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Apple to Obsolete iPhone 4 and Late 2010 MacBook Air on October 31
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The 2010 Airs are pretty slow by today's standards. I still have one. It's perfectly fine for being six years old, but I wouldn't automatically assume that the 2011, much faster unit, will be discontinued in exactly one year's time.
That list of obsolete products page doesn't have the Apple I! 
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"Apple Obsoletes the New Mac Pro from 2013" is coming.
This first comment is the very quip I was going to offer. It proves how universal a joke Apples hardware lineup is now.
Think of it as a buying opportunity.
Buy what? The company isn't selling any up to date computer products at the moment...
Looking at the Mac Rumors buying guide, you could be forgiven for thinking that Apple had obsoleted the entire Mac line up.
I remember seeing the iPhone 4 first time leaked on Gizmodo I was blown away by the design and then saw FaceTime demoed by Steve Jobs etc it was one the best product launch after the original iPhone.
I've still got a late 2010 MBA which my partner uses daily. It was the fully maxed out version so 4GB RAM, 256 SSD and 2.2 GHz Core 2 processor and it still works perfectly for standard office stuff (mail, web, office, etc.) running 10.11.
Pretty sure it was still on the list for 10.12, but haven't been bothered to update yet. I refresh my machine every 3 years
so when the new machines are announced I'll be handing down my 2013 MBA and the 2010 will be surplus to requirements. Will probably look to sell on, as it's still in perfect working order and would still make a great machine for someone.
Pretty sure it was still on the list for 10.12, but haven't been bothered to update yet. I refresh my machine every 3 years
so when the new machines are announced I'll be handing down my 2013 MBA and the 2010 will be surplus to requirements. Will probably look to sell on, as it's still in perfect working order and would still make a great machine for someone.
I have to agree with most of you; the iPhone 4 is still the best looking iPhone they made. 5, 6, and 7 aren't exactly ugly, but the 4 was definitely the beauty pageant winner.
Having owned several iPhones from the start, the 4 is my favorite. I had it jailbreaked and it was a totaly awesome phone. The iphones now is just- another whatever, ok, thinner, but dont really care about it anymore. Dont know what my next phone will be, still using the 5, but unlike before I am not sure it will be an iPhone.
The Sad Mac will be the Halloween costume of choice for Mac users in 2016.
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The CPU's they are about to include in new MBP's are about 12% faster than those found in current shipping models. The current models are hardly outdated. Graphics performance of course is one area where they lag, but Apple always lags behind on graphics performance. Apple places their value on different things - thinness, portability and battery life. And those are the three things I care about most in a laptop.
Writing as someone who has used Windows 10 laptops with Skylake processors and better dedicated graphics in them, I can tell you battery life that frequently drops below five hours quickly wears on you.
So if Apple design for obsolescence in 7 years (& they will - or force the issue by leaving the hardware behind in new OS updates) - take the cost of say a mid-price mac, macbook pro and iPhone - divide by 7 and is that what Apple expect you to spend every year on their hardware? Circa £450 a year at UK prices.
Surprisingly low actually - but of course many can't spread the upfront capital cost over that time period (at least not without costs).
So VFM or not?
Surprisingly low actually - but of course many can't spread the upfront capital cost over that time period (at least not without costs).
So VFM or not?
If they 'designed' obsolescence, then 7 years is amazing longevity in this industry. Buy an HP laptop and you'll be incredibly lucky if they're still releasing newer drivers for it 6 months later. That's something to be said about standardised hardware.
It's getting pretty bad. Work purchased a 13" rMBP for me two months ago. Supposedly brand new, it shipped with Yosemite and had a manufacture date 15 months prior to delivery. I spent the best part of the day updating the OS (Apple's servers were exceptionally slow that day) before it would even allow me to migrate from my El Capitan time machine drive.
same here
Meanwhile my Thinkpad from 2009 seems to be immortal. It is running Windows 10 like a champ and will run Windows 11 fine too!
Can't argue with that but is the pace of change in software and how we use our computers really changing that much any more? I can understand the gamers and creatives want more CPU/graphics grunt but do the bulk of the office slaves require much more than was on offer 6/7 years ago? Also, if you do need to keep CPU/graphics state of the art then Apple with its sealed in components (other than Pro?) is hardly the best choice.
I'm talking about OEM hardware/software support, not Microsoft or Windows 10.
Ah, the Pumpkin Pro. Macrumours buyers guide says 349 days since last update......
I got 5 years out of my previous Lenovo Thinkpad. It wasn't the drivers that ended it, it was the Nvidia Quadro GPU giving up its ghost.
I'm not saying that an outdated driver will kill a computer. You can frequently get the driver directly from the manufacturer's website anyway, especially with dGPUs.
But the point is that they ship as much stuff as possible and then don't support it afterwards. They'll frequently stop manufacturing parts too. Even laptops less than a year old can struggle with atrocious turnaround times due to limited/no stock. Add an extended warranty to that and you're SOL. Especially when there's a documented/widespread failure (HP touchscreens come to mind, in addition to a few Toshiba LCDs/mainboards), they'll have an indefinite "TBC" time.
Then what? You've got a laptop waiting for months on end to get a part. It's still in warranty. The manufacturer won't replace the computer and you can't get the parts for it. So what do you do in this situation?