Apple may eliminate online chat support. This is how customers will be required to get support in the future

Not all of you will remember this, but once upon a time, we didn’t have the luxury of texting people. And ever since that became the norm, life became so much easier, right? It’s not time-bound, it’s not a constant engagement and the conversations can even be historically tracked.

And Apple’s iMessage was a very strong contender for a free texting service, just like WhatsApp, Messenger and even Viber are today. So, in a way, the Big A was part of this revolution, where now most of us prefer to text rather than talk.

So, with that short and not-at-all-elaborate-enough history lesson concluded: MacRumors has reason to believe that Apple is planning to can it’s text-based online support. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.



Now, some of you may recall that @AppleSupport used to be a big thing in Twitter, back in 2016 when it wasn’t called X. The account was created in order to share tips about how to best use Apple products, but it also responded to a huge number of user requests.

Oh, also, a lot of those were so meme-worthy that there were days on which you could not avoid seeing some sort of snapshot from the account.

Well, since all of that went well, allegedly Apple is planning to can the account starting Oct 1, 2023. And the same goes for its other support accounts on different social media platforms.

And, unfortunately, this extends to the Apple Support Community forum itself, where users and professionals collaborate to help each other. And let me tell you, as someone who used an iPhonefor just a couple of years, I really, really benefited from the forums, so I hope that they at least keep the conversation inside visible, because it is a gold mine.

But wait, if that’s the case, then how are users supposed to reach Apple moving forward? Well, through the phone. And — reportedly — Apple is offering the opportunity of all of their specialists to transition over to a phone line too.

As someone with a lot of experience in the support industry, I’m not a big fan of this decision. I think that this will inconvenience most users and will also turn out to be way more stressful and annoying to Apple employees, but time will tell. I may just end up being a negative Nancy!

All that being said, though, this is just a rumor and Apple hasn’t come forward with some sort of official statement on the topic. Will this happen? Maybe. But we’ll have to wait awhile in order to find out for sure. And when we do, we’ll make sure to tell all of you too.