Applecare; to get or not to get.

I got it!

Hey, if it helps, another vote for Apple Care here. I bought it yesterday with my new aluminum iMac. Got $50 off with my student discount and the Apple Store auto registered me. Is it just me or is the Apple store always that jammed full of people?

I've never bought Applecare, but I need to make a decision about it soon for my MB as it will be out of warranty in a couple months.

Has anyone bought a cheap Applecare package off ebay? How's that work? Where are the sellers getting them? I looked at a few that people have bought and they have left the seller positive feedback.

shfle said:

'Rockcare'

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Brilliant.

I was facing the same situation earlier this month. My one year warranty for my MacBook runs out at the end of the month, and while I wasn't going to get it, I decided that it is better to be safe than to have something happen and be without it. If you are a student, the discount takes a pretty good chunk out of the price (about $80 dollars off).

I'm planning to get myself a MBP with AppleCare. Just to give me some piece of mind.

NYTechGuy said:

Hey, if it helps, another vote for Apple Care here. I bought it yesterday with my new aluminum iMac. Got $50 off with my student discount and the Apple Store auto registered me. Is it just me or is the Apple store always that jammed full of people?

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Over here in Australia, Apple Stores are generally packed with people as well. But 70% of the people only walk in to get access to their emails and browse the web. Pretty lame IMHO.

Thanks to my Apple Care my iMac has a new logic board, new LCD, and new Hard drive. Without it I would have been out $2000+ on a new iMac as I can not be without one for what I do.

Beyond worth it for me.

Applecare is essentially a new computer within 3 years if you need it. Think about it. How is that not worth the cost. People like to claim things on't happen as often as people worry. But you CAN count on your hard drive having a good chance to go bad within 3 years if you use it heavily.

Heck just this last month Not only did I have the above repairs done but I also had my external firewire drive replaced from Western Digital through RMA. Amazing how many people forget their peripherals often have a 3 year warranty.


Want another reason to get Applecare? If you have an Airport or Airport Extreme, Or a Time Capsule and you get Applecare on your computer it will cover those other devices as well. Think about it.

theonegod said:

Thanks to my Apple Care my iMac has a new logic board, new LCD, and new Hard drive. Without it I would have been out $2000+ on a new iMac as I can not be without one for what I do.

Beyond worth it for me.

Applecare is essentially a new computer within 3 years if you need it. Think about it. How is that not worth the cost. People like to claim things on't happen as often as people worry. But you CAN count on your hard drive having a good chance to go bad within 3 years if you use it heavily.

Heck just this last month Not only did I have the above repairs done but I also had my external firewire drive replaced from Western Digital through RMA. Amazing how many people forget their peripherals often have a 3 year warranty.


Want another reason to get Applecare? If you have an Airport or Airport Extreme, Or a Time Capsule and you get Applecare on your computer it will cover those other devices as well. Think about it.

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Doesn't this require that you purchase the Airport + Computer together?
I have a Time Capsule and 2 Airport Express in China. Plans to get a MBP sometime in the future.

Up to now, this thread has been viewed 369 times.

Out of all these, 1 person has reported problems with a recent Mac and one had problems with a defective product (Released by Apple almost 10 years ago).

Hardly compelling evidence/statistics for me to recognise the folly of my ways and rush out and get Applecare is it?

shfle said:

Up to now, this thread has been viewed 369 times.

Out of all these, 1 person has reported problems with a recent Mac and one had problems with a defective product (Released by Apple almost 10 years ago).

Hardly compelling evidence/statistics for me to recognise the folly of my ways and rush out and get Applecare is it?

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You guys are going to think that I'm lying, but I forgot earlier: I bought two iBook G3s last year. Within 1 year, the first ones logic board was fried.

Just to get this clear, you can't purchase AppleCare after the 3 year extended period?? Like three years from now, if I've got it, I can I buy it again?>

Sorry, I meant the G3 iBook in general was found to be a defective product, not just yours.

No I don't believe you can extend it beyond 3 years. This is one of the points that I am trying to make, if a computer is going to break down then the vast probability of when this will happen is either during it's first twelve months of operation, or when it is starting to get old (Of course there are exceptions but this is when most faults arise).

You are therefore paying money to protect your computer during the period of time when it is least likely to break. Companies know this and are therefore gambling at very short odds and even using your money as the stake, so they really can't lose.

