Warranty is 2 years minimum in all of EU. If anybody says otherwise (plenty of sales and customer support people will try to convince you it's 1 year) show them this: http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...

To quote - "Under EU rules you always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee at no cost.

This 2-year guarantee is your minimum right. National rules in your country may give you extra protection: however, any deviation from EU rules must always be in the consumer's best interest."

This is also on Apple's customer support pages when you check if you're still in warranty. It says that local rules apply when you're out of Apple's limited 1 year warranty.

People keep misunderstanding what this 2-year warranty is. It's not a blanket 2-year warranty where if your product develops a fault the manufacturer has to fix it - it's a warranty against manufacturing defects and manufacturing defects only. And the onus of showing that something is a manufacturing defect is on the customer, sadly. So if you bought a macbook, and 1.5 years into the ownership the screen dies, apple is under no obligation to fix it, unless you can prove that it died because of a manufacturing defect.

To directly quote from the article you posted:

"But, after 6 months in most EU countries you need to prove that the defect already existed on receipt of the goods, for example, by showing that it is due to the poor quality of the materials used."

True. When it comes to parts that don't usually die on their own without visual problems (like a cracked screen) this is not such a big problem. Usually it comes down to convincing whoever is behind that desk and being firm and calm about it. That's my experience at least.

That is what I meant, poor phrasing, I edited.

AppleCare used to be vastly superior (at least in here in Australia) - you could walk in without an appointment, and service was while-you-wait. I needed some repairs to a 2007 MacBook, they offered to repair it within a couple of hours, send me an SMS when it was ready, and offer a voucher for a coffee at a nearby cafe while I waited. And if they couldn't repair it same/next day, to swap it with a replacement machine. That's the kind of service I was paying the Apple tax for, to minimize my downtime.

But it's nothing like that now. Apple is back to 1 - 2 week wait on repairs, just like the third-party repair stores before the Apple Store existed here. Much of the point of AppleCare for me - same day repairs in any major city around the world - is gone now.