This means the products will no longer be eligible for any repairs from Apple, nor will you be able to order any replacement parts for them.
According to the tech giant, products are considered obsolete if Apple has stopped distributing them for more than seven years. A list of all the now obsolete products can be found on the website if you dig through their support page.
The Tame Apple Press claims that this is no real issue because the move happened before Black Friday so now is a "great time to buy a new Apple" but given that someone has not replaced their old one for nine years it probably means that they don't see the need for a new one. We are talking the sort of user who is happy to wait half an hour for their computer to boot up and only then uses it to write or browse the interwebs.
Still, an Apple that old we would be worried about catching fire and given you can get a PC that does more than a nine-year-old Apple for a couple of hundred dollars (or have the same functionality on a tablet or smartphone) we would say it is time to give up on the old tech.
If Apple made their products user-repairable - in the same way PC users can upgrade parts of their machines when new components are needed - we would see wider support to keep them going longer. But it wants you to waste a few thousand dollars for tech you don't need.