Apple kills off support for its final plastic MacBook

The last MacBook that Apple produced with a plastic chassis is now officially obsolete, along with a number of MacBook Pro models from 2009 (with a caveat for the US and Turkey – more on that in a moment).

The 13-inch MacBook from 2010, a polycarbonate model available in black or white, is now considered obsolete globally, along with several notebooks from the previous year, namely the 13-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2009) and two 15-inch MacBook Pro models (Mid 2009, and 2.53GHz Mid 2009).

That means Apple no longer officially supports repairs for these devices, or stocks spare parts. So if these MacBooks go wrong in the future, they can’t be fixed (at least not by Apple).

Californian and Turkish delight

The caveat is for Californian and Turkish laptop owners, where these products have become categorized as ‘vintage’ rather than obsolete. For these areas, vintage status means that limited support is still available for a further two years (thanks to specific local regulations which demand this).

But for the vast majority of the world, including the UK and most of the US, these products can no longer be serviced by Apple should they develop a fault.

The last-of-its-kind plastic 13-inch MacBook is fondly remembered by many, and still used by more than a few folks today. Although they’ll certainly be hoping that no hardware bugbears rear their heads with these devices, of course.

At the end of last December, a number of other MacBooks hit obsolescence, including the MacBook Pro 15-inch and MacBook Pro 17-inch released in early 2011, along with the MacBook 13-inch from 2009.

Via: MacRumors

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).