Most of you out there are familiar with the extended warranty. Whether you're talking about electronics, appliances, cars, you name it, most stores are more than happy to sell you an extended warranty as well. Most of the time I think that extended warranties are completely worthless and just a way for the retailer to increase its profit margins so avoid them like the plague. That being said, for some reason, when buying Apple products, I have always plopped down the extra dough for Apple's extended warrantly: Applecare. Why I do this when normally I avoid extended warranties?? Other than the fact that I basically enjoy signing paychecks over to Apple, who knows. I've never taken advantage of Applecare until recently. To give you a little backstory, my 24 inch LED Cinema display had been wonky lately....the lower half of the screen (lower left corner especially) was "warmer" than the rest of the screen. This translated to a yellow/brownish tint and aside from being annoying, plopping down $900 for a monitor with a varying color temperature across the screen is unacceptable. The monitor was out of warranty, but low and behold I had purchased Applecare with the monitor, so I brought it in to Apple. The genius at the bar was a little skeptical of my complaints, but took them seriously and logged the monitor in for repair. I was without the monitor for about a week, but then got a call saying it was ready. So far after a little calibration and white balance adjustment (via display preferences in OS X), it's looking pretty good. Can't tell if it's perfect but certainly better than before. Was the $80 for the Applecare (for displays) worth it?? Take a look at the iphone grab of the bill and judge for yourself (look at the "amount due". hint: yes). In this case I can certainly say from experience Applecare for your Apple products is worth it.
24" Cinema Display