Is Apple care or .Mac worth the money?

02/05/08 14:09
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I have two iMac's and signed up for Apple Care for both of them at a cost of $159.00. After some problems with Leopard and my iMac I have to say that for the most part Apple Care is not worth the money. The same can be said for a .Mac account which for a fee allows you get a Mac eMail address, publish your website on the Web and store back up files. However with more and more inexpensive and free services appearing unless Apple adds more value to .mac a lot of people may forgo this service.



Apple Mac Care

If you Google Mac troubleshooting you will find a checklist of the same steps that the people at Apple Care use when you call them. It involves the usual verify and repair disk permissions along with eventually reinstalling your OSX as either a clean reinstall or archive and install. When I had a real serious problem of having my Finder disappear I was on the phone with Apple Care for over an hour and wound up just doing a reinstall and erase. Well for my money I could have figured this out myself, I mean DUH. When my new iMac arrives next week I am not going to sign up for Apple Care but rather will use the Leopard book I purchased on Amazon.com.


.Mac


I have been using a .mac eMail account ever since I got my first Mac 6 years ago. At the time it seemed like a deal as they offered special software and a nice backup plan but the value is just not there anymore. Yes you can publish website but you have to publish to a funky long domain that is not easy to find. If you want to publish an iWebsite to your own domain you have to make several changes which could take some time. Now with free eMail services like Yahoo! and Gmail .mac does not seem like it's worth the money. Now there is a rumor that Apple is planning an upgrade of the .Mac service but I have heard this for awhile now and will believe it when I see it.


The bottom line is that you can save some money to use for more RW themes and other programs or external hard drives rather than sign up for Apple care or .mac but to each his own. I have noticed that more and more people are choosing not to sign up for either one and that could be a signal to Apple it's time to put some value back to get more people.
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