AppleCare Status On My Mac: Ways to Check

So, as a follow up, almost 9 months after buying the iPad and after 8 months of it's 3G not working, I finally got Apple to replace it. How? I had an Apple-authorized 3rd party service center look at it. They confirmed the problems and sent to Apple for repair. But it didn't end there! Apple sent it back to them and said it was fine. Grrr.

BUT, armed with the 8 months of no-iPad-3G love AND with the fact that the Apple-authorized 3rd party service center agreed I had a problem I berated the tech support guy until he agreed to send me a new one no matter what the results of their diagnostics said. And he made good to his word; a new iPad showed up on my doorstep several days later.

With that ends the saga of the failed 3G on iPad that Apple would not admit was a problem.

Now here's the sad, sad irony and how I still feel that Apple got the last laugh on me. The day I got my iPad back was the very same day Apple announced the iPad 2. With all the bad taste in my mouth from this Apple seriously has me looking at an Android tablet for my next upgrade. :-(

In general, extended warranty plans are a healthy-sized profit center for the company offering them. This implies that unless a product turns out to be less reliable than predicted, on average (mean average) customers will be better off paying for their own repairs without the warranty. However, if one can't afford to self-insure for abnormal or even normal deviations from the average, something like AppleCare will lessen the downside financial risks.

Thus, I suggest (and buy) AppleCare only if an Apple product seems to be getting numbers of reports of below average reliability (e.g. the Duo 2xx and PowerBook 5x00 product lines). For other Apple products, maybe put the money in a savings account instead, and there is a good likelyhood that you'll end up ahead after a decade or two of Apple products.