update. This happened to everyone. What Apple did was provided a new OS update that required more RAM than the then iPad 2 had – and the iPad 2 slowed to a crawl to the point of being unusable. Apple’s policy is that there is no way to revert the update and go back to the prior software version. So the iPad 2 is effectively dead. Makes a nice cutting board!
My 2006 MacPro desktop is still a beast of a computer but they stopped OS updates at 10.7 and now most newer software will not run on it. That’s kind of okay except for Internet browsers – which gradually become further out of date due to the net itself changing. Most new browsers cannot run on the system. Worse, I had a MacPro1,1 – the first edition – which has an unusual boot process and the hardware is unable to run Linux or Windows because of that. So it is soon to become a boat anchor, mostly trashed in a landfill. So environmental.
We had also bought a G5 iMac shortly before Apple announced they were abandoning the PowerPC CPUs and switching to Intel, which meant we’d just bought into a dead-end hardware system.
Now my 2015 Macbook Pro, Apple says, can’t get a battery upgrade. I found a 3rd party vendor and have placed an order. Reading the replacement instructions – takes 1 to 2 hours – Apple has glued nearly everything inside the computer because they never intended for anyone to replace batteries. There are 33 separate steps – each involving removing / ungluing something – before you even get to the battery itself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. There are then additional steps – 55 in total – by the time you’ve put in the new battery.
Then you reverse it all by doing those 55 steps in reverse. (Updated: the DIY battery replacement was successful).
This was not brilliant engineering – unless you want to force premature product obsolescence by making battery replacements difficult.
Consider Apple’s claims about their environmentalism
Apple and the environment
Apple products are designed to be long-lasting. They are made of durable materials that are heavily-tested in our Reliability Testing Lab. The longer you use your product, the better it is for the planet. For more information about Apple and the environment, visit www.apple.com/environment.
Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty – Apple Support
Officially, they end support in 5-7 years (or sometimes less in the case of my iPad 2 or my original Macbook).
Meanwhile, my 2012 quad core HP desktop is still getting Windows 10 updates after 12 years and runs all Windows software. I cannot update it to Windows 11 as the system did not support TPM, required now for security and encryption in Windows 11 (well, there are workarounds to run Windows 11 on systems lacking TPM 2.0, so there is that option too..). The system runs fine and all software runs fine, and newer, updated software all runs fine. I expect to use this now 12-year-old system for a few more years, without problems.
