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Not necessarily...... it depends on the strength of the vacuum. If you could easily pull off the cap, then AOS might be ok. If there was a severe vacuum which required a lot of effort on your part to remove cap then yes AOS might be bad.
Diagnosing a failing AOS is difficult (as you can tell) unless of course until it has completely failed - which you don't want to have happen. Some visual cues / things to look ar for help determining if it might be failing are:
Smoke - more than just a puff on start up (does it occur on hard accelleration, at idle after engine has been running a while, etc.)
Bellows - drips of oil below/on it, tears, degrading rubber, splits
J-tube - disconnect it at the TB. Look for puddling (more than what a misting would leave) in the tube and or in the TB.
Remember, this part since being intro'd on the '97 Boxster has been revised 4 times (5 iterations total....... so far). On avg, every 2.2 yrs PAG thinks they have a correct solution for it's purpose. In my opinion if you don't have at least version .03, it's really a matter of when not if it will fail. From what I have experienced/heard/seen/etc., the .02 versions and prior usually last < 50K miles.
Changing it out is cheap insurance for what could be catastrophic results when it fails. Parts are ~ $120 US and install takes under 2hrs DIY.
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