Goodbye, Apple Support Community: AI will never replace you

ZDNET’s key takeaways Apple’s Support Community is now read-only and will close for good on Nov. 20. Apple cites ‘strategy and customer needs,’ but hasn’t explained the decision.

If AI is the replacement, it’s built on answers humans wrote on that forum. After close to 30 years, Apple is pulling the plug on the Apple Support Community . A note on the site informs visitors that, as of today, users will no longer be able to make new posts, that the site is available in a read-only state, and that it will permanently close on Nov.

20, 2026. Nine days, then that’s it. Also: Need more AI in Creator Studio?

Apple may charge you for it More from ZDNET Long-term Apple fans will know that the site goes back to 1998, and it’s gone through several names — including Apple Tech Exchange and Apple Discussions — before settling on the current Apple Support Community. It’s been the one-stop shop for Apple users to get answers to their questions.

It was a faster — and often better — way for users to get solutions to common problems than calling a support line. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET In my experience, Apple tech support can vary from great to not great, depending on the support agent. But most questions in the support forum were answered within a few replies (and if there was no solution, at least people took solace in knowing they weren’t the only ones affected).

Contrary to popular belief, there was paid Apple staff on the site between 2013 to around 2023 who did answer questions, but only as a backstop for questions that languished unanswered after a day or so. Everyone else was volunteering their time, and based on what I saw, they did a great job.

Also: 5 apps I need Siri AI to work with now that it’s open to third-party developers It was also a great barometer for people like me to see how widespread — or not — a problem was. So why has Apple drawn a line under this now? In a message to MacRumors , Apple said that the decision comes “after a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs.” I’m a little more cynical.

What I’ve noticed over the past few years is that it’s become more and more of a toxic hellstew for Apple, and hardcore fans who were happy to tolerate the pain of being on the cutting edge of tech have been replaced by consumers who demand that the product just work, and it’s become quite a public record of user dissatisfaction.

It’s just not a good look. Also: MacBook Neo production to double in 2027 – and get its most-requested upgrade And no matter how great a resource I think the site is, you do have to go digging through a lot of bad advice and guesses before you find the good stuff — something that’s inevitable with any forum, but something that’s exacerbated when moderation is lax (although a few users have complained that critical threads were locked or disappeared).

Is this a push by Apple to replace human answers with AI? Gewirtz and I agree here. As he put it, “if that’s the case, that’s just going to backfire.” Take the 10 most-viewed solved threads from the Support Community and put the same questions to your favorite AI assistant (as I just did), and you’ll get the same answer, but only because someone — a human — already answered it.

But asking AI to help with new issues that don’t benefit from humans having already trodden the ground is just asking for data to be deleted and devices to be bricked. Is this because of money or housekeeping by a new CEO? I doubt it.

The Support Community would have been a drop in the ocean for Apple, and I think that the new CEO has more important things to deal with, so this decision likely predates John Ternus’s appointment to CEO. After all, Apple pulled the plug on the paid Community Specialist role in 2023.

Also: The Siri AI waitlist is gone in iOS 27: How to try the beta today Thanks to the volunteers Whatever the reason, I’ll be sad to see it go. Like the dusty old encyclopedias my granddad had, it may have been outdated, and it may not always have been right, but there was something both comforting and familiar about turning to it.

And a big thank you to all those who volunteered their time to help fellow Apple users. There were members of that community who really knew their stuff, and were generous with their time in sharing their knowledge. You made a difference.