Egg Freckles

Should you buy AppleCare? Every Apple product comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support and a limited one year warranty. AppleCare for Mac extends your service and support coverage to three full years from the date you purchased your computer. It gives you global repair coverage, and direct access to Apple experts for questions on a wide range of topics.

But at up to $349 per computer, AppleCare for Mac can be a considerable investment. That is why you should know what AppleCare for Mac covers, and what it does not.

AppleCare for Mac covers:

• All included hardware and accessories.
• One compatible Apple-branded display if purchased at the same time as your computer.
• An Apple-branded mouse, Magic Trackpad, Apple Battery Charger and keyboard if included with the Covered Equipment (or purchased with a Mac mini or Mac Pro).
• An AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort Time Capsule, Apple memory modules (RAM) and Apple USB SuperDrive if used with the Covered Equipment and originally purchased by you no earlier than two years before the Covered Equipment purchase.
• Apple will provide technical support for the Covered Equipment, Apple’s operating system software and Apple-branded software applications that are designed to operate with the Covered Equipment.
• Apple will also provide technical support using the graphical user interface for server administration and network management issues on Apple’s operating system server software.

In short AppleCare for Mac covers everything that comes in the box, and a number of Apple peripherals you may already be using with your Macintosh. AppleCare even gives you basic support for Apple pro applications like Final Cut, Logic, and Mac OS X Server.

AppleCare for Mac does not cover:

• Installation, removal or disposal of the Covered Equipment.
• Damage caused by a product that is not the Covered Equipment.
• Accident, abuse, misuse, liquid contact, fire, earthquake or other external cause.
• Operating the Covered Equipment outside the permitted or intended uses described by the manufacturer.
• Service (including upgrades and expansions) performed by anyone who is not an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
• Covered Equipment with a serial number that has been altered, defaced removed, or modified.
• Covered Equipment that has been lost or stolen.
• Cosmetic damage, preventative maintenance, or defects caused by normal wear and tear.
• Issues that could be resolved by upgrading software to the then current version.
• Modification to the Covered Equipment, the Mac OS, or Consumer Software in a manner for which is not intended to be used or modified.
• Third-party products or their effects on or interactions with the Covered Equipment, the Mac OS, Mac OS Server, or Consumer Software.
• Apple software other than the Mac OS, Mac OS Server, or Consumer Software as covered under the applicable Plan.
• Mac OS, software or any Apple-branded software designated as “beta”, “prerelease,” or “preview” or similarly labeled software.
• Damage to, or loss of any software or data residing or recorded on the Covered Equipment.
• Recovery and reinstallation of software programs and user data are not covered under this Plan.

In short AppleCare for Mac does not cover accidental damage, loss, theft, or normal wear and tear. You must use your computer and its software as intended. If you manage to deface your computer so that it is no longer identifiable, it is also not covered. AppleCare requires you to upgrade to the latest version of the software, but does not cover “beta”, “prerelease,” or “preview” releases of that software. Finally it is your responsibility to backup and reinstall your data and system software.

So should you buy AppleCare?

It depends on what kind of person you are, how often you replace your computer, and the price of the individual plan.

Are you a technically independent person, who always turns to an online forum before picking up the phone to ask a computer question? If the answer is yes, half of AppleCare’s value goes straight out the window.

However, even if you are a technically savvy individual, no online forum, pirated repair manual, or iFixit set of screw drivers will help you repair your computer if you don’t have the parts.

Today computers aren’t fixed with soldering irons and bails of wire. When computers fail, their faulty parts need to be replaced. And with Apple’s computers becoming smaller and lighter more functionality is riding on fewer parts. Replacement parts are even more expensive and proprietary than ever before.

You can’t get replacement parts by walking into an Apple Store, or ordering them on Amazon. You have to go to an Apple Authorized Service Provider, who will charge you labor to install them. AppleCare is the only affordable option to get genuine Apple replacement parts.

