Is Apple About to Retire the 2015 Apple TV HD? | A New Model May Be Coming

Apple products drop onto its vintage products list on a fairly regular basis, but this time around, there could be a surprising addition to the list: the 2015 Apple TV HD.

A product is considered “vintage” when it hasn’t been sold by Apple in at least five years. Needless to say, that means the list is chock full of older iPhones, iPads, and Macs, with new ones being added every year.

For example, at this point, the list includes the iPhone 6 Plus and older models, although, in an unusual twist, the iPhone 6 hasn’t yet made the cut, nor has the iPhone 5s, which precedes it by a year. Even though both these models are at least the same age as the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple kept selling a 32GB iPhone 6 in some countries until September 2018.

However, according to a memo seen by MacRumors, it seems Apple is set to move a product onto its vintage list that it’s still selling in stores.

Although the 2015 Apple TV HD is approaching its seventh year of life, Apple has never discontinued it. It’s still sold as a slightly cheaper alternative to the Apple TV 4K for those who want to save a bit of money on a basic set-top box and have no need for 4K capabilities, more storage, or a faster processor.

Even if Apple is preparing to discontinue the aging set-top box — perhaps at WWDC next month — it still wouldn’t be considered vintage under Apple’s rules until June 2026, five years after it was last sold.

There’s no mistake here, though. MacRumors says it’s been told by “multiple sources” that the “Apple TV HD” will be classified as vintage at the end of June.

What’s Going on Here?

It seems very unlikely that Apple would break its own rules for vintage products, particularly since anybody who invested in an Apple TV HD in the past twelve months would still be entitled to warranty coverage. Not to mention that Apple also still sells AppleCare+ for that model, extending its coverage to three years from the date of purchase.

In other words, Apple can’t arbitrarily declare the current Apple TV HD as a vintage product and stop supporting it since we have to assume it’s sold at least one of these devices in the past year.

MacRumors suggests that this could be a mistake and was instead meant to refer to the last version of the third-generation Apple TV, which continued being sold into early 2017 after being discontinued the preceding October.

However, a MacRumors forums member also suggests another interesting possibility:

Apple did update the Apple TV HD in 2017 with a new remote that had the line around the menu button. When my Apple TV Siri remote broke all the way in 2020 and I went to go get it replaced, they had to order a new remote, simply because they refused to replace my remote with one that had the line around the menu button, since my Apple TV was purchased before that change was made.Lounge vibes 05, MacRumors forums

Despite this change to the remote, Apple doesn’t differentiate between Apple TV HD models. The only non-4K version of Apple’s tvOS-capable set-top box, the Apple TV HD has had the model number A1625 since it was first released in 2015 as the Apple TV (4th generation); it wasn’t rebranded as the Apple TV HD until 2019.

Another possibility is that the memo may be referring only to the 64GB version of the Apple TV HD. The higher-capacity model was discontinued in September 2017 following the introduction of the first Apple TV 4K. While this would be very unusual, as Apple doesn’t typically distinguish its products by storage capacity, the timing is closer to lining up, although it’s still off by a few months.

Either way, the inclusion of the Apple TV HD on this list at all leaves us wondering if Apple will indeed be sharing something new for the living room during next week’s WWDC keynote.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]