Apple's throwing the original iPad Air and an iconic Mac display on the scrapheap soon

(Image credit: Future)

Apple will reportedly add two of its most iconic products to the obsolete list at the end of this month.

Products are added to the obsolete list when they are no longer eligible for repairs at Apple or its authorized partners which effectively means that it's time to start looking for a replacement.

In this case, the two products are the very first iPad Air as well as the 2011 Apple Thunderbolt Display.

Gone but not forgotten

The very first iPad Air was launched in 2013 before being discontinued in 2017. It wasn't without its issues, but the tablet was thinner and lighter than the previous iPad and also boasted thinner bezels around its 9.7-inch display. That made the tablet appear much more svelte than anything that came before it and sold for $499 at the time. The tablet had an A7 chip and was powered by iOS 7. The last update it received was iOS 12.5.7, suggesting owners still using the original iPad Air are missing out on plenty of new software features.

As for the Thunderbolt Display, that lasted five years before it was killed off in 2016. We now have the Studio Display and Pro Display XDR of course, but there was a big gap after the Thunderbolt Display's demise before we saw any sign of a new display from Apple. The Thunderbolt Display was once the best Mac display around thanks to its 27-inch 1440p display and included ports. The addition of an Ethernet port, FireWire 800 port, and of course a Thunderbolt port made it a great way to connect multiple devices over a single cable. There were also two USB-A ports for good measure.

MacRumors reports that both products will be added to the obsolete list as of May 31, 2023. Products become obsolete when it has been more than seven years since they were last sold.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.