ApplePoor

It reads if the device is currently under extended warranty, then they can service it. The magic phrase is under a current extended warranty.

When traveling around the world, AmEx is accepted at some of the major hotels and some of the top restaurants. Virtually no use in rural European or South American areas nor the seven countries of southern Africa we visited several years ago. Most of the airlines will take American Express for tickets.

So one really needs a VISA and/or a Mastercard to cover the bases when traveling. Also a debit card for local currency at  cash points.

I think the bad debt experience at GS is only a result of their poor selection process to allow new customers. Their lust after the exhorbiant interest rates on credit card debt blinded them to the fact that those high interest rates are because of defaults. Since they accepted marginally qualified customers, then there should be no surprise at their losses. Greed does often have dire consequences. 

 My Intel  i7 Mac mini has 64GB of OWC ram and the 2TB SSD soldered in by Apple. I have seen over 40GB of the ram being used as cache during massive file transfers. Perhaps the SSD could be smaller, but memory size does impact server activity.

Since I have a M1 Ultra MacStudio (128GB ram and 8TB SSD) now, when Apple drops support for Intel processors and I retire it for MacOS security reasons, I would put the M1 MacStudio into the job and get the most recent MacStudio. Since we can not change either memory or SSD after the build, we use what we have. Apple is offering $1,580 as a trade-in value for my MacStudio. The M2 Pro mini with 32GB os ram and a 2TB SSD lists for $2,599 before adding Apple care and sales tax. The M3 Pro mini would be that or higher.

Apple crippled the M3 Pro chip so the most memory of 32GB for the M2 Pro is now just 36MB for the M3 Pro. I had hoped for 64GB of ram as the memory had doubled going to the M2 Pro generation from the M1 Pro generation.

If the future M3 or higher Mac Studio failed, I could fall back to the M1 Mac Studio. Remember that a component failure results in a completely new motherboard and a quick replacement could be problematic and its would be a used board.

Wonder if the price will be close to the prior generation like last time?

I may be tempted this time and take my M1 Ultra Mac Studio (128GB & 8TB SSD) and use it as my file server to replace the aging and soon to be unsupported Intel i7 powered Mac mini (64GB OWC Ram and 2 TB soldered SSD). The M1 Mac Studio trade in value is less than a possible M3 Pro mini with maximum memory and a 2 TB SD. and probably will be supported for quite a few more years.

I remember in the 70s that a 32kb memory card from Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) for my PDP-11 cost $2,000. Every generation that followed in the same form factor doubled the amount of memory for the same $2,000. The last one was 4MB. I used 1.5MB for programs and 2.5MB as a virtual swap disc for compiling Dibol code which was blazingly faster than any of the spinning platters of the day.