Is Apple One a Bargain? It's Complicated (theverge.com) 46
Apple One, Apple's long-awaited services bundle, has arrived and The Verge's Chaim Gartenberg has crunched the numbers to see which subscription package, if any, is worth it. From the report: Let's start with the Apple One Individual plan. Offering a single Apple Music plan ($9.99 per month), a 50GB iCloud storage bucket ($0.99 per month), and access to Apple Arcade ($4.99 per month) and Apple TV Plus ($4.99 per month) for $14.99, it seems like it saves you money. But unless you're interested in subscribing to Apple Music and either Apple Arcade or Apple TV Plus, you're probably better off just saving the $4 and sticking with an $11 Apple Music and iCloud combo. (As a side note, Apple does grant everyone in your family plan access to Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus, even if you subscribe to it through the "Individual plan," which may impact your calculus.)
It's a similar story with the Family plan: a regular family plan for Apple Music costs $14.99 per month, and a 200GB iCloud bucket (which can already be shared across a whole family) is $2.99. Once again, if you want either Apple Arcade or Apple TV Plus on top of that, the Apple One bundle effectively gets you both of those services for the price of one, but if all you want is Apple Music and iCloud storage, Apple One doesn't really offer any benefits.
The Apple One Premier plan is a slightly different story, though. At $29.99 per month, it's the most expensive of the plans. Comparing it to the unbundled costs, an Apple Music family plan is once again $14.99, while a 2TB iCloud plan is $9.99. If you were already paying for both of those plans -- which isn't unreasonable for a family that's heavily invested in Apple products -- then you're only looking at a $5 per month increase to gain access to Arcade along with the additions of News Plus and Fitness Plus (which, at $9.99 per month each, are among Apple's priciest subscriptions). "But in most cases, Apple One only makes sense if you're already subscribing to Apple's most in-demand services: iCloud storage, which is essential for backing up most iPhones given Apple's increasingly absurd (and stingy) 5GB allowance for new devices, and Apple Music," writes Gartenberg in closing. "And at the end of the day, Apple One doesn't make subscribing to those two key services dramatically cheaper -- it just provides a discount for subscribing to Apple's less popular services. It's a good discount, mind you, but one that still results in most customers paying more than they are right now."
It's a similar story with the Family plan: a regular family plan for Apple Music costs $14.99 per month, and a 200GB iCloud bucket (which can already be shared across a whole family) is $2.99. Once again, if you want either Apple Arcade or Apple TV Plus on top of that, the Apple One bundle effectively gets you both of those services for the price of one, but if all you want is Apple Music and iCloud storage, Apple One doesn't really offer any benefits.
The Apple One Premier plan is a slightly different story, though. At $29.99 per month, it's the most expensive of the plans. Comparing it to the unbundled costs, an Apple Music family plan is once again $14.99, while a 2TB iCloud plan is $9.99. If you were already paying for both of those plans -- which isn't unreasonable for a family that's heavily invested in Apple products -- then you're only looking at a $5 per month increase to gain access to Arcade along with the additions of News Plus and Fitness Plus (which, at $9.99 per month each, are among Apple's priciest subscriptions). "But in most cases, Apple One only makes sense if you're already subscribing to Apple's most in-demand services: iCloud storage, which is essential for backing up most iPhones given Apple's increasingly absurd (and stingy) 5GB allowance for new devices, and Apple Music," writes Gartenberg in closing. "And at the end of the day, Apple One doesn't make subscribing to those two key services dramatically cheaper -- it just provides a discount for subscribing to Apple's less popular services. It's a good discount, mind you, but one that still results in most customers paying more than they are right now."
Rip-off (Score:3, Interesting)
Listening to and uploading music to YouTube Music costs nothing. Listening to the radio costs nothing.
My 50GB for life plan on Box.com costs nothing.
Watching TV costs nothing. Watching YouTube, LBRY, D.Tube, Vimeo, etc. costs nothing.
I only buy DRM-free games, therefore I only play games I get from GOG.com.
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Of course that doesn't mean people won't shell out for it.
