When people tried visiting the Apple Support Community site on Tuesday, they found not only that new posts were blocked, but that Apple is planning to shut down the forums permanently on Nov. 20. If you want to look up a specific Apple troubleshooting topic on iPhones or HomePods, now’s the time to do it. Soon, the entire peer advice and support site, which has been operating for nearly three decades, will be gone.
Apple was a pioneer in community support forums before the aughts, letting people discuss their Mac issues as early as 1998. For those of you who might remember, that’s the year Apple debuted its iMac G3, the desktop with a translucent blue teardrop-shaped case. The iMac G3 abandoned legacy ports and the floppy disk drive in favor of CD-ROM and USB.
Back then, the site was called Apple Tech Exchange, later renamed Apple Discussions until it eventually became the Apple Support Community in 2011. Many still turned to forums for DIY solutions, using it to get advice from other tinkerers interested in figuring out how to fix things on their own.
An Apple spokesperson told CNET the decision was made “after careful evaluation of our strategy and our customers’ needs.” Apple’s site notification directs people to visit the official Apple Support site.
