Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled AppleCare One, a new way for customers to cover multiple Apple products with one simple plan. For just $19.99 per month, customers can protect up to three products in one plan, with the option to add more at any time for $5.99 per month for each device. With AppleCare One, customers receive one-stop service and support from Apple experts across all of the Apple products in their plan for simple, affordable peace of mind. Starting tomorrow, customers in the U.S. can sign up for AppleCare One directly on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, or by visiting their nearest Apple Store.

For most people, I reckon those three products are their iPhone, iPad, and Mac, perhaps with an Apple Watch tacked on for an extra $6. That’s $26 a month on accidental damage insurance, which works out to $312 a year. By contrast, paying for all of that yearly and individually, whenever someone buys a new Apple device, comes out to $215 a year. Why anyone would throw $100 down the drain just for the “luxury” of paying for insurance monthly is beyond me. But it makes sense from Apple’s point of view: that $240 is almost entirely pure profit because only a few people will ever have their device repaired under AppleCare+, and the money Apple makes from everyone else more than pays for the few who need service. It doesn’t take long to cook up a program like this, either.

One thing I do like about AppleCare One is that people can retroactively purchase AppleCare+ on their products even years after they bought them, so long as they pass a quick diagnostic test. Previously, you had to subscribe to AppleCare+ within 90 days of buying a new Apple device, which makes sense to prevent insurance fraud — people breaking their device and buying AppleCare+ for a reduced cost replacement — but it just felt too limited to me. Now, people can subscribe to AppleCare One and apply it to devices they’ve bought in the last four years, which is great. I hope Apple extends this to individual AppleCare+ plans sometime soon, because I let my MacBook Pro’s plan run out earlier this year, and I’d love if I could renew it for a few months until the new M5 models come out early next year. (I usually subscribe to AppleCare+ yearly since I upgrade my devices yearly, and so this plan doesn’t make sense for me.)

But since Apple makes such a large profit on this subscription, this thought crossed my mind earlier: Why doesn’t Apple include this in its Apple One Premier subscription, priced at $40 a month? Truthfully, Apple services (sans AppleCare+, even) have extraordinarily high profit margins. If it really cost Apple $11 a month per user to run Apple Music, there’d be no chance Apple Music was priced at $11. There’s also no way 2 terabytes of iCloud storage costs $10 a month to maintain — one 2 TB solid state drive runs about $100 these days. So Apple can still turn a profit on the $40 Apple One Premier plan because these services cost next to nothing to run. Why not include AppleCare One, another profitable service, for Apple’s most important customers?

The idea works the same: Very few AppleCare One subscribers, through Apple One Premier or not, will ever actually take advantage of the service. Some will, but most won’t. If it were included in the $40 Apple One Premier plan, though, it could encourage people who only pay for one or two Apple services to splurge on Apple One, netting more profit for Apple. Bundling is so popular in consumer marketing — and has been for decades — because it encourages people to subscribe to things they’ll never use. If the rationale for offering an AppleCare+ bundle at all is for people to waste their money, why not include it in the other “waste your money” subscription Apple offers? It just sounds like more profit by weight of more Apple One subscribers.

I don’t want this to sound like one of those engagement bait posts on social media where losers complain about Apple Music not being included with a new iPhone purchase. AppleCare One certainly costs some money to operate, and Apple should charge for it. I just think the profit Apple makes on Apple One Premier should subsidize the occasional AppleCare One repair. Economies of scale also apply: If more people subscribe to Apple One Premier for “free” AppleCare One access, Apple One becomes more profitable. Apple could still offer the $20 monthly subscription for people who don’t pay for any other Apple services — which is certainly a sizable contingent of Apple device owners — but I really do think it would be a wise idea to include AppleCare One in Apple One Premier just as an added benefit. (And, it could still take $6 extra for new devices, like the standard plan, for even more profit.)