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When I was little (in the 1960s) there were still dime stores. Sometimes called five and ten cent stores. These were stores where everything in them cost a dime. There were lots of toys and candy and things. Enough ten cent items to fill a whole store.
Ten dollars was a heck of a lot of money. It actually still is a sizeable amount of money if you live frugal.
Not if you live in places like California, I suppose.
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I find Spotify a life quality increasing small investment. I did choose it over Apple Music mainly because Spotify Connect in my hifi - music doesn’t need to stream through the phone.
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I hate using Youtube for music esp because I donâ(TM)t want to get ads in between.
That's funny, cause I never get advertisements on YouTube. Maybe you should switch to a better browser. Or use a clip grabber.
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uBlock Origin or PiHole work wonders
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Oh no, listening to YouTube costs ~$10 a month. Google YouTube Premium if you want to understand how people can listen to music and videos without going crazy.
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My wife uses Google Photos on her iPhone. You get unlimited high quality cloud backup/storage for photos.
Unfortunately the box.com doesn't seem to be available any more but you can get free cloud storage from various places. The basic free 5GB from Apple is enough for your iPhone and app settings if you exclude photos.
Could you make the hype quieter? (Score:2, Insightful)
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It should be "News for consumers, stuff that's for rent".
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You highlighted the main issue with a lot of these bundles. Apple TV is the kind of thing you want for a month or two a year when new stuff comes out, then cancel it.
5GB is too small for a real backup (Score:1)
If you backup phone photos (which most people would) 5GB is too small, so at the very least the 200GB plan would really be needed.
I would say heavy users could easily exceed 200GB though, even just my wife and I need more storage than that for photo backups alone.
It will be interesting to see what people decide to do with the bundles, or if they just stick with separate items.
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Shut up, moran. You're generating clicks too!
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You can buy a 256GB flash drive for like $25. Nobody who cares about their photos would ever back them up online.
Also if you need more than 200GB of storage for photos and you aren't a photographer storing RAW source images, then you are just hoarding. There is no way in hell you will ever be able to go through or sort that many JPG or PNG photos.
lolwut (Score:1)
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The iPhone now captures and stores all photos in HEIC, essentially a RAW format.
HEIC [wikipedia.org] is not a RAW format. As used by Apple, it's an evolution of JPEG that requires less storage by image. Typically a JPEG image is 80-100% larger, partially because Apple might have prioritized space savings over quality [appleinsider.com].
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Wow, that's is really sneaky! So Apple used a higher default compression ratio for HEIF than for JPEG making the space savings appear greater than they really are. (When comparing image format you should of course compare image quality for files of the same size (or file size given the same quality, but that is much harder since "quality" is subjective and depends on the scene etc))
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The iPhone now captures and stores all photos in HEIC, essentially a RAW format.
Isn't HEIC a closed format, readable only by Apple devices and tech-literate folk?
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I also like to have access to all my files seamlessly on all my devices. This subscription is worth it for me. It increases my life quality.
or ... (Score:1)
No. Neither a bargain nor complicated. (Score:3)
A massive megacorp that has managed to turn tech into fashion uses its astronomical wealth to push the golden cage further into a services. That's a neat strategic move and to be expected from Apple, as they actually have Execs who know what they're doing and tend to do no half-assed shite like some other players.
But let us please not get silly and keep in mind that they are a megacorp and that all they offer belongs to them either way, as with any megacorp. The phone you get from them, the tablet and even their PC is getting more and more lock-in. Same with their services. If they decide that the content you bought access to yesterday shall not be accessed by you today, they can kick you out and there is not a single thing you can do about it.
Meanwhile every half-assed refurbished laptop with an easy install of Ubuntu 20.4, Manjaro Whatever or whatnot and countless sources on the intarweb offer pretty much the same content for way less and with the upside that Apple or anybody else can't decide wether it should disapear from your device.
So, no. Not a bargain. And not complicated at all if you get 2 or more braincells fired up to ponder the issue for 5 seconds.
My 2 eurocents.
Re:No. Neither a bargain nor complicated. (Score:4, Insightful)
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That would only be relevant if someone started producing better hardware.
