Retirement date: the day a model stops answering
A retirement date is the day access ends. Three things have to be read alongside it: whether it can move, whether it is stated as the earliest possible day rather than the day, and which surface it covers, because a consumer product and an interface can close months apart. As of 2026-09-22.
| Question about the date | Why it changes the plan |
|---|---|
| Can it be pushed back | An extension turns urgency into wasted work |
| Is it the earliest or the actual day | A floor cannot be scheduled against |
| Which surface does it cover | An interface may close after a product does |
| Is a successor named beside it | A runway leading nowhere cannot be spent |
Inclusion rule. Questions this register asks of any dated row before recording it. A date without these answers is still recorded, with the wording kept verbatim. Order. In the order that changes a plan most.
1Two dates for one model is normal
The one completed retirement in this register closed a consumer product about five months before it closed the interface behind it. Both dates were in the same notice and only one of them was quoted widely.
So the first question about any date is which surface it applies to. A team calling an interface and a person using an app got very different amounts of warning from the same announcement.
2A date can be a floor
One maker in this register describes its shutdown dates as the earliest a model might be retired. That makes each one a lower bound, so work can be scheduled up to it and nothing guarantees the model stops there.
Read as a deadline, a floor produces a migration finished early and possibly wasted. Read as published, it produces a migration held ready. The wording decides which, so it is worth keeping verbatim.
3A date with no destination is half the information
Stopping on time is arithmetic. Choosing what to move to and re-establishing a look on it is the expensive part, and a notice that names no successor leaves that entirely with the customer.
One entry in this register names a successor in a dated row. Everywhere else the date arrives alone, which is why succession is kept as its own column.
A definition rather than a dated entry: no line above is a vendor statement. Where this word turns up in a real notice, the wording and the date are on the change calendar. Nearby terms: Shutdown, End-of-life, Legacy period.