Another point, if by misfortune, I am one of the unlucky few that develop faults during this period and say, for example, my hard drive failed out of warranty and I have no Applecare (Must be in 2nd or 3rd year or this would be useless anyway). I have no idea how much it would cost to get a new hard drive put in an iMac but lets use £200 just as an example.

Now am I £200 out of pocket just because I didn't purchase Apple care? No I'm only £61 down because I never spent £139 on Applecare in the first place. I know I'm still £200 out of pocket but that's not the point.

Here's an analogy for you (And no I do not gamble on the horses):-

Would you put a £139 bet on a horse that has odds of about 4/1 in a race that is probably less than 5% likely to be run? If the race is not run (Say about 95% chance) you lose your stake, in the unlikely occurrence the race is run (About 5% chance) and you have not placed a bet then you have to pay the odds.

This is effectively what you are doing with Applecare and the like (I used 4/1 to cover logic board, anything else would be much less odds).

Applecare Warranty plan for Apple iMac-Save Big Bucks! - eBay (item 120324585796 end time Nov-05-08 18:04:58 PST)

save yourself some money AND give yourself some piece of mind. It's what I did..

shfle said:

Out of all these, 1 person has reported problems with a recent Mac and one had problems with a defective product (Released by Apple almost 10 years ago).

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Try four years ago.

And there are signs that the NVidia chips in the latest MacBook Pros have a latent defect just like the iBooks did.

shfle said:

Would you put a £139 bet on a horse that has odds of about 4/1 in a race that is probably less than 5% likely to be run? If the race is not run (Say about 95% chance) you lose your stake, in the unlikely occurrence the race is run (About 5% chance) and you have not placed a bet then you have to pay the odds.

This is effectively what you are doing with Applecare and the like (I used 4/1 to cover logic board, anything else would be much less odds).

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Please wash your hands and flush that 5% figure down the toilet. I know where you pulled it from.

The failure rate of Apple's notebooks, in the past, has been pegged at anywhere from 15% (in PC Magazine, of all places) to 40+% (in MacInTouch surveys as the iBook debacle was beginning.) No way is it as low as 5%. Yes, some of that is covered by the standard warranty, but not all of it.

Regardless of what the figure is, if you were buying a hundred computers, then you could play the odds and you'd certainly come out ahead financially. Statistics are a lot less useful when your sample size consists of your only computer.

And that's ignoring the unlimited support and diagnostic tools you get with AppleCare.

To be honest I never realised that the iBook G3 ran for so long, I was referring to the fact that it was released in 1999 and was surprised to find out that it was still available up to 2003, so I apologise for my inaccuracy there.

Regarding the NVIDIA chips, I was under the impression that Apple were replacing these for free anyway.

As for the failure rates, of course we don't know the exact figures (Only Apple will have this information). As I could find little information, I used statistics from a Gartner survey of computers covering the period 2005-07 (Whether this is any more accurate than pulling them out of the toilet may be debatable, I don't know, I'll leave that for you to decide).

PC Failure Rates Drop, But Not Far Enough, WebTechGeek.com
(I did find a more detailed copy but the server is down atm for that page)

As I was specifically talking about the iMac, I used the desktop figures. Their findings were 5% failure in the first year rising to 12% after 4 years. So basically 7% occurred during the 2nd and 4th years.

This survey covers all PC vendors and I (Rightly or wrongly, partly due to my own experiences over the past 12 years) presumed that Apple would be towards the higher end of quality in this group, plus the fact that the 4th year is not covered by Applecare anyway, so I shoved my hand down the u-bend and plucked out 5% (As I would presume that a considerable chunk of the 7% would be in the 4th year, I thought I was being rather conservative with this figure).

PS
Toilets?, iBook G3s? Have I not heard a connection before somewhere?

I've just remembered something that someone told me ages ago, which will be of interest to UK Mac users (I've just checked and it is still correct). If you purchase your Mac from John Lewis (Either instore or online) you automatically get a free 2 year warranty from them.

Buy Laptops Online from John Lewis

After thinking it through, I figure I won't be getting the Applecare most probably. Gonna take a risk on this one, and pray my iMac will do what it's told and run just fine.

Btw, out of curiosity, its not illegal to buy Applecare from a eBay seller and register it right.

It is worth it to me