To AppleCare or not
AppleCare? That conundrum is part of all new and Apple Certified
Refurbished Mac purchases.
I've never purchased AppleCare for any of the new Macs I've
purchased over the past 19 years, and I have never even made a warranty
claim under the basic one-year warranties on any of my Apple notebooks,
although I did have a defective (excessively noisy) cooling fan
replaced on a LC 520 desktop back
in the early '90s.
I simply am not convinced that AppleCare coverage is a worthwhile
expenditure, given the track record I've experienced, although some
users who've had catastrophic hardware failures repaired under
AppleCare will no doubt argue the contrary.
I figure that at this point, had I purchased AppleCare for each of
the laptop Macs I've purchased over the past 13 years, I'd have spent
something like the price of a new MacBook Pro and more, with no benefit
to show for it aside from some peace of mind that might have been
illusory anyway, so even if I do someday have a major hardware meltdown
outside the basic one-year warranty period that I have to pay for
myself, I'm still ahead of the game having not bought AppleCare over
the years.
Note also that that many major credit cards will double the
manufacturer's warranty period (often capped at two years) on purchases
made with their cards. However, if you use your computer for work, be
sure to read the fine print, since most credit card warranty extensions
don't apply to machines used for business purposes.
Insurance is another matter, and I do keep my late-model Mac laptops
insured with all-perils coverage using a personal articles rider on my
homeowner's insurance policy, which also covered my kids' computers
while they were at college.
Another thing to consider is that with the historically very modest
prices of computers these days - even Apple laptops - spending two or
three hundred dollars on extended warranty coverage represents a
substantial fraction of the cost of a brand-new or certified
refurbished replacement computer with a fresh warranty, possibly more
power and a better feature set than your present machine.
It was different back in the day when you could spend $5,000 or more
on a high-end PowerBook. For example, back in August 1997, the PowerBook 3400c/240 was selling for a
suck-in-your-breath $5,879.02, and its lower-end sibling, the
3400c/180, went for a still-daunting $3,821.02 (MacMall ad), but with
13" MacBook
Pros selling new for $1,198 (and 2.4 GHz refurbished units
for $999) and 15-inchers for $1,799,
the dynamics have changed substantially.
A Consumer Reports survey on the experience of readers who had
purchased extended warranties on electronic equipment found that on
average consumers had paid about as much on extended warranties by the
time a product needed service or repair as the repair itself would have
cost them.
AppleCare coverage for the iMac is a relatively modest $169, but for
the MacBook, MacBook Air, and 13" MacBook Pro it's $249, and for the
15" and 17" MacBook Pros, $349.
An alternative to purchasing AppleCare is to take the money you
would have spent on purchasing an extended warranty and invest it. If
you do need service or repair after the original warranty runs out, you
can cash in your investment to help pay for it, hopefully with some
interest or growth added. However, if your Mac survives the initial 12
month warranty period with no repairs needed (as is most likely) or is
repaired during the first year, the probability of it needing repairs
during the subsequent two years is relatively low (although it could
happen). Most computer hardware defects show up early on, and the
likelihood is that your "repair fund" money can remain invested until
you upgrade to a new system, at which time you could put it toward the
new computer purchase or keep it socked away against potential
out-of-warranty repairs on the new machine, adding the amount you
would've had to pay for AppleCare on the new machine, with the
attendant dollar cost averaging and so forth.
There's also the extended telephone technical support aspect of
AppleCare. Personally, I'm tech-savvy enough that I don't have a lot of
interest in extended Apple tech support (Apple's standard phone tech
support on new machines expires after 90 days), but for for some users
AppleCare's tech support lifeline might be helpful.
Of course, as I alluded to above, it's partly a matter of how much
risk you're prepared to assume, balanced against the certain
expenditure of paying AppleCare premiums. You can't put a price tag on
peace of mind. There are instances when the logic board or the display
- the most expensive components of a laptop - will fail, but my
philosophy on that, still holding true subjectively, is that major
failures due to inherent manufacturing faults will usually show up in
the first year of basic warranty coverage anyway.
The only two serious hardware failures I've ever experienced in Mac
laptops - a burned-out processor in a WallStreet PowerBook and a
failed logic board (presumably) in a G3 iBook happened at the 3.6
year and 6.2 year marks respectively, so neither would have been
covered by AppleCare. Your mileage may vary of course.
However, if you'll sleep better knowing you have AppleCare coverage,
don't let me persuade you otherwise. The degree of risk one is
comfortable assuming is a personal judgment call, and statistical
probabilities notwithstanding, with any mass-produced product there
will always be a percentage of lemons, so if you do decide to roll the
dice, be aware and prepared that once in a while they turn up
snake-eyes.
