Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

AppleCare, worth it?

buy it...very worth it

2 personal experiences:

40 GB 3rd generation ipod...died unexplicably..tried everything..called apple...new ipod at my door in 3 days!

2. was in last year of applecare for my G4...the burner died (i burn alot of DVDs for the business so I was not surprised)....was in a jam...called Apple.....new burner at my door in 2 days!!! and that was over a holiday weekend here in Canada.

I didn't buy any for my ipod shuffles b/c they are not very expensive to begin with.

buying applecare is like buying life insurance...you hope you don't need, but boy oh boy, when (if) you do, you sure wish you had it (ok..maybe in the case of life insurance, you won't know the difference, but your family sure will if they need to pay off your mortgage or outstanding debts :)

so yes, buy it. my view: why buy something so expensive and not protect your expense? i don't see why people don't buy it.

good luck
keebler
 
For my iBook and Powerbook I won't be obtaining the extended Applecare. I have enough experience swapping parts out of these machines that if something were to go wrong I'd be ok. On a Macbook Pro? Oh yes, I would definitely get Applecare.
 
Apple Care is a must.

I bought an ipod in December 2004. It suddenly died a couple of days ago and so I sent it for repair on Tuesday. They emailed me on Wednesday saying they got it and on Thursday a brand new ipod was at my door.

Now that is impressive.

Note: I do live in japan where service is excellent.
 
When I had my 12" iBook G4, I didn't get AppleCare within a year from the date I bought it, and then the logic board failed and it would have cost like 600-700 dollars to fix.

And if I paid that much to have it fixed, I'd have to keep paying out-of-pocket for everything else that went wrong with it.

I ended up just buying a new 14" iBook G4.

A couple months ago, I bought AppleCare for the 14" iBook G4.

Lesson learned: Always. BUY. APPLECARE. :)
 
My Powerbook Ti has AC, and the optical drive failed twice, once right after the end of the first year, and a second time with 1 week to go on the warranty. The sum total of repairs would have been over 1K without AC. My PM G5 has been fine so far (1-1/2 years), but I used for phone support my HD crashed due to file directory corruption recently.
 
Why is Applecare a must? It's just insurance, and there are other ways to get insurance coverage for your laptop. For example, if you buy your laptop using a Visa Gold/Mastercard/Amex, you'd automatically get double the length of your original warranty at no extra charge. I'm sure there are other insurance plans. I'm just not sure if Applecare is the best value for money...
 
Once, the harddisk in an iBook I had, broke after the warranty period. So I replaced it with a bigger, faster one. That was quite a bit cheaper than Apple Care, and I got a bigger HDD. I spend some time changing it myself though. The other laptops I have had, haven't had any faults.

And yeah, it will add to the residual value, but you won't get all of the money you paid for Apple Care back.

I don't think it's a must. It depends. I'll take my chances.
 
I have never bought it but I also don't have any portable Macs. If something break out of warranty, I will fix it myself. But, I also have never had anything die on me in the first 3 years that didn't die in the first year.
 
I personally find Applecare to be a bit of a waste. I've never bought it with any Apple computer that I've owned, portable or desktop, because I never needed to have the computer repaired. Granted, this is when Apple computers were built slightly better, but I haven't bought it of late.
 
MUCKYFINGERS said:
why is applecare illegal in florida?
Click to expand...
Florida has laws against extended warranties because of problems (real or perceived) with scams against the population. Florida has a high population of senior citizens that are generally the target of scam artists.

So in order to combat these scams, the state banned extended warranties.

ft
 
Extended Warranties are never "worth it"

Virtually all extended warranties, including Apple Care, is sold to make money, and therefore they collect more money than they pay out. I'm not sure what the ratio is for Apple Care, but for most extended warranties they pay out considerably less than 50% of what they collect. Therefore, probabilisticly you will loose a lot of money in the long run, if you always bought the extended warranty.

As previously mentioned this is an insurance program. Buying insurance for a non-catastrophic loss, is always of questionable value. You must buy insurance to protect you from losses that you cannot comfortably cover from your saving, (death, disabilities, fire, etc). It is generally not a good idea to buy insurance for things you can cover yourself, as you are just funding the insurance companies.

It is important to note that many credit cards offer free extended warranty, which tells you that the actual value of it is not that great.

For many of the products in the Apple Store, the Apple Care is ridiculously expensive(C$300 on a C$2400 MBP). When you consider that the residual value for a one year old Mac is probably only about 2/3 of a new Mac in order to justify paying the Apple Care you would have to figure the Failure Rate would be close to 20% (actually even higher, as most failures are not catastrophic, but limited to one component). I should hope that Apple Computers are more reliable than that.

[EDIT: Correction Actually it is C$400 on a $2400 MBP]

The only time I think you could ever justify it, is if your parents are buying the computer for you. That way you don't risk having to go back to them again in 2 years...
 
wonga1127 said:
I am currently in the process of switching. Im going to order a MBP online and was wondering if AppleCare is worth the money.
Click to expand...

I own a 12" PB (1.5GHz+SD), and there's no way I'll pay almost one third of the price of my notebook for a warranty extension, especially since this isn't a real insurance, because it doesn't cover the case that you damage the notebook yourself (e.g., by dropping it). If my PB dies within the first 3 years I'll probably get a Lenovo Thinkpad. The Lenovo warranty is significantly better.. (1 year on parts and labor, 3 years on parts).
That said - I love my Powerbook and I hope it will last a very long time ;-)
 
webgeer said:
As previously mentioned this is an insurance program.
Click to expand...

Not really... it doesn't cover accidental damage of your notebook. They'll only repair it if the damage was NOT your fault.
 
weg said:
Not really... it doesn't cover accidental damage of your notebook. They'll only repair it if the damage was NOT your fault.
Click to expand...


Well it is insurance, it is just insurance against a specific and limited type of loss...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back