Agreed, quickest take-off and put on mechanism
The biggest 'threats' to expensive matches are actually loss or theft but AppleCare+ doesn't cover that (neither for the Sport or Steel). I don't see the value here instead of traditional insurance.
I would say the biggest threat is scratches to the housing and smashed glass.
A lot of repairs are actually just exchanges, so the deductible has to cover having to hand over another unit, even though they are getting the original back. They don't want it being done often.
For example, here in NZ, screens are not officially repaired for iPhones, and the cost of an out of warranty exchange if a damaged phone is eligible (including just cracked glass) is basically half the price of a retail unit.
If you have AppleCare + it's a fraction of that, so it's worth having AC+ here.
Likewise, changing a battery in an iPad is not a service that is carried out here, but they have a "swap out" service fee to "replace" the battery that Is really a service fee cost since it's nowhere near the cost of a replacement iPad, yet it is a whole replacing unit.
The costs of AppleCare and these services are set at a price that covers multiple regions with different services available.
It's not about what the service or replacement units actually cost, but rather the fact that they have to have replacement units as service parts in stock. At lower prices, that means more gold just tied up as service parts. The costs are proportional to the costs tied up as service parts in stock.
