I would argue that it failed because of the disorganization amongst both the codebase and the product management team. It didn't really seem like they had a roadmap for their future, and it seemed as if engineering wanted to spend so much time cleaning up the dirty codebase that they couldn't do anything else. My take was that the whole project devolved into argumentation.
Honestly, I appreciate the warranty that AppleCare provides. I have had to use it multiple times, and I find store employees to be lenient about being 30-60 days out of warranty. So, Mac.