I’ve rarely seen any useful answers that solve the problem on these forums. Most of them are helpful pointers to Apple’s support pages though. BUT, this was also a way for Apple to get a sense of the issues people were facing and how widespread some issues were. With LLMs now, Apple could’ve used the forums to glean a lot more information than before. It could have also shown relevant support page links while someone was composing a post (like what the StackExchange sites did a long time before LLMs).

Apple doesn’t seem to be serious on listening to customers though. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall for this forum to disappear when the Apple Seed discussion forums were removed without any notice or notification. That was a place to get a few Apple engineers and engineering liaisons to look at specific feedback reports.

It’s truly sad that a new CEO comes and Apple becomes even more walled off from its customers. Is Apple going to tie up with Reddit now, to know what its customers are asking or complaining about? This is a loss for Apple!