I'm looking to buy a new Macbook Pro, and have questions about the Applecare extended warranty?

AppleCare is a simple extension of the normal warranty, does not cover accidental damage, water damage, dropping, cosmetic damage, stolen equipment. There are no warranties that cover those kinds of things. The warranty is intended to cover defective parts, manufacturing defects, things that are Apple's fault.

It is still a good idea to get AppleCare for something as expensive as a computer.

For the MBP it just extends the time of the warranty, doesn't add more coverage.

If you are talking about features of the MBP itself, as long as you are not looking at the Retina models, then the memory you can upgrade yourself for a lot less than Apple charges, and that does not affect the warranty as Apple considers memory a user permitted upgrade. Great sources are Crucial and OWC, both are Mac specialists and have on-line videos on how to do the install.

If the 15" is what you are looking at, a good upgrade is the 7200 rpm hard drive, gives a little better performance over the standard 5400 rpm drive.

The Hi Res screen is good if you do a lot of graphics work.

Comparing the 13" amd 15" you will notice the 15" has a second, discrete graphic processor...helps when you get into heavy duty videos, games, graphics...but keep in mind that kicking in the second processor uses a lot of power and will run the battery down faster.

If you are looking at the Retina models, then keep in mind there are no post-purchase upgrade options...you have to buy with everything you want at the start.

Just some thoughts.

The 13" MBP is available with 750 GB or 1 TB HD at 5400 rpm...the 7200 rpm is not offered with the 13".

The SSD sizes are 128, 256 or 512 GB, substantially more expensive on a per GB basis. But the SSD response time is something like seven times faster than a hard drive.

So it comes down to how much are you willing to pay for the storage and how important is response time to you? You need to think seriously about how you will use the MBP - are you going to do a lot of gaming or video work where you will stream from the mass storage? If so fast response time becomes important. Are you going to spend your time word processing? If so response time doesn't mean much, you can only type so fast.

Look at how you plan to use the machine and let that guide your decision on mass storage.

In theory, the SSD should be a lower drain on the battery since you are not using power to spin a physical disk. That is if you are really into the longest battery operation time you can get.