The newly released MacBook Pro line is now using a new serial number format to support continued growth and scalability.
The change was first anticipated four years ago (
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/04/10/apple_readies_new_hardware_serial_number_format.html)when Apple began telling its suppliers to update their in house systems to be able to service the new serial numbers.
Apple hardware formerly used an 11 digit alphanumeric serial number that could be decoded to reveal the manufacturing location, year and week of manufacture, a unique identifier and finally the model number.
The new scheme (
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/16/apple-tweaks-serial-number-format-with-new-macbook-pro/), detailed by Eric Slivka of MacRumors, compresses the week and year information from three digits (formerly the year's least significant digit paired with a two digit number specifying the 0-52 calendar week) into just two (the year information is now presented using a letter code that indicates six month periods, while the week code uses alphanumeric characters to signify one of 26 possible weeks within that designated half year period).
With the compressed manufacturing date code, there's now more room for adding new manufacturing location codes and model numbers, even as the serial number only increments from 11 digits to twelve.
Users are often interested in deciphering the meaning of their serial number in order to determine when their machine was manufactured, and whether it is included in a batch of machines that may appear to be suffering from a similar defect.
