Did you buy AppleCare for your Apple __Fill_in_the_blank__ hardware product? Was the decision to buy or not buy difficult? This is an easy decision for two groups of people. These people sit on either end of the extreme for this decision. One group says, "I always buy extended warranty from Apple." The other group says, "I never buy extended warranty from Apple." However, for those of us in between those two extremes, to buy or not to buy AppleCare for a new Apple product can be a difficult decision to make for some of us some of the time. I've bought a couple of Macs and iPods over the past few years and bought AppleCare for some, but not all, of those devices.
The one Mac I didn't buy AppleCare for had a major problem after is one year warranty had expired. It would have been within the three year AppleCare extended period though. My MacBook's hard disk died within the first year and was covered by the warranty. I have not exercised the AppleCare extended warranty.
The AppleCare extended warranty for the 1st generation iPod nano expired without any incident. I didn't buy AppleCare for a 5G iPod (video). It is coming up on two years soon without any problems so far (knock on wood). I bought an two iPod touch-es last year. My daughter's iPod touch recently had a problem with its touch screen. Apple replaced the unit within a couple of days after a visit to the Genius Bar. I'm still not sure if AppleCare was worthwhile for the touch-es. I began to think about AppleCare's value while waiting for my appointment at the Genius Bar last week. So, I took at at the...
...website and started playing with the numbers.
You can see that all Apple hardware products have one year warranties. AppleCare extends iPod/iPhone warranties to two years and Mac warranties to three years. The % Price column divides the cost of AppleCare by the price of the product giving a percentage of price. The only product with a plainly silly AppleCare price is the iPod shuffle. It probably makes more sense to buy a new shuffle rather than pay nearly 80% of its price for a warranty. I found it interesting that lower-end products have higher % Price values for both the iPod and Mac lines. The iPhone is the exception to the rule. But, that makes sense since it probably gets more daily use than an ordinary iPod.
Since the iPod and Macs have a different number of extended warranty years, I created a % Price/Year column column to try to illustrate how the AppleCare price is affected by the number of extra warranty years (1 for iPods, 2 for Macs). The numbers for the iPods don't change from the previous column. But, the percentage cost per year for Macs take on a different complexion (to me, anyway). The low-end iMac, for example, drops to 7% of total price per year over two years. If you buy a higher-end model or upgrade the system at time of purchase, this number looks even better since the base AppleCare price remains constant.
I've developed a couple of rules of thumb for deciding whether or not to purchase AppleCare over the past few years.
- Low-end devices (iPod shuffle, maybe the iPod nano, Mac mini) tend to be replaced more easily (read cheaply) and are probably replaced more regularly than more expensive devices. I'll guess that buying a new iPod every 12 to 18 months is probably reasonably common.
- Higher cost products like the iPod touch, iMac, and MacBooks (plain and Pro) probably are used and kept longer. The fact that the % price for Macs are lower for higher-end products actually helps me justify its purchase.
- AppleCare doesn't cover things like batteries, accidental breakage, and certain LCD problems. So, treat your Mac with care.
- AppleCare is not the same as Apple ProCare. If you don't have a spare Mac and need to have your Mac running all the time, you might want to consider ProCare instead.
- AppleCare is really about peace of mind in some respects. If it helps you sleep better at night knowing you have pre-paid for some (but not all) repairs, then it is worth it.
Categories
Mac
Comments (5)
Read More Entries by Todd Ogasawara.
I am just now catching up on myblogs :) so I know I'm a little past due for this comment, but I really like this breakdown... I purchased a MacBookPro, which was a big deal for a high-school student with limited income, that was almost a year and 4 months ago... and so far I have only had one problem... The logic board was shotty from the beginning, but I like the old "dont fix it if it isnt broken" so I didn't bother with it until The laptops screen no longer worked... I was surprised to hear that the issue was with the logic board, you know that big thing that makes things happen... but I was even more surprised that they replaced it no questions asked and it was back in my hands 4 days later... More importantly it was shipped to my dorm room, saving me a 3 hour trip back home... The laptop would have been just on the cusp of the standard warrantee... I rest easy at night knowing my MacBookPro is backed-up and free of risk from damage/issues not related to anything stupid I might do :)
Quentin: Read your blog entry. No disagreements from me. I think extended warranties can make sense for some people given the following conditions: 1. Related to your statement So you should only buy insurance when the thing you’re guarding against is so expensive that you really couldn’t afford to be hit by it (which must also mean that it’s terribly unlikely, or you couldn’t afford the premium) - If you do not plan to replace that item soon (e.g., I keep and use notebooks for many years because they are somewhat costly), it makes sense. 2. If you depend on the product daily. 3. If the product is difficult for the average technically inclined end-user to fix (which most Apple hardware is). And, maybe: 4. If you can afford the extended warranty and it helps you sleep better at night (or naps in the day :-)
dave: As cool as water cooled systems sound (and sometimes look), I always wondered about their reliability without regular maintenance by a person who actually understand the water cooling mechanisms. I pretty much laughed out loud while reading your comment.
I started writing about why I thought it wasn't a good idea, and it became rather a long post, so it's on my blog instead:
http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/07/31/1956/
I always buy AppleCare for laptops, iPods, and whenever I buy the first model of a new Apple product line [such as when they transitioned from G4's to G5's on their desktop model, then when they transitioned from G5's to Intel's].
Laptop's and iPod's tend to take more of a beating, making marginal components much more likely to fail, and there always seems to be problems with the desktop models when Apple makes big changes to them.
Oh yeah, and I totally knew that Apple's water-cooled G5's were going to be a trainwreck. It's the only model that was obviously designed to only last until the AppleCare warrantee ran out. Other models may have had design flaws that failed after a number of years, but there was no chance of the water-cooling system lasting indefinitely [with not even the most trivial check for loss of water-coolant? Hello, are there any engineers there?].