If Apple charges for some of its AI services, they will likely roll them into part of Apple One, their bundled subscription service at a substantial discount, which the article mentions.
Apple One is a good deal if you have use for most of the services it provides, and there are three plans to choose from, especially if you have others to share it with. The two higher tiers let you share with up to five people.
At one time I subscribed to the Premier Plan when it was about $5 cheaper, but after calculating costs and what I actually used, I canceled it and chose what I wanted individually since it was cheaper. In my case that's just the 2TB of iCloud+ and Apple TV+ for $20/mo.
Since I am a sad, misanthropic loner and shut-in, I had no one to share the service with –– and also no one to complain when I canceled it. Blissful. :-)
I also found the Apple Music streaming service to be far too intrusive the way it is designed. It took over the Music app on both my iMac and iPhone and tried to get me to use it instead of playing my sizable collection of music ripped and purchased music, as it defaulted to it on searches and such.
It also made buying songs harder to do since Apple wrongly assumes I'd only want to stream my music after joining it, not own any of it. The worst part? I never found a way to simply disable Apple Music or any of the other services I wasn't using even if I was paying for access. I might have kept the Apple One subscription if they just let me terminate Apple Music with extreme prejudice and be on my merry way. But no, Tim Apple and Co. know me better than I know myself, right? :-)
Apple News was the only thing I miss after canceling the Premier tier, since many of the articles are behind the paywall. No way I'm paying $12.99/mo. for it when many of the publications in it have far cheaper deals when subscribing to them directly through their own sites, often with far more features. |
