TIL Select Mac computers from 1992-96 were sold with free, live technical support via a dedicated telephone number "for as long as you own your Apple product." The company attempted to end the service, but was ordered to keep it due to a class-action lawsuit. The number still works (1-800-SOS-APPL).

[u/cocobandicoot]

http://www.info.apple.com/usen/legacy/legacyfaq.html/

[u/afranke]

Oh god, I used to work in the group that answered this number up until about 4 months ago. This Reddit post was always my worst fear...good luck guys, enjoy the Legacy calls!

[u/[deleted] → u/afranke]

Please, please tell us more!

[u/afranke → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, been a busy couple of days moving into a new place.

Our group covered several different lines of technical support, Legacy being one of them. In my two years with that group, I got maybe four Legacy calls myself, only one of them legitimate. Overall in the group, we grew from 30 people to about 200 in the time I was there. Total, I heard of maybe a dozen calls to that line.

When you see your screen pop up with "Legacy" your first thought is "aw, crap." Often times it's someone that was misrouted when mistaking Vintage or Obsolete with Legacy. This usually ended up in an argument with whoever was on the other end of the line. We had a very short and specific set of guidelines for taking a Legacy call (see the other comments and link), and if you didn't meet them we didn't take the call.

The one time I did get a legit call, it was an older man (surprise) and I want to say he had a Performa 6300. It would power on, but get nothing on the screen. As we had no specific training on these machines, we just had to use basic troubleshooting workflow. First step, is it hardware or software? Well, do you have an install disc we can attempt to boot off of? No? Of course not, it's been 18 years, the install disc grew up and went to college. So, I dig through the system and find one to send to him (don't even ask how long that took, but since the hardware could support OS 9 it made things slightly easier). It eventually shows up and we set up another call.

Ok, boot from the disc holding C. Just power, nothing on the screen. Welp, it's hardware. Guess what, we no longer make any parts for this machine. Time to go buy a new one! But wait, you say, I have lifetime support. And yes, you do. And I have supported you for the lifetime of the machine. Phone support does not mean parts availability, and as we have no diagnostics available for hardware troubleshooting that machine in the retail store, the only other suggestions to make are the same old ones of resetting PRAM, changing any internal batteries that may have died, etc. This guy decides 18 years is plenty of time for one computer and it may be time for an upgrade anyways and moves onto a new machine.

Having used Apple computers since before I can remember (my earliest memory is Oregon Trail on 5.25" floppy on our Apple IIc Plus), I never really minded troubleshooting the older systems. The toughest part was doing it over the phone without any of our modern tools. When I worked in the retail stores prior to this group, I would assist anyone that happened to bring one in just because I could and enjoyed living in the good ol' days for a moment.