I'm offering this with the preface that I'm not a huge Apple fan... not a hater by any means, but I think Apple is often given an undue ethereal status.
A few things are coming to mind when I read over this thread.
First, there's an interesting paradox in that Apple's products are draconian in the sense that you have to bring it to them to fix for a very high cost. At
the same time, they're fairly easy and cheap to fix yourself with easily sourced parts. That dichotomy is, in my experience, very true, courtesy of warranties that one risks voiding, and proprietary hardware (think pentalobular screws) that serves no purpose other than to make it difficult for someone to work with their own device. In my own experience, $20 for a part and about 30 minutes of time was all it took to replace an iPhone 3GS battery, vs their $100 cost to replace the device... well worth it for me to do it myself. The bottom line is that AppleCare is a huge money maker for Apple, and the draconian elements of their products are a means to these ends of profit making.
Now, on the other hand, the cost of an AppleCare warranty, despite being signifcantly higher than doing the repairs oneself, may be a very good value for a great many people who simply don't have the experience or desire to do their own repairs... and I think that's great.
With all of that said, I'm seeing a bigger paradox, which I cannot as easily explain. It's a pretty typical argument that the inflated cost of Apple products
(compared to non-Apple counterparts, that is) is balanced by their "just works" factor, and that they offer greater longevity... this seems at odds with the importance of purchasing AppleCare. Conversely, if in fact the failure rate is high enough to justify the AppleCare purchase, then it effectively means the cost of the products are actually even higher, thus eroding a bit at the perceived balance of the value proposition.
Again, there are plenty of customer for whom this is a perfectly good value, nonetheless. For myself however, seeing that TCO is potentially even higher than just the initial sticker shock is more than enough reason for me to pass on it.