Yup. Prosupport was very worth it.. People who buy Macs for work also buy Apple Care, right? Same thing. Dell sent technicians to my house twice to fix issues. My only gripe was that my Precision didn't seem to fully support the Ubuntu 18.04 it came with, but everything has been better with 20.04.
I do not buy AppleCare, especially for MacBook Airs. There are no moving parts, and I feel like the likelihood of something not working is so low in the period that AppleCare covers that it is just worth it to buy a new laptop if anything happens to it.
Note that apple would not sell AppleCare if they were losing money on it. If you can afford to replace a laptop, you might as well do that. Dell’s professional warranty sends someone to your house next day to fix it, which is worth something extra, especially if you are far from an Apple store. But I do not think Apple’s does anything special like that.
But if you break anything on that device and you want to have it repaired, that’s likely to be pretty expensive. In contrast, if you have AppleCare, the repair may be free, or just the cost of the replacement components and no labor charge.
More recent versions of AppleCare have even started covering screen replacements, which can easily exceed the value of the device, or even the cost of buying another one that is identically configured.
So, yeah — I always buy the maximum AppleCare I can. Just one broken component, and it has paid for itself for the remaining lifetime of that device.
Extended warranties are very high margin - probably 65-75% for Applecare. For a vendor like Dell, they pay a variety of third party entities something like $25-40 per on-site visit, plus a commodity part. If you're handy, it is often cheaper to DIY.
With Apple, remember that they are masters of business process, supply chain and scale. You either hump the computer to the Apple store or do a depot repair. There's no man in the van. They put OEM parts or replace the unit and refurbish it in some industrial process. Apple makes of money on this, as the process maximizes utilization and minimizes loss - they are using their own staff or a smaller number of depot contractors, and push losses like shipping shrink to their contractors like FedEx.
But... remember that you have captive to a single supplier for most replacement parts, and replacement parts are a profit center for Apple. It's gross, but if you're not prepared to essentially replace the unit in year 2, and you need the device, you may be better off with AppleCare. Another factor is because Apple devices are unpredictably hit or miss for quality. My company had a defective keyboard MacBook that was replaced in full 7 times. There have been issues with batteries, de-lamination, and other things at various times that are a risk as well.
Personally, I buy AppleCare for Macs, but not for things that are more accessories like Apple TVs, iPads, etc. My kids iPad has a cracked screen stabilized with scotch tape.
> People who buy Macs for work also buy Apple Care, right?
Not for laptops, the quality is so high I’m stacking them up as I can’t justify throwing them out or recycling them. I have a macbook pro from 2012 still going strong (albeit slow)
