If you’ve ever had a problem with an Apple product and looked online for a solution, there’s a high probability you’ve ended up on the Support Community forums. This is a site owned and operated by Apple, but reliant on the expertise of members of the public, who start threads about ongoing issues (such as the iPhone Duo’s cracked screens) and offer each other advice. You won’t always be able to find a perfect fix there, but it’s a great place to find confirmation that other people are experiencing the same issue as you, and to keep track of the best workarounds currently available.
Sadly, however, the site’s days are officially numbered. At the time of writing, visitors are greeted by a message announcing that Apple Support Community “will permanently close on November 20, 2026,” and directing those seeking guidance to instead head over to Apple’s Support site. (The company also offers support via phone, chat, face to face in stores, and through the Apple Support app.) For the time being, existing community threads are still available to view, but nothing further can be added. The forums are read-only from now on, and the entire thing will close down in nine days.
Apple doesn’t offer a reason for the decision in its announcement. We asked the company what was going on, and received a statement saying only that it evaluated its strategy and customers’ needs and then decided to close the forums. No details were offered as to how the forums’ existence clashed with strategy, nor in what way it was a bad thing for customers to have access to a repository of advice and guidance from fellow Apple fans. So we can only speculate about the rationale.
Apple
One obvious issue with the forums would be the same one encountered by every company operating such a site: The owner has responsibility for the content without having control over it. If news of a hardware problem breaks, forum users will discuss it in a way that carries consequences for Apple’s corporate strategy, potentially widening awareness before the company is ready to release a statement or even seeding misinformation, and disgruntled device owners are unlikely to follow Apple’s desired messaging lines when complaining about the latest thing that has gone wrong. In the thread I linked above, for example, several commenters point out that the screen issue is rare and covered by warranty, but another advises the thread author to stick with conventional iPhones and avoid the Duo for now.
In other words, Apple probably didn’t like the idea of owners googling a problem with their device, seeing the forums in a prominent search ranking and with official Apple branding, and then being exposed to unofficial messaging. It’s a company which is notorious for wanting to control the narrative at all times, and forums are a terrible medium for that.
On the other hand, forums are a brilliant way to generate large amounts of content without having to pay for it, and Apple is about to kiss that goodbye. Apple’s community forums have been around for decades, dating all the way back to 1998. Longtime Apple users will fondly recall browsing Apple Discussion threads before Reddit or Discord were a thing.
In the vacuum left by Support Community’s absence, users will have to look elsewhere. Other sites may see an increase in traffic to their own forums (and Apple will have even less control over the discussions on there) while others with a preference for the official route will visit Apple Support.
But a site curated by in-house writers, even one funded by a multi-trillionaire company like Apple, cannot possibly react as quickly to breaking stories and emerging vulnerabilities as a forum open to the public; it’s not just about manpower, but also about having to get clearance from the PR and legal departments before publishing anything. Apple Support is a more reliable resource in most respects than Support Community, but it cannot perform exactly the same function… unless John Ternus has an AI-based approach in mind.
We’ll have to wait and see what Apple’s support functions look like after this change. In the meantime, make the most of Support Community while you still can.
