Malcolm Owen
Apple is making the decision for customers acquiring the iMac Pro to pick up AppleCare with their purchase easier, by keeping the price of the extended warranty service the same as for the iMac despite the increase in hardware cost.
According to the Apple online store's AppleCare+ for Mac page, the link to buy the service for the iMac Pro takes users to the page for the iMac, rather than a separate listing for the Pro product. It appears that Apple is equating both the iMac and iMac Pro for support purposes, with the associated costs of AppleCare+ kept identical for the two product ranges.
AppleCare+ for iMac and the iMac Pro costs $169, and can be used to extend the support coverage to three years, up from the standard one-year limited warranty and 90 days of complementary telephone support offered with all Mac purchases. AppleCare+ also includes coverage for two instances of accidental damage, with service fees of $99 for screen or external enclosure damage and $299 for other types of damage, excluding tax.
AppleInsider checked other regional versions of Apple's AppleCare pages to see if the policy is the same in other regions, and discovered it to be the case. The online stores in the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and France all direct the AppleCare+ links for the iMac Pro to the iMac equivalent, indicating it to be company policy.
Notably, this means AppleCare+ for the iMac Pro is significantly cheaper than the coverage for the Mac Pro, which costs $249 in the United States with the same excess fees and service features.
While the cheap price for extra coverage is highly useful, it is possible Apple could introduce a separate AppleCare+ warranty specifically for the iMac Pro in the future, or even increase the price to counter the higher cost of components used inside the iMac Pro.
Sales of the iMac Pro commenced on Thursday, with models starting from $4,999.
Sponsored Content
William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
9 Comments
And yet it’s $379 for a MacBook Pro 15”. Go figure. It remains WAY cheaper for me to annually insure my MBP on a State Farm personal effects policy which covers theft and ANY kind of damage or malfunction with no deductible. And no I don’t work for SF.
This is one reason I'll settle for purchasing a non-upgradeable iMac Pro. There's less for me to worry about if something goes wrong, especially something serious. I don't have the technical knowledge or patience anymore to be troubleshooting some aftermarket parts. I'm not Linus Sebastian or JayzTwoCents to always be tinkering around with some over-clocked beast that's always on the bleeding edge. Sorry, but maybe if I were in my 20's or 30's I wouldn't mind spending some time mucking around for the challenge, but being almost 70 years of age, my remaining time is quite precious. I'd rather just hand the computer over to some experts who are fully-equipped to handle problems.
You may hate on Apple's closed-computer business model all you want but I think it works for an awful lot of ordinary consumers who don't have the technical skills. I'm certainly not 100% behind Apple's decision to not allow somewhat skilled consumers to upgrade their own computers. I'm just saying that it's my choice to stick with Apple because I can afford to do it without constantly griping. I'm not going to be building a custom-Windows PC because I don't have a real reason to. Although I enjoy looking at custom gaming machines in all their glory, that doesn't mean I'd want to use one on a daily basis. I don't do gaming anyway so I have no need for maximum frame rates. All that custom water-cooling and RGB lighting are sweet, but I'd lose interest in that stuff rather quickly.
A base model iMac Pro with some additional memory and AppleCare honestly seems like a fine deal to me and it will keep me satisfied for years as long as it runs as reliably as the day I bought it.
Why is that mine is $249 for my 2016 13" MacBook Pro?!?!?