In many countries, AppleCare is a largely unnecessary add-on because no company can refuse repairs for a reasonable period beyond their own warranty period for defects.
Really? What exactly do you have? We have a law that whatever you purchase has to be free of defects during the first 6 months and if it isn't, you can go back to the merchant to have it fixed. But those 6 months are shorter than the 1 year Apple warranty and it's only intended to make sure the merchant doesn't sell your garbage. Of course you can automatically have an insurance through your credit card, to the terms of your bank and that will last longer than a year. But we have no additional consumer protection laws as it is assumed that things can break unexpectedly as they age - unless it's a series defect (like the dying graphics cards on the 15" models), where you'll absolutely get it fixed outside the warranty period.
The issue I have (and this might not affect many people here) is that I use my Mac for work too, so I can't have my Mac being repaired for a week, or maybe wait even longer having to convince Apple to repair it under whatever law there might be. So that is also why I make sure that my Mac is always almost-new and always under warranty, so that in case something happens I have the guarantee that it going to be fixed.
And don't forget the benefits, always having the latest hardware and having a brand-new device that is less likely to break in the first place.
with the late 2016's we purchased, it is no longer possible ... Currently have a Dell XP15 in for trials
Many defects will be a total loss outside the warranty period, and even inside the warranty period you need to send in the entire device for any defect. I hope you have replacement laptops ready for when you need to send a Mac in for repairs. The difference to Dell is that with Dell (and others) you can have up to 5 years of on-site service on the next day, so your user will only be interrupted for a day and you don't need too many loaners at hand. But look at the Latitude series instead, the XPS one has quite a few customers complaining about failing hardware.
if I where in the market for a 2,000 computer buying a year old used (even with 1 month warranty left) I would not buy for 1800 at 10% savings.
Don't tell me that! It's ridiculous that people buy used Macs at close to their retail price, especially an older model like the 2012 13" that was overpriced in the last years by Apple to begin with (or in other words, it didn't see a serious decrease in price as would be expected with old hardware). Look at the prices on Ebay for used Macs, other laptops are sold at 50% off their original price or even less, while Macs keep their value. What people do is they get a used Mac with a tiny bit of warranty left and then they purchase AppleCare, so they get a used machine with 2 years of warranty basically.
I might be a bit wrong with the price you can sell it for, perhaps it's 250 or 300 dollars you'd have to sacrifice if you spent 2000. I can get the tax back on my Mac though since I use it for work, and so a 2000 mac will cost me 1850 or so. Selling it for 1600 or so will only give me a 250 dollars loss. But I admit, for most people it will be a bigger loss.
its tablets, home servers, and cloud computing. No more traditional computers.
And your home server is a tablet, not a traditional computer? Kidding aside, the tablets and clouds don't allow you to run full operating systems like MacOS, so when you realize that your tablet closes apps once it runs out of its 4GB of memory or just closes some by default and doesn't let you change that behaviour, you'll regret it. Try painting with the new iPad Pro, while listening to music and keeping a browser open with multiple tabs. Eventually the browser will close, ending your cloudsession whereever you were logged in, or the chat app you had was closed so you aren't reachable and so on. Let's not get into performance and its absence.