well, for starters a 'manufacturing' defect can be interpreted differently. you may think the fans in your MB should last 5 years without issue. apple thinks they should last one year at least, but is willing to take a risk on 3 years for a little more of your hard earned money.
no warranty will cover damage or wear and tear. insurance will. different.
the bottom line is components when manufactured have a mean rate of failure and that means some will fail early, some will last decades. this is really what you are warranted against, early failure, which is not necessarily a defect if the manufactured component fell within the quality control parameters.
generally if there is a genuine manufacturing defect, some logic boards, the nvidia debacle, some power bricks, apple is pretty good at replacing them, even out of warranty, but this is of course at their discretion.
apple profits by only supporting for one year (and i think you'd agree that most manufacturing defects would become apparent in one year) and gambles that enough suckers buy applecare to warrant the few who incessantly send their machines in for repair.
it's a piece of highly complex manufactured equipment. it could fail at any time.
It seems many people come here saying how AppleCare won't cover things on their computer that the user broke, and that it only covers manufacturing defects. And the Geniuses that tell them that are right in saying that because that's what AppleCare is supposed to do. But why should users have to pay more money to have AppleCare extended to 3 years? If there was a defect during manufacturing, isn't that surely Apple's fault and it should be fixed for free? So we're basically paying more money to be covered a few years from now if a mistake that was made during manufacturing pops up...
Unless I'm missing something, that makes no sense. Most warranties I know of cover more than just manufacturing defects, especially for additional money!
