Claiming warranty service on Apple accessories

One of Apple’s key selling points for decades has been its warranty service. Yes, the company has had some notable points of irritability—some of which have led to apologies or consumer lawsuit settlements—but, by and large, you don’t have to fight or fight much less hard to get your devices repaired.¹

When it comes to stuff you buy that works with Macs, iPhones, and iPads, the track record is a little murkier, partly because it’s not always clear what warranty service is available and under what terms.

Six Colors member Nathan writes in with a complaint and question about this:

I’m dealing with an iPad Magic Keyboard issue, and apparently, before I can get a repair or replacement, I need to call Apple and have them associate the iPad with the keyboard. And each iPad can only have one accessory, so I had to un-associate an Apple Pencil first.

I’ve seen online that the association should happen in the first 60 days, but nobody seemed to care, which raises the question: What is the point of this if I can just change associations whenever I want? Also, apparently, sometimes associations happen automatically?

How do you make an association? How can you tell what’s covered? And how long does coverage last?

What’s covered and how?

Because every country and some states or regions have variations in warranty requirements that Apple must conform to, I’ll cite and link to the relevant text for U.S. warranties below. However, despite using the decision tree at the Hardware Warranties page to drill down to a product, model, country/region, and even the years covered by warranty language,² the same warranty appears to apply to many countries. Where that’s not the case, Apple meets or exceeds the U.S. warranty requirements in most of the world.

This general “Apple One (1) Year Limited Warranty – Accessory” for products branded as Apple or Beats covers quite a lot of goods that function on their own: AirTags, earbuds, headphones, Apple TV, and so on. This is true, too, for Apple Pencil, Apple-branded iPad keyboards, Mac keyboards (which can also work with iPhones and iPads, of course), and mice and other input and pointing devices with the Apple name.

Where you start seeing a division in coverage is with AppleCare+. With the included warranty, defective products can be repaired or replaced at no cost, and you get 90 days of technical support beyond troubleshooting—you can get someone to talk you through migrating a Mac or installing apps on an iPad.

Pay for additional coverage with AppleCare+, and technical support extends for as long as you pay, as well as repair and replacement, plus some bonus features that are free or come with a set fee. Batteries on any device with one can be replaced at no charge when they drop below 80% capacity. The fees cover things that are your fault or someone else’s. With AppleCare+ for Mac, you can pay a flat fee to repair accidental damage: $99 for screen or case, $299 for other kinds of damage. With Apple’s AppleCare+ with Theft or Loss for iPhone (available in 18 countries), you can pay $149 to replace a phone that’s lost or stolen, up to twice in a 12-month period.

While you can buy AppleCare+ for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, as well as for Apple Display models, Apple Vision Pro, HomePod (all types), Apple TV, and “Headphones” (which includes Air Pods in earbud format), you can’t pay for it for AirTags, mice, keyboards, Apple Pencil, or iPad cases with keyboards.

However, this is where Nathan’s scenario comes in: if you buy AppleCare+, it covers certain accessories depending on the device beyond the device itself:

• Mac: Battery (if present), power adapter (if sold with the Mac³). Harkening back to the old days, any USB SuperDrive or Apple-sold add-on memory is also covered.⁴.
• iPhone, Apple and Beats audio gear: Battery and the cord that came with the device.
• Apple TV: Siri Remote and power cable.
• Apple Display: Power cord and an Apple stand or mount that you purchased at the same time.
• iPad: Battery, cable, and power adapter, plus an Apple Pencil and Apple-branded iPad keyboard.

Yes, the iPad is effectively the last device standing that has associated hardware! The footnote on the iPad AppleCare+ page about this notes, simply, “one compatible Apple Pencil, and one compatible Apple-branded iPad keyboard used with your iPad…” That lack of specificity does seem to leave a loophole through which you could own and have repaired multiple Apple Pencils and Apple iPad keyboards—but it’s also out of date with Apple’s own legal documents.

The battle of and/or

As I noted earlier, Apple keeps all its old warranties and similar legal documents available online, organizing them by the date they were in effect. This lets you harmonize your purchase date with what Apple agreed to cover. When you examine the AppleCare+ Terms and Conditions, you can go back to the July 15, 2020, to September 14, 2020, version to find this language in the list of what’s covered:

iPad (including an Apple Pencil and an Apple-branded iPad keyboard purchased for use with your iPad, referred to as “iPad Input Devices”)

That says and not or. This changes in the May 7, 2024, to June 19, 2024, T&C to:

iPad (including one Apple Pencil, one on [sic] Apple Pencil Pro, and/or one Apple-branded iPad keyboard to be used with your covered iPad, referred to as “iPad Input Devices”)

And is gone, but and/or rises: you should be able to have coverage for all three. It also doesn’t state anything about purchase or time of purchase.⁵

So Nathan was given bad advice by Apple Support. Even worse, though: The only way you can change an “assignment” to an iPad is by calling.

Extended warranties are always bad except Apple’s

There’s a consumer advocacy rule that can be stated succinctly: Never buy an extended warranty. There’s a reason for that: Most things we buy either break so soon that they are typically covered under a standard manufacturer’s warranty, or they take so long that your extended warranty expired or you’ve paid more for the extended warranty over the period until you need a repair than the actual cost of the repair.

Apple clearly sees AppleCare+ as a revenue center, or it wouldn’t offer it. At times, perhaps it has taken a loss for particular products, but I can only imagine it turns a nice profit. Certainly, Apple has been accused of developing products that are so difficult to repair, sometimes by inventing new screws or locking parts to devices—sometimes justly and sometimes not. But it’s also the case that with Apple Stores, 24-hour technical support, and mail-in service, it’s very difficult to beat the cost structure of AppleCare+.

The company switched earlier this year to offering AppleCare only as a monthly or annual recurring subscription; the multi-year AppleCare+ plans of the past are gone. While this allowed Apple to raise the warranty’s prices as part of the process—prices that hadn’t kept up with inflation, for sure—it also felt like it extended the utility.

A four-year-old iPhone is somewhat more likely to die than a three-year-old one, and if there’s no damage involved, Apple replaces it. They’re using refurb models fixed from trade-ins or repairable units they swapped out. But the cost of four years of AppleCare+ at that point only then starts to tip over towards buying a comparable, excellent-condition refurb of the same model.

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