The mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro will soon be listed as vintage

Apple MacBook Pro (Image credit: Joseph Keller/iMore)

What you need to know

Apple has marked the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro as vintage.
Vintage products become so after they were manufactured more than five years ago.
If you own a 2012 MacBook Pro now might be a good time to treat yourself to one of those fancy new M1 Macs.

Apple's mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro, the last to sport a DVD drive, will be marked as a vintage product come January 31.

Apple will be adding the device to its list of vintage products within the next two weeks according to a MacRumors report based on an internal memo seen by the site. Apple was selling the mid-2012 MacBook Pro as recently as October 2016.

Apple's marking of the product as being vintage means that it was last sold more than five years ago — a timeframe which came into play some time ago. However, as the MacRumors report also goes on to note, people might still be able to get these older machines repaired depending on whether parts are available or not.

Apple considers a device vintage once more than five years have passed since it stopped distributing the device for sale. Vintage products used to be ineligible for repairs in most regions, but Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers now offer repairs for vintage products for up to seven years, subject to parts availability.

However, Apple no longer supports these models in terms of software with macOS Big Sur being the last software update to include support for the mid-2012 MacBook Pro. That being said, at almost ten years old there is little arguing that any mid-2012 MacBook Pro hasn't done well to last this long.

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.