*Up until the time of the original publication of this blog entry, Apple encodedvarious details about devices into their hardware serial number. An individualwith the serial could determine things such as the hardware model, themanufacturing location, the manufacture date, and even the device enclosurecolor.
Mac Build Date Serial Number
To understand the rest of this post it is important to know that themanufacturing date for an Apple device is encoded in the 4th and 5th charactersof a serial. For the remainder of this post we will be using my iMac Pro as theexample device.
This web service can give you information about the date your Mac was manufactured. You just input your serial number. You can find the serial number by going to the Apple menu > About this Mac. The Serial Number is the bottom of the list.
It is now one of the most comprehensive sets of serial number decoders on the internet. Aimed at collectors, sellers, dealers and eBayers, it now covers vintage or antique Rolex, Tissot, Timex, Elgin, Casio, Citizen and Omega watches as well as Gibson, Fender and CF Martin guitars, Roland and Boss (which includes all the old analogue gear and Boss pedals), Kawai and Yamaha pianos, DOD and Ibanez guitar pedals, Hot Wheels diecast models and some electronic component dating tools useful for dating vintage guitars, pedals and synthesizers. Recent additions have been tools to date and identify Apple devices as well as Samsung Galaxy and Sony Xperia mobile phones.
The serial number of an Apple product has (almost always) the manufacturedate encoded. For a CPU, first two characters of the serial number is the factory code, next three are the year (one digit only), and week.So, for my MacBook Pro, the serial number "WQ929xxxxxx"indicates the twenty-ninth week of 2009 as the date of manufacture.
Under the Apple menu, "About This Mac" can be selected, to show the serial number, or you can hunt the case of an iPad or iMac for a label.In case of a repair and motherboard replacement, the software might no longer know that serial number.
Do not use third party links as they may not be secure. Do not post the serial number on this board, as that is your key to any support you may have left.Use this tip also to help figure out which portion of the Support Community to post in, as this tip explains:
When you have no serial number, use one of these third party sites to find your model, production year, time in year(early, middle, late) is a great resource to isolate your model based on EMC#, Apple part number, and other features.
July 20, 2011 will only run 10.7 or later. The model IDs (x,x) and EMC that fit this description until June 25, 2012 release of 10.8 (excluding the ones which will run only 10.8 or later earlier mentioned) :iMac of an EMC of 2496; 13,x and later.Mac Mini 5,x and later.Macbook Air 4,x and later.MacBook 8,x and later (no Pro no Air in the name)Mac Pro 5,1 with EMC 2629 - the oldest that can be have Mac OS 10.14 installed after installing 10.11 or later, those without that EMC number came with 10.6 and can also be updated to 10.14 the same manner; 6,x and later.
During 2000 to 2009, the serial number also made it easier to identify the Macs, as the 3rd, 4th, and 5th character of the serial number referred to the weekand year of the shipment date. Thus for serial numbers where x can be any letter or number, xxABCxxxxx serial numbers would refer to an A which is the last digit of the year, and BC=week of the year. xx905xxxx is the fifth week of 2009. You can then use Wikipedia to figure out what date the release was, and if it was after a specific retail release of an operating system to determine which pre bundled disc it came with, and which later retail discs the Mac could work with.
The DATEVALUE function converts a date that is stored as text to a serial number that Excel recognizes as a date. For example, the formula =DATEVALUE("1/1/2008") returns 39448, the serial number of the date 1/1/2008. Remember, though, that your computer's system date setting may cause the results of a DATEVALUE function to vary from this example
Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers so that they can be used in calculations. By default, January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448 because it is 39,447 days after January 1, 1900.
We created the serial number decoder that can help consumers who are interested in repairing your device and need parts from a specific model. Our MacBook pro serial number lookup, iMac serial number lookup, iPad serial number lookup, and iPhone serial number lookup can help you research and learn before buying a new device.
The Apple Serial Number Search tool developed by the cryptanalysts here at Beetstech can help you to uncover a whole lot more info about your Apple device. This tool not only lets you look up Apple devices by serial number, but it returns all compatible parts, and even allows searching by other criteria like EMC number, model identifier, and model number. Additionally, this tool lets you find Apple parts by searching the Apple Part Number, a part number printed on the component, or any combination of keywords you can think of.
