MacBook – How to find closest AppleCare service provider

Generally an extended warranty (and insurance in general) is not worthwhile if you can afford the loss. By definition, insurers calculate the odds that they'll need to pay out a claim, and charge more than that (odds * payout) to make a profit.

The only reason to pay that surcharge is to protect against losses that would cause massive financial hardship. If you can replace the item on short notice without going hungry or losing your home, you're probably better off self-insuring in the long run.

That being said, there are exceptions: most notably when you have better information than the insurer about your risks. In other words, if you know you're much more likely to damage an item than the average user (and the insurance company considers you an "average user"), it might be a win to insure for accidental damage.

For this reason, I did actually go ahead and insure my iPad -- although I did so through SquareTrade, not Apple, as they offer a better product IMHO.

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.