Sometimes, it is price taking a second to notice the top of an period, even when that ending may need occurred a very long time in the past. Today, Apple introduced that it considers the mid-2012 13-inch MacEbook Pro obsolete. It was the last MacEbook Pro to incorporate an optical drive for taking part in CDs or DVDs.
This implies that any MacEbook Pro with an optical drive is not supported.
Regarding merchandise deemed obsolete, Apple’s help web page on the subject says:
Products are thought of obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them on the market greater than 7 years in the past… Apple discontinues all {hardware} service for obsolete merchandise, and repair suppliers can’t order elements for obsolete merchandise. Mac laptops could also be eligible for an prolonged battery-only restore interval for as much as 10 years from when the product was last distributed on the market, topic to elements availability.
Apple stopped promoting the mid-2012 13-inch MacEbook Pro in October 2016 (it was obtainable for some time as the corporate’s finances possibility within the Pro lineup), so anybody doing the mathematics noticed this coming. Further, it has been years since this specific Mac was supported by the most recent Apple OS releases. Released in 2020, macOS Big Sur ended help for the machine, although older variations of macOS continued to get safety updates.
The exclusion of an optical drive in subsequent MacEbook Pro fashions was controversial, nevertheless it’s now clear that whether or not Apple was leaping the gun at that time or not, optical drives have fallen away for many customers, and plenty of Windows laptops not embody them.
Apple nonetheless sells an exterior optical drive it calls SuperDrive that may learn and burn CDs and DVDs. However, it hasn’t been up to date in ages; it nonetheless makes use of USB-A, which most Mac {hardware} not consists of. So, even if in case you have Apple’s exterior CD/DVD drive, you in all probability want an adapter to make use of it with your fashionable Mac.
That’s an indication of simply how related optical drives are for immediately’s customers, however this looks as if time to recollect a bygone period of bodily media that wasn’t so way back. So farewell, mid-2012 13-inch MacEbook Pro—truthfully, most of us did not miss you by this level.