When to always buy AppleCare

• If you are purchasing a new Mac with a compatible Apple-branded display, or have a lot of eligible Apple accessories. AppleCare will cover them.
• If you can get the educational discount. AppleCare can be discounted by over $100 if you work at or are attending an educational institution.
• If you live far away from an Apple Store and plan on asking a lot of technical support questions after the first 90 days.
• If you are buying a MacBook, and battery life is important to you. AppleCare now covers MacBook batteries that retain less than 80-percent of their original capacity within the first three years.

When to never buy AppleCare

• If you are prone to accidents or theft. AppleCare does not cover loss or damage.
• If you have a credit card insurance plan that doubles the manufacture’s warranty of electronic goods like computers.
• If plan on replacing your computer once a year. You can buy AppleCare anytime within the first year.

What about iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple Watch, and the Apple TV?

AppleCare for these devices only covers your purchase for an additional year. It does not cover accidental damage without additional cost, and does not cover theft. If you get a new device every year, do not buy AppleCare. And even if you don’t, seek out alternative insurance programs that cover theft and accidental damage.

I have had a Mac.com email address ever since I had a Mac that could send email. iTools, the predecessor of .Mac and MobileMe, has been part of my online identity since the summer of 2001. I remember when the only way to access my iTools’ IMAP email was through Outlook Express. When sending files to iDisk’s 5MBs of storage required AppleShare. When one of the perks of owning a Mac was the ability to send tasteful electronic greeting cards with Apple’s branding all over them. Before 2002 Apple’s online offerings were less about features and more about exclusivity. iTools was free, but only if you owned a Mac.

iTools was replaced with .Mac in the summer of 2002. Suddenly my mac.com email address cost something, my online storage size got a little larger, and my iCard electronic greeting cards? Well they stayed the same.

I started paying for .Mac because I saw the value in developing the online identity I started under iTools. Additional services like Apple’s miserable Backup application, and McAfee’s unwarranted virus protection never enticed me. .Mac’s early appeal was always its email address, and how it set me apart from the subscribers of Hotmail, Yahoo!, Comcast, and Earthlink. On the Internet your email address is your identity. It is the one account that connects you with all of the services the web has to offer. You can’t experience most of the web’s opportunities unless you have an email address. By purchasing my .Mac email address I was securing my online presence in a way only a professional email address could provide.

Over the next few years .Mac’s value would grow to include services like webmail, dynamic DNS, and the ability to sync data between Apple’s computers. In 2008 .Mac was replaced with MobileMe and iCards were a thing of the past. In their place were online galleries, 20GBs of storage, and the ability to sync email, contacts, calendars to an iPhone without a corporate Exchange account. I continued to pay for Apple’s online service for the freedom it provided. Instead of being tied to a business account, or a Internet service provider’s email address I could take my MobileMe email, contacts, calendars, and storage with me wherever I went.

Apple’s online services have always faced more affordable competition. From Microsoft’s free Hotmail to Google’s powerful web applications, MobileMe has never been considered inexpensive, or feature-rich. But if you lived inside Apple’s ecosystem and used all of the services MobileMe provided, the $69 discounted annual fee was not unreasonable. The difference between MobileMe and the competition is the respect Apple gives paying customers.

Google recently lost one of its best customers for undisclosed reasons. They canceled his account without telling him why. Google took 7 years of correspondence, over 4,800 photographs and videos, his Google Voice phone number and voicemail, all of his saved reading lists, bookmarks, contacts calendars, and more. He lost his online identity. He lost his blog. He lost his ability to be contacted by the outside world during a time that he needed his established methods of communication most.

Until you pay for your Google, you are not its customer, and even then Google’s primary responsibility is to its advertisers who spend millions of more dollars than you do. When you trust your online identity to free services like Google, you are trusting Google to make the right choices for its customers the advertisers. I would rather pay Apple, a company that makes products and services for people like me, then base my online identity on the profitability of ads.

Today MobileMe is now iCloud, and is free to all of Apple’s customers. As long as Apple is putting its customers first, I will continue to trust iCloud with my online identity. Apple is positioning iCloud as a feature that comes with Apple hardware. The price of new Macs, iPhones and iPads, will secure iCloud’s future. Nothing is certain in web services, but as long as iCloud remains part of the purchase price of Apple products, I can rest assured my online identity is safe.