On Tuesday, Apple announced it will permanently shut down one of its oldest online services: the Apple Support Community forum, where users could post questions and get answers about the iPhone, the Mac, and other Apple products they owned.
The forum has existed in some form since the late ’90s, but its closure, while abrupt, makes a lot of sense. Here’s what you need to know.
What’s happened?
One Tuesday, visitors to the Apple Support Community (found at discussions.apple.com) discovered they could no longer post new topics to the nearly three-decade-old Apple forum.
Instead, they were greeted with a message from Apple announcing the community’s upcoming closure.
“The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026,” the message read. “Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.”
The message went on to thank the members of the Apple Support Community “who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.”
As of the time of this writing, all Apple Support Community posts are still available to browse, but, as Apple’s message stated, new posts cannot be created, and existing posts cannot be replied to.
And, presumably, all posts will be wiped from discussions.apple.com on November 20.
The product of a bygone era
Apple has offered some version of the Apple Support Community for nearly three decades.
As noted by 9to5Mac, in 1998, Apple launched Apple Tech Exchange, its first forum-based community support site. The purpose of the forums was to provide one central location where Apple’s customers could get their support questions answered by other Apple users.
Apple Tech Exchange eventually morphed into Apple Discussions in the early 2000s, which then became the modern Apple Support Communities in the early 2010s.
It’s unknown how many users the forums had, but even today, the portal still boasts that the Apple Support Community was “the world’s largest community of Apple fans.”
The problem with Apple Support Communities, in the opinion of many Apple users, was that the answers found on the forums were often lackluster, incomplete, or sometimes just downright wrong.
Many queries also often went unanswered, or the only replies to a tech support query were along the lines of “I’m having the same problem.”
In other words, actually getting useful help on the Apple Support Communities was often a hit-or-miss affair.
That’s not to mention that the forums were very much a product of another age. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the forums made sense as a central hub for Apple fans to share their knowledge.
But over the last 20 years, the web has changed with the rise of social media and platforms like Reddit, along with massive online communities of Apple fans that populate in MacRumors’ popular forums.
As these platforms grew more popular, Apple Support Communities became less relevant.
Why is Apple shutting down Apple Support Communities?
Beyond the message now at the top of Apple Support Communities, Apple has not publicly commented on why the forums are being shuttered.
Fast Company has reached out to Apple for comment.
However, there are several likely reasons Apple has finally decided to close the forums.
First, this feels like some long-overdue housekeeping Apple is finally taking care of. Apple recently got a new CEO, and when new leaders come on, they tend to tidy up the place.
Second, if you spent any time on Apple Support Communities, you quickly realized that many of the people turning to the forums for help thought they were getting answers from Apple’s official support staff. However, that was never the case.
As the Apple Support Communities footer notes, the forums contained “user submitted content, comments and opinions” and were “for informational purposes only.”
Despite this disclaimer, the misconception that an Apple employee was responding to your queries seems to have been rife.
This likely led to a lot of frustration when a user found they couldn’t get a firm answer to their query, further leading to the perception that Apple’s support staff was inept—or that getting tech support from Apple was a frustrating experience.
Those are misconceptions that Apple was probably getting sick of.
Third, as previously mentioned, web forums were all the rage in the late ’90s and early 2000s, but now if you need help with your Apple queries, the best places to get an answer quickly are usually the various tech or Apple subreddits on Reddit—or just ask the tech community that hangs out on X or Threads.
Finally, even social media and platforms like Reddit are now being superseded by AI chatbots.
Asking ChatGPT, Gemini, or Apple’s new Siri AI how to resolve your Apple problem is often the quickest way to get a reliable answer now. (I know, shocking that AI is now superseding user-generated content.)
As for those who did find Apple Support Communities helpful, you’ve got a little over a week left to peruse the site before Apple takes it down for good on Friday, November 20.