Apple will no longer limit how often AppleCare+ owners can pay Apple to repair supported products. As MacRumors noted yesterday , the company has updated AppleCare+ subscription support to offer “unlimited”repairs for its current product line. That’s a lot more flexible than the two repairs a year that were previously offered, according to the Wayback Machine.
According to the fine print, this only covers “physical damage resulting from treatment due to unexpected and unintended events.”And there are associated service charges. For example, fixing broken glass on an iPhone will cost you $29 in addition to the monthly subscription fee. And you can pay $299 for accidental damage to a Mac on top of the device subscription price.
For anyone wondering how subscription prices compare for Apple’s just-announced offerings, Apple is charging the same two-year fee for the iPhone 14 announced yesterday as it does for the iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, and iPhone 12 ($149). However, iPhone 14 Plus coverage is $179 for two years, and it will set you back $199 for iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max coverage for two years (Apple also sells monthly subscriptions).
Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Ultra, the most expensive AppleCare+-enabled watch ($99 for two years vs. $79 for the Apple Watch Series 8) and AirPods Pro pricing, for which Apple announced a second-generation version yesterday, remains flat. $29 at the time of writing.
The AppleCare+ update is similar to other recent repair efforts that include Apple’s self-healing program, which offers parts, tools, and guides for self-repairing some Macs and iPhones. None of these efforts completely addresses the environmental, financial, or other maintainability problems of the machinery. And both have limitations that may someday be eliminated, such as cost and complexity for consumers, and limited support, especially for older products.
However, new changes to AppleCare+ make the subscription cost more reasonable if you’re supporting a type of product that you expect to break several times a year.
As yesterday’s colorful and lengthy Far Out showed, Apple will continue to push you to buy its latest products as soon as possible. But for many of us who prefer repairing a device to updating it, Apple has become a little more accommodating.