Hacker News Reader

Comment by Corrado | Hacker News Reader

I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This won't put any any more money in Apple's pocket but I could see it being another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price arguments. Plus, it's only $300 and I'm sure Apple could suffer that "loss" on a $6,000 - $30,000 purchase.

View on HN

I've always argued that for the prices that Apple charges Apple Care should be included in all its products.

The first Apple computers I bought lasted for years and I never thought Apple Care was necessary, but since the fiasco with the 2011 MBP and the butterfly keyboards I'm not buying another of its products without Apple Care. Yes, Apple ended up doing the right thing in both cases but it took years after the problems started and a couple of class action lawsuits.

I don't think Apple should necessarily include coverage for user-caused damage as standard, but having only a single-year warranty on manufacturer defects is kinda shameful for a premium product. I expect premium products across most product categories to carry a three or five year warranty as standard.

A single-year warranty is in general an indicator that a) the manufacturer doesn't have faith in reliability past the first year and b) the manufacturer is begrudgingly just meeting the minimum standard for warranties in most jurisdictions. Even if neither of these are the case, the optics aren't good.

This is a really good thought and I would be OK with Apple extending the warranty on "professional" products instead of full Apple Care.

>A single-year warranty is in general an indicator that a) the manufacturer doesn't have faith in reliability past the first year and b) the manufacturer is begrudgingly just meeting the minimum standard for warranties in most jurisdictions. Even if neither of these are the case, the optics aren't good.

Dell's Precision workstations come with 3 years warranty, upgradable to 5 years coverage with on-site service. There is no reason Apple can't match that.

It presumably is in some areas. In New Zealand we have The Consumer Guarantees Act. Things are expected to have a reasonable life span. What this means is not specified but is generally accepted to be relative to the price paid (eg if it’s expensive, it should last). It’s a fantastic piece of legislation. I’ve had a 2.5 year old iPhone covered for example.

I believe that the parent meant that Apple charges enough (in the US), so it should have the extended guarantee included there. In NZ, things cost extra due to that law, correct? The difference: is everybody is paying for that extra protection, there's no choice.

We do have very high retail mark ups. Perhaps this is due to that law. But it is very nice protection to live under.

Aside from the additional taxation and regulations in NZ, it does have some pretty unavoidable issues which drive up the prices of consumer goods. It’s a very small market, and very far away. Getting things there is just going to cost more anyway, and the market isn’t big enough to invite significant competition, so there’s usually a large (or at least larger than a lot of other places) markup on imported goods.

Is it really far from China compared to US/Europe?

It’s not just far, it’s far away from everything, including all the major trade routes. In Europe and Asia, a lot more goods are produced close by, and if you ship a product to any country in Europe or Asia, there’s a lot more people to buy it, and a lot more markets close by.

And there are lots of regulations too. For example I sold an oil burner light on eBay to someone in NZ (didn't actually know as there was a UK address that forwarded the package) and I included some oils for free...

Big mistake. Package was returned and I had to remove them.

My only point being it's a poor port in part because of its delicate ecosystem, which necessitates very strict regulations.

My friend living in NZ has a fantastic quote about the distance:

> NZ is a fantastic place. It takes 24 hours to get anywhere around the world.

Yep, it's that far.

It’s far but 24hrs is a bit stretching reality e.g.

~12hrs to Santiago Chile. ~9hrs to Bali, Indonesia. ~13hrs to Los Angeles, USA. ~4hrs to Sydney, Australia.

Add a layover and you could easily be at 20+ hours (which is common since NZ is small so there aren’t that many flights). Europe is well over 24 hours even to the major hubs.

Granted, however the flights I listed are all non-stop.

There’s a non-stop Auckland > Denpasar flight?

> Yep, it's that far.

It'll be handy when the zombie apocalypse occurs though: it'll be quite the swim for any ghouls.

If you have this protection, it's like insurance. You, and everybody else, pay an insignificant amount of money and you get a much more expansive treatment incase of failure. Sure you have a choice, back the politicians that are against this.

I don't get why freedom loving people rather have a corporate take away their freedoms than a democratic self governed body. Both are power clusters, but in one you have a moral ground to criticise when it's acting against the populous interests (democratic government). While abuses of power from corporate cannot be argued against morally, you don't own them, they are playing by the rules, they manage to make a buck, all is above board morally while in actuality masses of people might be hurt by corporate abuses of power.

Freedom is extremely important but it is sometime conflicted with other values, a reasonable discussion of the conflict and tradeoffs is a much better way to improve life for people, than fanatically protecting the one single value you hold most dear.

I don't live in the US. I live in Mexico where Apple products are on average about 20% more expensive when converting currencies.

If you compare the value of the peso in Mexico vs the dollar in the US, Apple prices are in comparison much more expensive than in the US.

>relative to the price paid

TV set you get on Black Friday works until X-mas. It was a bargain, what did you expect?

That discount you got on your car? You think it was because of your outstanding negotiation skills? Think again, the seller swapped a cheaper bifurcator, meaning your mileage will suffer. But is it wrong? You got a discount.

If you sell it, if needs to be good. If it is not good, you cannot sell it. There's no price in question.

In Norway, it's not based on the price, but the product type. So TVs in general are said to last at least 5 years. So if you sell a cheap tv that breaks after 4 years, you have to replace it.

This of course means one don't get as much ultra cheap stuff sold, but at the same time most of that stuff is crap, and it's better for the environment to build stuff that lasts.

In most European countries it doesn't matter if it was a bargain or not, warranty law is the same for everyone.

