AppleCare has paid for itself

My Mac's warranty expired 6 weeks back and I've just experienced a hard disk crash. The laptop worked smoothly for the first 12 months and barely 2 months after the warranty expires it just randomly crashes and the Hard disk SATA cable blows out.

I think you guys should do a post on the deteriorating quality of Apple's Hardware. If I pay a premium for apple's products I expect them to last longer and offer more warranty than a Sony or Toshiba.

If one of the most expensive laptops on the market requires these many repairs in three years what does that say about build quality?

>> This article sounds like a PR piece from Apple and i'm beginning to question the independence of TUAW's writers!!

P.S. I don't have Apple Care Protection and my opinion might be a little biased considering own recent experience :)

Applecare is silly. They let you pay a lot of money to guarantee a product that already has a premium price. For a premium price I'm expecting top quality. You pay for 2 year xtra warrantee not three. In Europe you even have 2 year warrantee by law, go figure. (you can see how much money they make on services btw.......)

I used to occasionally buy extended warranties until I did the math. Self insuring makes more sense, especially for things that depreciate and are not essential (unlike health and home). This is especially so if you frequently purchase tech items.

I figured that if at every opportunity I was offerred an extended warranty, whether it was for an Apple product or a new camera, instead of giving that money away, I could save it in my savings account. This is not just for Apple products, but everything. Eventually one could outright replace an entire car with the money saved over some time. In other words, you play the same game the warranty companies play, but now you're the "house" and it is your money to keep if nothing goes wrong.

Avoid buying unreliable products, and realize and plan for the cost of maintenance with everything. Avoid buying new cars, and for that matter, you can save a lot fo money buying cameras used, too. Set up a savings account just for a maintenance fund. It works!

It's remarkable how someone would believe in this so much that they would write an article promoting it.

Buying any type of protection plan is just a bet, with the seller being the house, and the buyer being the gambler. We all know the odds are always in favor of the house.
Would you go to a casino and always randomly bet on one number in a game of roulette?
With protection plans the odds are even worse.

The argument that he gave in the article is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time:
"Whatever the reason, choosing AppleCare is a simple matter of numbers: given the number of Macs that Apple sells, if even a fraction of 1% have issues over the course of three years, that's going to be a significant number."

Using the 1% failure rate that he suggested, 99% of the AppleCare bought is immediate profit for Apple.
This means if 100 people bought AppleCare for MacBook Pro, $34,650 will go into Apple's pocket instantly. That is enough to replace the MacBook Pro of that one unlucky guy over 15 times.

If buying AppleCare results in 99% of the buyers throwing that money away and benefits only 1% of the unlucky people, how can buying it be smart enough to warrant such an article?
In fact, we don't even know whether the 1% of failures will all end up costing more than the price of AppleCare.

If you want to talk numbers a better way is to find the average cost.
With AppleCare,
Average_Cost = cost of AppleCare.
Without AppleCare,
Average_Cost = (cost to fix a failure)*(failure rate).

I would urge people to plug in a failure rate they think is reasonable and do their own calculations. (Remember it's failure rate and not defective rate. Defective products are already covered within the first year anyways)

To me, even 1% is too high, but for the sake of argument let's say it is true.
Using MacBook Pro as an example, and let us assume we will get a brand new top-of-the-line replacement if it fails:
Average Cost w/ AppleCare: $350
Average Cost w/o AppleCare: $2300*0.01 = $23

This means on average for every AppleCare that I don't buy for MacBook Pro, I will end up paying $23 each time. But if I buy AppleCare every time, I pay $350 each time.

I don't mind that Apple is offering such a plan, after all I would do the same thing if I was in their position. However, writing such an article to promote AppleCare not only misleads readers but also degrades the quality of TUAW.

I recently had my nearly 3 year old MacBook completely refurbished (pretty much) because of cracks on the casing, all covered under AppleCare. The repair receipt they gave me totalled £440 and I didn't have to pay a penny. They replaced everything you can see except the battery - that includes the screen, which worked fine but had a big scratch in it from a drunken accident. I think I will always buy AppleCare, but I am the kind of person who will keep a laptop until it no longer suits my needs, rather than upgrading every year or two, so having 3 years peace of mind is really nice.

'AppleCare has paid for itself (for user x)' and 'is AppleCare a value?' are two entirely different matters.

How cool is AppleCare when you have to lug your 27" iMac to a mall 12 miles away (and back) and dont have the original box because it took up half your apartment?

Dell's standard warranty is *in-home*, and 3-yr extension is cheaper than AppleCare.

In the last three years I've owned 24 Dell servers (which run 24/7, and at nearly 100% CPU for 6-12 hours a day rendering), 3 Dell notebooks, a Dell Desktop, a Mac Mini, 27" iMac, and the original 2008 unibody MacBook.

The only one of those 30 machines which have required service, when the Dell lost its video card after 2 years. I called Dell, they answered first ring, had me execute a special bootup sequence which created tones, the tones told the rep the video card was gone, and he dispatched a rep to my house and the call was over in 10 minutes.

The next morning at 9AM, there was a rep at my door - he came in and replaced the notebooks video card at my kitchen table while I made breakfast, and was done in 45 minutes - worked fine ever since.

I got the 3-year extended warranty on that notebook for free on deal - because, you know, every company except Apple puts stuff on sale sometimes.

I have been a loss adjuster and worked about 6 years in the insurance industry.

Honestly, this article is tripe. Warranty companies make a profit every year... how does the maths of that work out? Well obviously the warranty company pays out less every year than it generates from suckers willing to buy a policy. In fact the difference is not even close especially when you consider the fact that the warranty company also has all kinds of expenses on top of claims such as staff, IT, offices etc etc.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the average person buying a warranty is a bad idea. They are expected to lose out on the deal otherwise the warranty companies wouldn't make a profit.

Most electronics are covered by a manufacturers warranty so a warranty company doesn't even bear the risk for most components in the first 12 months, and for many other components in the 2nd and 3rd year (read monitors, hard drives, which have the highest failure rates). So for the most part it works out that warranty companies are charged you 10-30% of the value of the product to insure your time and effort of filing an RMA and fitting the replacement (which usually amounts to less than 30 minutes labour per case, yes even for the more complex things).

Take it from me, accept the free and (usually) mandatory 12 months and take the risk of perhaps having to file an RMA for a failed component + pay a technician 30 mins labour to fit the component (if you are not capable yourself).


Honestly, if a product makes

On both of my iMac's, I've had hard drives replaced, logic boards, fans, LCD's, Apple even replaced my 24" several times with new iMac's, when various repair issues occurred, all under Apple Care. While I have differing opinions of the time it takes to escalate a matter for repair with an Apple rep, I'd not buy any Mac without Apple Care.

During the "summer" this year (seriously, where was summer?) I bought an new iMac but decided that since I'd just paid damned near to £2000 on it that I'd wait a bit before getting the AppleCare since you only need to purchase it before the end of your normal 1-year warranty. However, for some unknown reason Apple seems to have given it to me for free anyway. I'm not sure if that is due to a cock-up on their side or someone just being nice but I'm certainly not going to complain.

The only thing about AppleCare I feel uneasy about is that you almost end up hoping something goes wrong so that the purchase of the plan can be justified. I didn't make my money back on the plan I bought for my MacBook Pro but it did at least get me a new battery when the one that came with it "bulged" about 2-months before the plan was due to expire.

I was glad I had Applecare with my PowerBook G4 Titanium quite a few years back. Just before the end of 3 years it started having display issues. They basically rebuilt it for me before Applecare expired. Still running today, not that I use it for much.