AppleCare is a good idea in general. Even if you’re generally careful, you never know when the mac will break because of something that was your fault

I break things infrequently enough that it's cheaper to keep the money I would have spent on protection plans in my bank account, and then just pay out of pocket when I do.

Paying protection to the mob is a good idea in general. Even if you're generally careful, you never know when a leg will break because of something that was your fault.

disclaimer: I have applecare+ on an m1 pro

> you never know when the mac will break because of something that was your fault

You have been gaslit by Apple.

You know when it's your fault... but with Apple, you can never be sure.

I really don't want to own objects that are so needy the require their own insurance policy.

No house, car, utility vehicles?

How about your body? Medical and life insurance are nearly universal.

You should insure things you can't afford to self insure for. Life, Home, maybe car.

You should not pay insurance for all the tech crap we buy. You're just losing money on average. Only way to win with this type of insurance is to be unlucky.

But this is exactly it. Insurance is about relative luck and hedging against being unlucky. It’s all a matter of risk/reward. It’s an ex ante cost.

Much history of costs/return in various domains show the power of ex ante investments vs ex post restitution.

If I spend $1200 on a high end phone, and it costs $300 to replace a screen, or $30 with insurance, after a $200 one time premium for 2 years… it depends how often you break your screen on average. If it’s at least once every 2 years, then yes, it’s worth it. And then that’s not even counting other things that may go wrong.

Same logic for extended car warranties. Sometimes they pay for themselves quickly, sometimes not.

Insurance is never a good idea in general, except if you can't risk paying for it yourself.

Which is nonsense, the whole point of insurance (and why most people should purchase insurance) is to pool risk so to cover high costs that most can’t afford for themselves.

GP is saying that insurance makes sense for things too expensive to replace on your own, like houses and cars, but not cheaper things like consumer electronics.

Consumer electronics in the thousands of dollars I would definitely want insurance for.

You and NorwegianDude wrote the same thing.

>can't risk paying for it yourself.

is intended to mean

>can’t afford for themselves.

“Insurance is never a good idea in general” is a bit too extreme. Not all hedges have to be about protecting you from a wipeout. It’s about opportunity cost for the premium vs the risk (magnitude x probability).

But if that tradeoff were favorable to you, wouldn't that mean it's unprofitable to the company selling it, so they wouldn't?

In many cases, these programs aren’t profitable, especially if the extended warrantee covers products with unknown problems. Neither the supplier nor the purchaser knows the true risks of warranting a new product, they only have historical data to go by. Often they are profitable, on products that actually were far more reliable than consumers expected (eg. Phones whose screens get harder to break). But even then it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to buy it, as you can’t predict the future, you can only make bets and cover your risk exposure to some degree. That risk coverage and piece of mind is valuable even if the unlucky event never happens.

At a bigger scale than product warrantees, Health and Life insurance are both profitable but also often worth purchasing to protect you or your family as it’s the ultimate case of hedging against bad luck. You’re trading reasonable, predictable costs against actuarial events with huge (potentially bankrupting) costs. Some folks that didn’t need it, they spent a reasonable an amount of money and still got value out if it: risk coverage and piece of mind.

Warranty lasts 12 months. AppleCare lasts 3 years. Your choice.

Dell is the same. IIRC, HP was too. There's nothing to see here.

12 months in the US. It depends on the country. In Europe a device has to last a reasonable time with a minimum of 2 years. But the warranty is with the seller, not the manufacturer. This is why I generally buy from Apple directly, so they can't weasel out of it this way.

Though after the first year the onus is on the consumer to prove a manufacturing defect. During that first year the manufacturer has to prove it wasn't broken by the customer. That makes the discussion a bit harder after the first year. Also, these protections only apply to consumers. Businesses have to fend for themselves and that includes -employed when buying as such (and thus avoiding VAT)

But aren't the computers that broke in this story less than 12 months old?

You are still free to sue them if it is actually a faulty product. But maybe you want to get a quick repair done in the mean time without shelling out $800?

> You are still free to sue them

Indeed you are free to sue a wide variety of criminals, but ususally we don't refer to them with reverence and respect

Waiting for Apple to admit wrongdoing is like trying to get blood from a stone. Remember the Nvidia chip failures that Apple caused by using cheap solder on their Logic Boards? They never fully owned-up to that one, despite being 100% culpable. We eventually got admissions of guilt for things like Lightning ports and Butterfly keyboards, but that doesn't fix the thousands of devices that are now using ass-backwards technology that can only be replaced once broken.

The other comment is entirely right. The fact that Apple can sell a first-party service entirely dedicated to replacing broken iDevices is evidence enough that it's a racket.

I rarely had a problem with an iDevice. Once my MacBook Pro 17 inch broke down after 4 years or more, it was out of warranty and out of Apple Care, and they replaced the whole motherboard for free anyway. My mother is using it to this day.

Doesn't feel like a racket to me. Rather, if you buy an expensive device, and you cannot easily afford a replacement if it breaks, get an insurance. That's Apple Care (plus). It is an easy enough to understand concept.

I think it's closer to Ford being both your manufacturer, insurer, and sole authority on vehicle repair. This is something our nation already faced, and rectified with legislation.

What exactly is your point? What legislation are you referring to? What exactly is Apple doing wrong here? Not paying off some Smurf who dropped his MacBook one time too often?

Interesting that you compare Apple with Ford: https://fee.org/articles/how-henry-ford-zapped-a-licensing-m...

Like Ford, Apple wants to be free to innovate. If you don't like the quality of their products, don't buy them. There are plenty of other great choices out there. Oops, maybe not so much for the M1 MacBook Air.

> If you don't like the quality of their products, don't buy them.

"If you don't like the country you live in, just move!"

Seems pretty asinine now that the shoe is on the other foot. Here's the problem: I bought the iPhone X. I have the Macbook Pro. None of them do anything for me. Sometimes I boot up the Macbook to test a Darwin build once in a blue moon, but MacOS isn't even on my radar of daily-driver OSes right now. The BSD compatibility layer is festering, and Apple's refusal to implement modern APIs like Vulkan is childish. MacOS has been heading downhill for the better half of a decade, and Linux support on M1 is barely existent.

So, I think I'm perfectly contented to call Apple out for poor innovation. I paid their price-of-admission, now I get to leave a bad review. If you don't like the content of my feedback, don't take it personally. There are plenty of other great comments out there. Oops, maybe not so much from the technocrat-apologist crowd on Hacker News.

> "If you don't like the country you live in, just move!"

Done that.

> Apple's refusal to implement modern APIs like Vulkan is childish

No, it makes perfect sense. Metal is a nice, compact, and easy API. This is one of the reasons that allowed them to get out the M1 in the first place, because they could reuse all the work on Metal for iOS. Why would they try to accommodate the shit show that is Vulkan? And why would they try to appease people who really want Linux, not macOS?

Personally though, I am turning away from Apple when it comes to programming. It is just becoming too insular. It is great if you want to only reach people in Apple land, the tools (like Swift and Metal) are pretty nice. But in the end, web tools are also very nice these days, and your reach is just so much bigger. It is great to see your software running on a £150 Chromebook!