All iPhones come with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of technical support. AppleCare costs $69 and extends that by two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone, with AppleCare+ costing $99 and adding coverage for up to two incidents of accidental damage due to handling, each subject to a $49 service fee.

Owners of the iPhone 4 who purchased it on or shortly after launch date will have their factory warranties expire soon, as the standard warranties on most Apple products—the iPhone included—last for about a year before they expire. iPhone 4 owners can check the status of their warranty and when it is due to expire by entering the iPhone’s serial number at selfsolve.apple.com.

If you’ll sleep better knowing you have AppleCare coverage, don’t let me persuade you otherwise. The degree of risk one is comfortable assuming is a personal judgement call with no right or wrong conclusions, and statistical probabilities notwithstanding, with any mass-produced product there will always be a percentage of lemon units.

A hard drive failure is one of the most painful problems than can affect your computer. Sadly, Apple has identified that a “very small” percentage of MacBooks sold between May 2006 and the end of 2007 are exhibiting higher than normal hard drive failure rates. If you have one of these MacBooks, drop everything and backup your data. The identifying symptom of this problem, hard drive failure, is booting to a flashing question mark instead of OS X.

Smoking around your Mac (or any computer for that matter) might not be such a good idea. Two Mac users have been turned down for AppleCare maintenance because their Macs were used in a residence with a smoker. Both cases were appealed all the way up to Steve Jobs’ level, and they both lost because the tar and other chemicals in cigarette smoke which were found inside the computers were considered a “biohazard.”

First generation iPod nano owners, listen up. If your iPod nano was purchased between September of 05 and December of 06, then you might have some “hot” features you don’t want.

Macworld has an article that details Apple recognition that “in very rare cases” (about 0.001 percent) said iPods could overheat. Apple is blaming the problem on an unnamed battery supplier. The faulty batteries can, in some instances, overheat, causing “failure and deformation of the iPod Nano.”

Details after the break.

Although this may sound like something off a broken record, there is one thing I must say about Apple. AppleCare and Apple service centers are absolutely, positively amazing. I’m just puttin’ that out there. Keep in mind that I did not even go to an actual Apple store for the latest repair, only an Apple more »

When I signed up to write at Appletell nearly two months ago, I had planned to write frequently, but soon after I began writing, things took a turn for the worst. The problem was that my 15” powerbook G4 kept randomly shutting down about every 9 or 10 hours. Because I had purchased the AppleCare extended warranty, I was eligible to receive repairs free of charge. I called up AppleCare (1-800-APL-CARE) and explained the situation to a representative.

They decided to send me a box which I would send the computer back to them in to get it repaired. After a couple of days, I got the box in the mail, and after about 2 weeks I got the computer back from the repair center. I eagerly fired it up, and everything seemed fine, but I would soon find that instead of every 9 or 10 hours, it was now shutting down every 2-3 hours. I called up AppleCare again and I was shortly transferred to a senior repair representative. He was very nice, and said that he would be happy to set me up for a second, expedited repair. This time, after only 1 week, I got my computer back, but only to find out that my computer was now shutting down every 40 minutes. I called my representative at his direct number and spoke to him about the situation.

With the iPhone out for almost a month now there have been a few incidents of the people having trouble with their phones, mostly in the form of cracking screens. We had previously mentioned that AppleCare would be available for the iPhone, and it would be around the $60 mark. Well, according to Apple’s site more »

If you’ve bought an iPhone, you’ll certainly be wondering about what to do, should the worst happen to your beloved little gadget. Apple has posted several tidbits on their support pages that we thought we should share with you, valued reader. AppleCare for the iPhone will be available sometime “in July”. If your phone fails more »