Each manufacturing location is represented at the start of the serial number by a different alphanumeric code. Apple manufactures their devices in a variety of locations, and unfortunately not not all location codes are known, but the following is a mostly complete list of codes and their corresponding factories:
The year and week of manufacture are also represented by an alphanumeric code which is, fortunately, easier to decipher. The fourth character of the serial number represents both the year the device was manufactured in, and whether the device was manufactured in the first or second half of the year. The following table shows how to interpret the fourth character:
Decoding the serial numbers of Apple products can be useful for a number of reasons. If you are interested in repairing your device yourself, determining which factory the device was manufactured in, or the date of manufacture, can help you to determine which replacement parts must be ordered to fix the device. Additionally, understanding the serial number structure can help you to troubleshoot issues with your device, as known issues can arise on products manufactured in certain factories or on certain dates.
If you try and using the inbuilt options to change the formatting of the cells with this data set, it would not do anything. This is because Excel does not consider these as numbers, and since dates for numbers, Excel refuses your wish to format these.
Note: Remember dates and time are stored as numbers, where every integer number would represent one full day and the decimal part would represent that much part of the day. So 1 would mean 1 full day and 0.5 would mean half-a-day or 12 hours.
With the October 2018 update, versions of Creative Cloud and Document Cloud are not available for deployment via serial number licensing. On November 30, 2020, many customers will also be affected by expiring serial numbers. To avoid interruption and to access the latest versions of the apps, customers must migrate to alternate licensing models. For more detail, see the announcement.
If the volume serial number has expired, users may experience licensing or serial number errors. You can use the AdobeExpiryCheck tool to check if the volume serial numbers have expired or are expiring soon. If they have expired or are expiring soon, it is recommended that you re-serialize with a new serial number.
AdobeExpiryCheck (v1.0.0.3) is a command-line utility for IT Admins to check whether Adobe products on a computer are using serial numbers that have expired or are expiring. IT Admins can use this tool if they are not sure whether the serial numbers used in their organization are expiring or if they want to identify the machines with expiring serial numbers.
With the AdobeExpiryCheck tool, admins can get the information about the product licensing identifier (LEID), the encrypted serial number, and the expiration date. To identify installs for Acrobat Professional DC and Standard DC, see Identifying Document Cloud Installs.
Once you have collected the output files from all the client machines, you can store them in a folder and run scripts to find the machines having expiring or expired serial numbers. For example:
You can also parse all the output files and export the result in a file. For example, you can use the following command to parse the output files for serial numbers expiring on 30 November and export the result in a .csv file:
"How old is this razor?" It can be difficult to figure out. Sometimes patent dates are a help, but they give you the front end of the date scale, and not always too exactly. Some razor makers put serial numbers on their razors, but we don't always have the key to how the serial numbers fit to dates of manufacture. Gillette is one manufacturer for whom we have information on serial numbers and later date of manufacture codes that we can link to time.Other makers included serial or manufacturing codes, but we do not have the keys. AutoStrop and Rolls are two well known manufacturers who serial numbered their razors. If you have the key to another manufacturer's codes, please share this information with other collectors.Razor Serial Numbers were impressed on all Gillette razors from 1904 until 1921, and on deluxe models from 1921 until 1931 (except for a period in 1927-28). This corresponds to the time King Gillette was directly associated with the business, and may have been at his insistence. These serial numbers were on the top of the guard, or sometimes the inner barrel. There were no razor serial numbers from 1931 until 1951.Gillette Date Codes were used from January 1951 until 2001. They are found in the top left and right corners on the underside of razor guards, both 3 peice and 1 piece models. The letter represents the year, found on the chart below, and the number 1-4 correspond with the quarter of the year. Gillette Blade Date Codes (and earlier lot systems) were imprinted on one side of the blade as a series of letters and/ or numbers, or on the cartridge. The blade system adopted in 1931 is still in use today, and was used on razors as well after 1950. All the coding systems are listed below. Please Contact Us with any corrections or updates. Go to.... 1910's 1920's 1930's 1940's 1950's 1960's 1970's 1980's 1990's 2000's 2ff7e9595c
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