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1 in 2 Surveyed Willing to Pay at Least $10/Month for Apple Intelligence

Another ******** survey to justify another paid service. Included it in iCloud services where we can manage the AI memories instead.
 
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One has to admire the marketing wizardry at play here. Apple is somehow selling vaporware wrapped in a polished box, powered not by innovation, but by sheer brand hypnosis.

Let’s not pretend this is about value. This is about Apple seeing just how far it can stretch the loyalty rubber band before it snaps. It's a masterclass in monetizing brand loyalty over actual delivery.

Features are missing, promises have aged into lawsuits, and yet somehow Cupertino still manages to make people feel privileged just to be considered for beta-quality AI.
 
Bazza1 said:
Careful what you suggest. I Apple can't make it work, they might try this for those of us who want every vestige of it off our phones...
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I still think it was a ploy to get people to buy iPhone 16’s. I just upgraded to a 16 Pro Max a couple of weeks ago.. frankly the tariffs scared me into upgrading.. I had planned on waiting until the 17’s but at the proposed prices I wouldn’t have bought a Pro Max.. I just would’ve bought a Plus. Seriously, I could’ve kept my 13 Pro max going but I would’ve needed to replace the battery. Why sink money into something you plan on getting rid of?
 
I have switched it off on all devices. Really have no need for it and certainly wouldn't pay for it, seriously why would anyone pay for AI? The market is already saturated with AI tools.
 
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Dr_Charles_Forbin said:
I still think it was a ploy to get people to buy iPhone 16’s. I just upgraded to a 16 Pro Max a couple of weeks ago.. frankly the tariffs scared me into upgrading.. I had planned on waiting until the 17’s but at the proposed prices I wouldn’t have bought a Pro Max.. I just would’ve bought a Plus. Seriously, I could’ve kept my 13 Pro max going but I would’ve needed to replace the battery. Why sink money into something you plan on getting rid of?
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Same. I was hanging onto my 11 but the camera got funky, then with the prospect of the tariffs I decided better safe.
 
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zinacef said:
That vision sounds great in theory, but it conveniently ignores the reality of how tech companies operate—and how they’ve always operated. The idea that AI assistants will become platform-agnostic, customizable tools that users can freely carry across services and devices assumes a level of interoperability and user control that the current tech landscape vehemently resists.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon didn’t spend billions building closed ecosystems just to hand over control to third-party AI services. These companies thrive on lock-in. Why would Apple, for example, let you use a Google-powered AI assistant deeply integrated into iOS, when they can push their own “Apple Intelligence” and monetize it directly? That’s like expecting Apple to let you replace Safari with Chrome as the default browser for everything—oh wait, that took EU regulation to even begin to happen.

And the Coke vs. Pepsi analogy? It falls apart under scrutiny. Coke and Pepsi compete in the same stores, under the same distribution networks, and don’t require you to sign 3-year contracts to buy one or the other. If Apple, Meta, and Google are the gatekeepers of digital experiences, then the AI you “pick” will still be filtered through their terms, APIs, restrictions, and priorities.

What’s more likely is this: users will be forced to use multiple AIs depending on the hardware and services they use. Your iPhone will use Siri (Apple Intelligence), your work PC will use Copilot, your browser might default to Gemini, and your smart home assistant will use Alexa—each with walled gardens and half-baked compatibility. Want a seamless, single-AI experience across platforms? Prepare to get locked into one ecosystem entirely or deal with fragmentation.

So no, we’re not heading toward a user-first, AI-as-a-service utopia. We’re heading toward a turf war—one where the winner isn't the best assistant, but the company that controls the most endpoints.
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The way the EU is forcing all tech companies to operate will be exactly what I described.

EU idiotically thinks that all hardware is generic and all things should run on them all the time for no cost and no change in security (which they do not want so they can spy at will). Asia is also slowly following suit.

I do not know where you get your there year contract stuff from. That does not really exist anymore in the US. Two years sometimes if you finance a phone from a carrier, and that still can be easy;ly voided if you pay off the phone. Verizon and T-Mo in the US let you out of the contract if you switch and all you have to is pay off the phone.

And when I said Coke v Pepsi, I was talking about AI interfaces. I think you read it wrong.

What you described is the current arrangement for AI use in these nascent stages. I told you were things are going to be. There will be an API/kit for all AIs to adapt to whatever platform a person uses.

Your last paragraph invalidates your own theory.
 
Verizon is now a 3 year contract... well, lets say that they split up the trade in value over 36 months. Was that way when I bought my iPhone 13 Pro Max and the same way for my iPhone 16 Pro max. I can pay out of it any time I want. My original plan was to buy it outright from Apple and pay it over a year but I'd be a fool to walk away from an $830 trade in value on a phone where the battery was about 82% life given I'm probably staying with Verizon anyway. The difference in plan price is negligable... like a few dollars a month. I wish the 15 Pro Max's would've been part of the promotion, I'd have preferred that to the 16 Pro Max.
AI... next big marketing scheme. Remember when everyone loved the cloud and had to have a cloud provider? Cloud was the buzzword and probably half of the people didn't understand the basics but spouted on about it. Now it's AI. I've said this before and if I'm repeating myself: apologies. (1) Models by nature have implicit biases that no one really wants to look into it. You know what they call it now when an AI screws up? A hallucinatiion. Incredible. (2) People tend to believe without question what the phone/AI tells them. (3) I'll know AI is starting to be reliable when someone builds geographic barriers into a model. For example.. when my health insurance company offers me a list of providers in a 25 mile radius... it needs to know that I live on an island seperated by a 15 mile wide sound. Offering me a provider that will take 3 hours to drive to but is still within a 25 mile radius is understandable on the surface, but I'm concerned that they will start limiting my choices (see 2) and I'll have to defend myself for not using a provider in an inconvienent location. Don't think it can happen? Part of your credit worthiness is derived from your zip code. Read Weapons of Math Destruction and tell me how how confident you feel about AI in it's naescent state especially when drones start to be decision makers.
 
I don’t use Apple intelligence either. It doesn’t do anything useful.

Maybe once or twice it has flagged an important email but thats it.
 
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