> implicit AppleCare (~$300) as required by EU consumer law

I wouldn't say AppleCare is the same as having the extended warrenty to obey the EU consumer law. AppleCare includes a bunch of things that are outside of normal "warrenty" coverage.

I'd love for someone to chime in with specific details. I looked quickly at the French and US sites to compare. France does offer AppleCare+ for 299,00 € on a random MacBook I chose.

The US page is pretty clear that it extends a 1-year hardware warranty to 3-years and extends 90 days of technical support. In recent years they seem to focus more on accidental damage (with an additional per-incident fee).

The French website is more hand-wavy around improved hardware warranty. It also mentions the tech support, but the value seems to be the accidental damage.

The accidental damage math in the US is a tough one for me. $300 for AppleCare+ and $50 per incident goes a long way towards paying outright for a repair or buying a new laptop. The hardware warranties seem to be significantly better in Europe and historically the biggest value-add in the US. AppleCare+ just seems a lot less useful in Europe.

While this is probably true, I don't think it would be entirely fair to beat apple up for not having an EU only warranty program tuned to the minimal that is required.

Thanks for the correction, 2399$ was the price of the comparable Dell modell. The VAT and AppleCare makes sense.