It was quite a while ago, about 6 or 7 years, that I purchased my first Mac computer, an 800 megahertz PowerPC iBook G4 with 256 megs of ram. I was thrilled to be a member of what at the time was the newly (re)minted Mac elite. I loaded up all the music I could into iTunes and even tried playing video over the free dial up that was offered to all students of my school- hey, I was a student and broadband was relatively expensive back then. Needless to say, video still wasn’t quite up to snuff, especially over that sort of connection.
So why am I reminiscing like an old sailor long retired from his mistress, the sea? Because Apple just released their annual list of “vintage” and “obsolete” machines. Vintage machines are those between 5 and 7 years old and will not receive service or hardware updates from Apple any longer unless you live in the state of California. Obsolete machines receive no updates anywhere.
The list please? (via cultofmac.com)
Among products on the “vintage” list are:
iMac (Early 2001)
iMac (17-inch Flat Panel)
iMac (Flat Panel)
iMac (Flat Panel 2003)
iMac (Summer 2001)
eMac
Macintosh Server G4 (Digital Audio)
Macintosh Server G4 (QuickSilver)
Macintosh Server G4 (Quicksilver 2002)
Macintosh Server G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
PowerBook (FireWire)
PowerBook G4
PowerBook G4 (12-inch)
PowerBook G4 (17-inch)Obsolete gear includes:
Macintosh Server G4 (AGP Graphics)
Macintosh Server G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
PowerMac G4 (AGP Graphics)
PowerMac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
PowerMac G4 (PCI Graphics)
PowerMac G4 Cube
PowerBook (Firewire), and even the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh.
Naturally, this won’t mean much to those truly devoted to keeping their machines running. As a matter of fact, I’m writing on that very same iBook from all those years ago as I write this blog in bed, and mine has already been on the vintage list for a year!