Because life is short. (Score:2)
I completely understand if you have a different preference--your choices are valid. Mine are just as valid.
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Amen. I cannot begin to understand why the Apple haters feel so much drive to try to educate the Apple users.
Frankly, even if they are overpriced luxury goods, then why no go pick at the zillions of other things that fall into that category like Mercedes, BMW, Rolex, Prada, Louis Vuitton and those are just the first ones that pop into my head.
Ffs /.! (Score:1)
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Exactly. It isn't complex. The people interested will already be subscribers to multiple services so they'll want the bundle.
Of all the services Apple offers, only Arcade and Music+ are the ones that are decent. Apple Arcade offers some really interesting and unique games, and isn't just an app subscription like Google's offering (Google's offering is a really bad clone of Apple Arcade). Music+ is just that.
Apple TV+ is kind of short of content, News+ seems kind of pointless. If you're having an iCloud stor
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Exactly. This will save me any my girlfriend money - and give us access to more services to boot - why is that a bad thing?
They didn't take anything at all away. You can still subscribe to everything individually if you would rather. No one is forcing anyone to do anything.
It's "Apple" therefore we MUST! hate it I guess. Who knows.
Basic math (Score:2)
Not interested in News, Games, Music, or TV. So, pretty much, the ability to sync our photo libraries and documents that we do for the current ten bucks per month. Seems rather steep, but it's seamless, so there's that.
I've got Apple TV+ free for a year because of of my developer Arm Mac mini, but it's not something I'd pay for currently. Maybe it will be better in a year. Music? I'm just a not a music person, and don't understand how music made Apple rich, because I have no idea why people spend money on m
Expensive Hardware Dongle (Score:2, Insightful)
The hardware dongle that is necessary to take advange of most of the Apple One content is overpriced and low spec. Well, they have a 'really fast' processor, if any ARM processor can be called fast. Not that you need a fast processor to consume Apple One content.
I remember when iTunes first came out. I was amused by the irony of 'win a free iTunes song' bottlecaps on soda bottles.
I remembered back to when Steve Jobs asked John Sculley if 'he wanted to sell sugar water to kids for the rest of his life.'
apple TV is built into most new Smart TVs (Score:2)
Could someone explain what Apple Arcade is? (Score:1)
Why is this a story? (Score:4, Insightful)
Between my girlfriend and I, we already pay more than $25 a month for Apple services. By subscribing to Apple One we will now be paying less and get access to more services. That sounds good to me.
Why complain about something that is completely optional? If it's not of value to you: DON'T SUBSCRIBE! They didn't take anything away - they just added a handy bundle for people who are interested in using multiple Apple services.
Yeesh....
If it's not a good deal, keep doing... (Score:3)
If the bundle isn't a good deal, keep doing what you're doing. Apple didn't raise the prices of anything, they just made getting the bundle of services cheaper than buying the services individually.
So:
- If you're subscribing to the services in one of the bundles already, you save money by converting to the bundle deal.
- If you're subscribing to some stuff, but not everything, and you're interested in the added services, you can add the rest of the bundle more cheaply if you want.
- And if you're not interested in more than you have now, you keep paying what you're paying.
Same deal as any other bundle offer. You can buy an album for less than the cost of buying all the tracks on the album. You can buy a dozen bagels for less than the cost of buying 12 bagels individually. You can get a bundle of internet+tv+phone from Comcast for less than buying all three separately,
The only "hard part" is reading about the three bundles, and deciding if you want what's in them:
1) Individual: Music, TV+, Arcade, iCloud 50 GB, for $14.95/mo
2) Family: Same stuff, for up to 6 people, and 200 GB storage, for $19.95
3) Premier: Adds News+ and Fitness+, and 2 TB of iCloud, for $29.95.
So, like any bundle deal, they're giving you an increasingly "good deal" the more money you spend, so you just have to decide if the added stuff is worth the incremental price. For example, I have a family, use iCloud and pay for more storage now, and am interested in Fitness+, so Premier looks like a good deal - it'll cost less than I am paying now, and give me more.