In Europe a lot of products have to include 2 years warranty by default, which makes Apple Care a lot less attractive. You're basically paying the same price for just one more year instead of two.

2 years for people, 1 year for businesses. That includes self employed people if they want to enter it as an expense in the accounting books (I'm not sure about the terms in English, I hope you understand what I mean.)

Not every EU country has such a law. In the UK 1-year long warranties are standard, but some other states mandate 2 years on all electronic devices.

Unless of course you are talking about the EU-wide consumer protection rights which apply for 2-6 years after purchase, but which people very mistakenly call a guarantee. The problem with this protection is that it protects you only against manufacturing defects. And anything that happens after the initial 6 months is up to you to prove that it existed at the time of purchase. So no, if your MacBook suddenly dies 23 months after purchase, apple doesn't have to repair it, unless you can demonstrate to them that it died because of a manufacturing defect. In comparison, apple care would get your laptop replaced under the same circumstance.

We have CRA 2015 here in UK. 6 years on everything. Apple ask me what I want to claim under when I take my stuff in there. I only need AppleCare for when I break something :)

I'm wary about AppleCare BECAUSE of the MBP keyboard incident. They refused to replace mine or my wife's. I have purchased well into the 6 figures of Apple devices over the decades.

p.s. Switched to Windows when I bought my laptop for that reason.

What is the MBP keyboard incident?

Apple care should not cover things that are flaws in the design caused by Apple.

These type of design flaws should be fixed up as part of their normal warranty process.

I hear you. My current strategy, unfortunately, is to buy a new MBP, sell it at exactly 23 months so that I can advertise "over 1 year left of Apple Care".

I live in Indonesia where there is no Apple store and where time for repair of an issue such as keyboard replacement is six weeks.

This wasn’t an issue years ago because reliability wasn’t an issue. My ~2005 30” Apple Cinema Display is going strong connected to my 2010 Apple mini. My 2017 MBP however has been the most unreliable hardware I’ve ever had (my first computer was a 286). 6 weeks for repairing a pro device with a hefty premium price.

Still using my 2004 20" ACD.

assicuration is often a form of self selction bias. people conscious about damaging their property are those that are more likely to take care of it. apple care for everyone can dramatically shift its profitability.

But then they would have to either extend that to all Macbook Pros, iPad Pros and iPhone 11 Pros for consistency, or admit that these devices only got the "Pro" slapped to the name for marketing.

> I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This won't put any any more money in Apple's pocket but I could see it being another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price arguments.

Do Apple hardware failures happen often?

In ~20 years of assembling PCs with consumer grade parts I've only had 2 legit non-keyboard/mouse hardware failures (3 if you count lightning destroying a power supply before I knew about surge protectors). For context, I've had 0 hardware failures in the last 10 years. I keep my computers on 24/7 too.

Sure, they fail plenty, and Apple "extends the repair period" on products fairly often. Macworld has a pretty good roundup for recent ones: https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/macbook-problems-reca...

These were one's that specifically came to mind for me:

2019: Battery Recall: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-macbook-pro-recall/

2018: Macbook Air Logic Board issue: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/apple-macbook-air-power-i...

2018: Battery Recall: https://qz.com/1258843/macbook-pro-battery-recall-apple-ends...

2017: Screen staining: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/17/apple-extends-free-stai...

2018 SSD Issue: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/09/apple-macbook-pro-ssd-s...

2017: Battery recall https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall

2016: "Flexgate" _ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/flexgate-macbook-pro-display...

2013 - 15 Retina Screen Issues: https://www.cultofmac.com/514741/apple-extends-free-repair-p...

2010: White Macbooks Yellowing - "https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unibody-white-macbook-t...

2009: White MacBooks crack: https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/08/apple_addressing_...

Funny, in about the same period ~27 years or so, I've seen enough PSU failures alone, that I always use a UPS. I've seen ram that failed a couple times, quite a few motherboards die in the early 00's. A MB that was DOA and a video card that died after a year. Oh, and a first gen Intel SSD that suddenly thought it was an 8mb drive.

I still prefer to DIY for value... my 4790k build lasted 5 years, just put together a new one, placeholder cpu waiting for 3950X. Will probably, again, last 5 years or so.

What's really funny is in the late 1990s and early 2000s I always overclocked my systems because it gave a noticeable FPS boost in the games I played. Dual Celerons (physical chips) running 366@550 (a classic) and then a Pentium III 733@900 which was a huge upgrade, especially for a consistent 125 FPS in Quake 2 / 3.

My 2 legit failures were an old IDE HDD that audibly clicked like crazy for months before failing completely. Since it gave such a long warning I was able to back everything up thankfully. The 2nd failure was a different power supply that just stopped working without any notice or grand events. I never had any RAM or video cards go bad, but after assembling a new machine I always run them through rigorous automated tests to help detect faults. I've had 1 stick of RAM be DOA but I don't count that as a failure.

My current system is an i5 4460 (3.2ghz) with a bunch of other components. It's been going 5ish years now without issues and I work this thing pretty hard. Full time development, video recording and editing, gaming, etc..

Oh yeah... I've also had a few HDDs fail too... Two that were in Raid-1 within a week or so of each other (before the RMA for the first drive came back).

Aside, kernel (5.3) and drivers (mesa 19.3) are all updated, can finally drop in the rx5700xt card I'd been sitting on and play with it. Amazing how many things are working without issue via Steam's Proton (Wine, dxvk, etc)

It goes both ways. If you can afford to spend this (crazy) amount of money, you can pay for Apple Care as well.

Why would they price it so low, and not at 10%?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com