Mine failed literally the day after the AppleCare expired and thankfully the guy let me get it repaired as if it were under AppleCare. My understanding is that the store managers actually get a fair amount of leeway on this. Were that not the case, I would have had to think hard about spending $350 on a repair for a computer that was no longer my primary.
I'm glad they took care of you! I'm curious: had you bought the extended AppleCare?
Reason I ask is because the general consensus seems to be that they cut you a lot more slack if you've paid for the 3-year warranty, even if it's expired.
That's been my experience, but... I'm not rich enough to buy two identical MBPs (one without extended coverage) and use one as a proper control sample. :)
Right now, this is only -good- news for me, because it's not clear what the fix is.
My main concern is what they're replacing the defective boards with. When I replaced my motherboard under AppleCare, they basically gave me a new board with the same design defect. In less than 6 months, I had the same problems, and then my MBP died over the XMas holidays. Lucky me, I replaced it with a Lenovo that came with Superfish installed.
For the news to be great, they'd have to replace my current board with a redesigned board that won't fail again in 6 months. Until more information trickles in from people who have gotten their MBPs fixed, I'm going to reserve judgment.
In any case, I'm very happy that Apple finally decided to make whole the people who have suffered with this problem for the past few years. It was the right thing to do. I do feel badly for the people who sold their units at a significant loss though.
At least it was not a rMBP. My mid-2102 rMBP coverage expires this June, and I'm seriously thinking of selling it and upgrading just to get Apple care back. The whole computer is almost a single piece at this point. Any kind of damage is super expensive to repair out of warranty.
> it's frustrating that they took so long to "do the right thing."
Par for the course.
I was bit by logic board problems on the dual USB iBook (2002 model), which eventually got covered under a similar warranty extension. Then I had to pull teeth when my MacBook's plastic discolored in 2006.
I had similar problems with a 2009 MBP about a month after AppleCare expired and they repaired it free of charge. They seem to be pretty good about that.
Last year my 2011 MBP failed literally the day before its extended AppleCare expired. Had it failed a day later, I'd have been in some trouble.