> Isn't it worth it to purchase the Applecare warranty for $250 which extends the warranty period to 3 years?

payoff * Probability of payoff = EV

3000 * Probability of payoff = 250

3000 * P / 250 = 250/250

3000 / 250 * P = 1

12 * P = 1

∴ P = 1 / 12

You require 8.3% of the computers to fail in years 2 and 3, and for the failure to cause $3000 worth of 'damage' avoidance, and for it to be something covered under the warranty terms, for your gamble to make sense.

Judging by the fact they offer the warranty, I would imagine the fail rate to be somewhat lower than this, or for the failures to be vastly less expensive than that - else they'd be losing money.

Or that they lose money on the warranty and make up for the loss in other ways.

It's a necessary part of the package.

When the customer is spending north of $3k on a computer, why not toss in the warranty for free?

When you see the price of the dual GPUs, the ECC RAM, PCIe SSD, and the small design, you will see why they didn't toss in the warranty for free. You do get 1 year free warranty though and that's something. It's only $249 for the extra two years which is worth it in my opinion.

ECC isn't that much more expensive, while AFAIK the price premium for pro-model GPUs is almost pure price-gouging, and Apple's surely not paying those inflated prices for the GPUs.