Yes, Applecare is available but I refuse to pay for it to cover things they should be doing as standard. When I pay the equivalent of 4.3k USD for a laptop, I don’t expect to have to pay more for basic support that is covered by the law.

In fact, under EU consumer law I should have had this one replaced but Apple — the global company Apple — refused to let me do that from Spain for a laptop bought in the UK (both covered by the same EU law).

I was told if I wanted to ‘try to make a claim under consumer law’ I would have to fly back to the UK. As I’d just had a daughter, I wasn’t going to do that just to have yet more arguments so I reluctantly gave in and accepted the repair.

The laws Apple have to work to are summarised on their own site — https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

But they’ve done everything possible — twice — to make it as hard as possible to the point where I finally gave up trying to get a replacement for the second machine.

I hadn’t thought of emailing Tim Cook. I just checked and he does have a public email address like Jobs did. Obviously not all read by him, but sure, it will do no harm to point it out to someone there.

Thanks