Dropped your iPad? That's $600 to repair

ComputerWorld.com.au is full of c r a p. Every iPad ever sold is still under warranty. Apple will not repair your ailing iPad--not least, not immediately. It replaces your broken tablet with a refurbished device having the same specs. If no refurbished models are available, then it will ship you a new device sans SIM card. If you understand these basic facts, then the price is understandable.

That said, when you purchase an iPad, you should also purchase an AppleCare policy for it. If you do so, then you will not have to pay the replacement price. Even without an AppleCare policy, there every iPad is protected under warranty for one year. To repeat my statement above, every iPad ever sold is still under warranty. If you don't have AppleCare, then you have until your warranty expires to purchase it.

To close the loop, your broken iPad will be refurbished and sold to another customer or used to replace some other customer's broken iPad.

So where are the reports of damaged iPad screens?

Who wants actual reports when they get in the way of fantasy estimates?

BTW, I've already dropped my iPad. It didn't break. However, I when I dropped my digital camera, it did break -- and the cost of repair is about half the price of replacing it with a new camera.

Thing is, I haven't even heard any reports of scratched screens. Mine is certainly in great shape. Are these things really that bullet proof?

But not every broken iPad is covered by the warranty. The warranty doesn't cover clumsiness.nor just plain stupidity.
What kind of fool would expect the warranty to cover a broken screen after dropping the darn thing?

Incidentally, the Australian Dollar is about $0.84 U.S., so at the very least, 20% needs to be subtracted from the above fantasy repair estimates.

FWIW, two days after I received my 64 GB iPad 3G, it experienced a problem for which it could not be reset or restored. Apple replaced my device under warranty. Quite frankly, it doesn't bother me that Apple has taken measures to identify iPads that have been used as boat paddles. Every customer who pays for his own stupidity is one less customer who passes on his costs to the rest of us.

So this thread has no meaning. I think that was obvious from the start, but at least now the OP has been cornered into admitting it.

Nonsense, as usual. You seem to possess an endless supply.

Who in the entire world expects to have a product repaired under warranty if they break it?

The problems with the "estimated" costs of repair have already been pointed out. You, predictably, have ignored them.

This whole thread is just another lame attempt to find a chink in the iPad armor. When announced, it was just a big iPod; people were still excited. It was missing too many crucial features; people didn't care. Only an idiot would pre-order something they have never seen or held; pre-orders sold out. Once people see them, they will be unimpressed; Apple can't make enough of them to meet the growing demand. People will quickly get bored of this limited toy; satisfaction is over 90%. The rest of the world is more sensible; the black market is thriving and the legit market is mostly sold out. Now, these things will cost too much to repair; there are no widespread reports of problems with damaged screens.

Keep trying. Someone is bound to come up with a real deal-breaker, eventually.

Mr. Me is still here and can speak for himself, thank you very much. Understand this if it is possible for you to do so. Mr. Me is an adult. Adults and people who behave as adults do not expect warranties to cover damage that they caused unless it is specifically listed as a covered item.

There's a new variant: when the iPad has absolutely beyond a doubt proven its utility and appeal, just assume that some non-specified Android tablet will be just as good.


Followed by


Notice the segue from "iPad" to "tablet" to "Android tablet", as if the author's zeal for the iPad, specifically, could be attributed to tablets in general of which the iPad just happens to be the example at hand. Never mind that there were plenty of tablets to "fall in love with" prior to the iPad and that they were apparently lacking; now that Apple has demonstrated how it's done we have to consider the entire concept to be a generic catagory which your manufacturer of choice may reasonably clone to precisely the same effect (albeit, inevitably, with Flash or better specs or more ports or teh Openess).

The comments, which the author participates in, make clear that there's little Apple love thereabouts; apparently he considers it a mark of his free thinking that he's willing to hold his nose and appreciated a product from that company with the asshole demographic, at least until he can get a version from someone he likes better. He seems to never consider the idea that the very things that make the iPad so nice to use, so "personal", are all the little details that Apple worked long and hard to get exactly right. Or that it's exactly those little details that are most likely to be glossed over or ignored by the next manufacturer to slap Android on their formerly WinMo tablet.

I would call this the refuge of last resort for the endemic Apple hater-- freely acknowledging the basic excellence of an Apple product while simultaneously pretending that that excellence is just a matter of adhering to what are suddenly the norms of a suddenly pre-existing category, and waiting eagerly for someone else to do it "better" (i.e. without the encumbrance of being an Apple product).

Once the Android tablets start shipping we can be absolutely sure that the same people that dismissed the iPad as underpowered, running "just a phone" OS, occupying a completely untenable middle ground between phone and netbook, and offering an awkward compromise of form and utility, will celebrate those very things (when properly Google-fied) as being Right and Inevitable and just another example of how Apple is "falling behind."

Your observations were brilliant.

When I read the article, I, too, observed that the iPad became just one of many in a particular genre of device. Never mind the fact that Apple created the genre of consumer facing tablet. And never mind the greater fact that the "many" have yet to materialize. Waiting on other devices to hit the market because "competition is good for the consumer", has become the favorite sport of the iPad loving, Apple hater.

You mean repeat myself? No thanks.