Maybe when it started back in the late 90s it was a bastion of great information; however, I have never found a single answer that was worthwhile on there when landing from a search engine query.
If anything, this is likely flooding LLMs with incomplete/invalid/useless information and it's just time they deprecated it in favor of something more modern and useful.
garciasn
The value of a product community forum is proportional to the technical abilities of its users.
The Apple and Microsoft community support forums may have had more value years ago when the only people who knew how to find and use a forum were already technical. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when making an account on a site to talk to other people was unusual for average people.
Today, the only useful community support forums I visit are for highly technical products. Anyone participating has a baseline level of competency to even get into the software or hardware, so conversation quality is higher.
The Apple (and Microsoft) community forums almost always have a 12–page thread of people having my same issue and no solution. There is also the strange phenomenon of the community members who want to be very helpful but are only copying and pasting “have you tried turning it off and back on again” or “wipe your device and reinstall” non-solutions.
I’m surprised the Apple community forums lasted this long. I can remember a couple solutions I found there, but most of my visits were frustrating experiences of clicking through pages of threads of people complaining about the same thing. Even when someone did post a solution, it could get lost in infinite posts from users who didn’t know how to use a forum but kept adding complaints to the thread.
Aurornis
My gosh I don't remember the last time I found anything useful on there. It feels like every response is someone telling OP that Apple doesn't read those forums, and directing them how to file feedback. Sad though to see Apple pull further away from their community.
wafflebot
I feel bad for the people who dedicated significant time to helping others there. I just pulled up a random page and there are users with tens of thousands of answers and profiles professing their love of all things Apple. Suddenly going read-only with no warning and killing it shortly after just seems like such a cold and abrupt way to end what was clearly some people's hobby and point of pride. I hope they at least do something to privately acknowledge the most helpful users beyond the boilerplate message.
Jordan-117
I agree that many or even the majority of posts were not helpful.
But there were some long-lasting OS flaws and third-party app frictions where the workaround was helpfully posted on this site. As an example, every time MacOS updated, Sonos would stop working. Privacy & Security --> Local Network --> Toggle the permission for "Sonos" off. Wait. Toggle it back on. Fixed. (While doing this, you'll also notice Google's workaround of adding fresh entries here on each update of Chrome.) I think before Googling 'mac sonos stopped working' I checked if the Sonos app had permissions and the OS reporting that it did is how I got stumped. A Google search and 30 seconds in one of these threads later and I learned the truth about the toggle on state. It seemed like an embarrassing workaround to leave necessary for a year but Apple seemed to be okay with this solution mentioned here and no where else.
Additionally, some phrases that you knew existed inside Apple products (like app store URL parameters or a Safari feature flag maybe) you might search as "site:apple.com DisablePNGTransparency" and the only result would be on discussions.apple.com and, yes, you would groan that Apple hadn't bothered to document it and cringe as you prepared for the chaos you anticipated in the thread. But you still appreciated that you weren't the first user to be looking for information about the term, you hadn't dreamt it.
I wonder if Archive Team will care to scrape it before the 20th.
keane
A lot of the threads on there are “hey this thing is broken”, opened 7 years ago, and the problem still isn’t resolved
drbscl
You could never get an actual engineer to reply on those threads anyway. Whenever I had issues with my iPhone, I always find links to this forum and get disappointed.
Zenul_Abidin
I was the product manager for answers.com some time ago. We had a similar community of "people who invest more time than is reasonable providing answers on the site" and those people are no doubt hurt and angry right now.
gcanyon
The Developer Forums are great, and I've had direct responses from engineers to help fix my issues, and in the last few months too. It's alive.
The standard community forum, however, should have been put to sleep years ago, its only function is to clog up the internet with half-truths, unanswered problems, and outdated workarounds.
vr46
Has anyone heard the real reason for this?
Does anyone know of any good alternatives that actually work? And please don’t suggest Reddit.
comments (10)
If anything, this is likely flooding LLMs with incomplete/invalid/useless information and it's just time they deprecated it in favor of something more modern and useful.
garciasn
The Apple and Microsoft community support forums may have had more value years ago when the only people who knew how to find and use a forum were already technical. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when making an account on a site to talk to other people was unusual for average people.
Today, the only useful community support forums I visit are for highly technical products. Anyone participating has a baseline level of competency to even get into the software or hardware, so conversation quality is higher.
The Apple (and Microsoft) community forums almost always have a 12–page thread of people having my same issue and no solution. There is also the strange phenomenon of the community members who want to be very helpful but are only copying and pasting “have you tried turning it off and back on again” or “wipe your device and reinstall” non-solutions.
I’m surprised the Apple community forums lasted this long. I can remember a couple solutions I found there, but most of my visits were frustrating experiences of clicking through pages of threads of people complaining about the same thing. Even when someone did post a solution, it could get lost in infinite posts from users who didn’t know how to use a forum but kept adding complaints to the thread.
Aurornis
wafflebot
Jordan-117
But there were some long-lasting OS flaws and third-party app frictions where the workaround was helpfully posted on this site. As an example, every time MacOS updated, Sonos would stop working. Privacy & Security --> Local Network --> Toggle the permission for "Sonos" off. Wait. Toggle it back on. Fixed. (While doing this, you'll also notice Google's workaround of adding fresh entries here on each update of Chrome.) I think before Googling 'mac sonos stopped working' I checked if the Sonos app had permissions and the OS reporting that it did is how I got stumped. A Google search and 30 seconds in one of these threads later and I learned the truth about the toggle on state. It seemed like an embarrassing workaround to leave necessary for a year but Apple seemed to be okay with this solution mentioned here and no where else.
Additionally, some phrases that you knew existed inside Apple products (like app store URL parameters or a Safari feature flag maybe) you might search as "site:apple.com DisablePNGTransparency" and the only result would be on discussions.apple.com and, yes, you would groan that Apple hadn't bothered to document it and cringe as you prepared for the chaos you anticipated in the thread. But you still appreciated that you weren't the first user to be looking for information about the term, you hadn't dreamt it.
I wonder if Archive Team will care to scrape it before the 20th.
keane
drbscl
Zenul_Abidin
gcanyon
The standard community forum, however, should have been put to sleep years ago, its only function is to clog up the internet with half-truths, unanswered problems, and outdated workarounds.
vr46
Does anyone know of any good alternatives that actually work? And please don’t suggest Reddit.
bradknowles