Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Reportedly Considering Extending Apple TV+ Free Trial

masterleep said:
Practically nobody wants to pay for Apple TV+.
Click to expand...

So you've surveyed ' practically everybody'?

I plan on paying for it once my trial has expired. It's only 5 bucks a month and they have some great shows. Even if I only watch 1 show/month which is several hours of entertainment, it's the price of one movie rental and money I won't even notice is gone.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: JagRunner
cmaier said:
Mythic quest is fantastic.
Click to expand...

Mythic quest is terrible. But then again, it was clearly written for a younger audience than myself. Literally nothing in the show was funny (to me or my wife). We suffered through two episodes.

So, if you're in your late teens or early twenties, it might be fantastic.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: jbachandouris
generous? lol. I expect a free year every time I buy an iphone. I would never pay for ATV+ (well.. i would pay for one month to watch mythic quest and then cancel).
 
  • Like
Reactions: jbachandouris
dmylrea said:
Mythic quest is terrible. But then again, it was clearly written for a younger audience than myself. Literally nothing in the show was funny (to me or my wife). We suffered through two episodes.

So, if you're in your late teens or early twenties, it might be fantastic.
Click to expand...

Please buy an Android and leave this Eco System. MQ is freaking amazing.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: jbachandouris
The inner apple fanboy in me signed up for a year last Oct / Nov when ATV+ first appeared. Come Dec I purchased a new macbookpro. I received multiple offers for a free year of ATV+ as a result of that purchase. Called apple to see about canceling the ATV+ subscription I paid for or just add the free year to the paid year when it expires . . . was rudely told no way you scammer, you already bought the paid subscription so too bad. Wasn't a lot there to hold interest anyway. Either too juvie or too esoteric. That was unusual - I'm used to Apple customer support going out of their way to conform to the Apple good-guy image. Haven't watched it since.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: jbachandouris
PaulpBenitti said:
Giving it away for free has enabled them to falsely report huge growth in services. Despite the fact that they are giving it away, since they are giving it away with a hardware purchase, Apple is reallocating $65 worth of your hardware purchase to services revenue. So even though no one has paid for Apple TV+, Apple is pretending they did, and reporting it as such on the books.
Click to expand...
This actually isn't quite true... Apple is technically only reporting the portion of the hardware purchases for those who sign up for the free year, under generally accepted accounting principles (this has been reported by a wide variety of actual financial and investor publications like Barrons and CNBC, but not nearly as much or as accurately in the tech news).

Apple doing anything other than this would be defrauding investors, as you quietly correctly suggest, and would never be acceptable behaviour for any publicly traded company.

Granted, it almost certainly does still misrepresent reality, just not as blatantly so. I guarantee that Apple doesn't bother to account for people who signed up for the free year but stopped watching, since from a financial point of view a user who takes advantage of the offer is basically paying for an annual subscription up-front. Apple gets to record a one-year subscription for all of those people who were happy to jump on for free just to kick the tires, even if they barely watched a single show, while those who had to pay to check it out might have cancelled after the first month, netting Apple $5 instead of $60. Or they may have come back on a month-by-month basis, perhaps signing up for a single month to watch something like Greyhound and then cancelling right after.
 
SanJoseEd said:
Called apple to see about canceling the ATV+ subscription I paid for or just add the free year to the paid year when it expires . . . was rudely told no way you scammer, you already bought the paid subscription so too bad.
Click to expand...
That's really weird, and I wonder if you were misinformed by the person you spoke to. I paid for Apple TV+ on day one too, and only later decided to get an iPhone 11 Pro Max during a Black Friday deal. I simply assumed that it was too late to take advantage of the free year, but then about four days later I got an offer out of the blue, and when I took advantage of it, it simply added another year to my already-paid subscription. Granted, I was only on a monthly plan at the time (I had considering switching to the yearly plan, but hadn't gotten around to it), but the whole process was actually quite seamless — I just tapped the link in the email).
 
tgwaste said:
Please buy an Android and leave this Eco System. MQ is freaking amazing.
Click to expand...
Hahaha, yeah.... I'm in my late forties and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Then again, maybe I'm just a big kid 😀

There's stuff on Apple TV+ I've generally not enjoyed at all. Dickinson clearly was for a younger audience and didn't hold my interest enough to keep on watching beyond the first half-dozen episodes. I didn't dislike it, and I may still even return to it, but it didn't have that "must-watch" quality. The Morning Show and For All Mankind had me on the edge of my seat and are easily two of the best recent series' I've watched on any network or streaming service — I liked both of them way more than I thought I would. See completely lost me after only two or three episodes. As a comedy, Mythic Quest of course doesn't have quite the same draw, it was a great show that I thoroughly enjoyed. There are several others that I simply haven't begun watching, although they're still on my list.

However, I'm also drooling in anticipation to see what Apple is going to do with Foundation and Masters of the Air. If Apple can pull off Foundation the way it deserves to be done, I firmly believe that's going to be its GoT moment.

Needless to say, I fully intend to continue paying for it without hesitation once my free year is up. It's easily worth a couple cups of coffee each month (and I should probably drink less coffee anyway 😂).
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Pirate!
PsykX said:
Don't you have a time limit to do this?
Click to expand...
Yup, 90 days from when you registered a new Apple device. Although since any Apple device that can used to watch Apple TV+ is eligible, even an iPod touch, you can still get it as long as you've bought any qualifying Apple device in the past 90 days. It doesn't have to be the first new one you bought.
 
calstanford said:
It's also not necessary to go against huge TV juggernauts. What are they going to go after next? They wanted to do cars for a while. That was even more ridiculous (but that idea seems to have died down).
Click to expand...

Besides TV streaming/production and cars they also tried actual TVs. At least they had the vision to retire from it early in the game.
 
Ha ha. They're going to have to increase the length of the free trial! I've only seen a couple of things on the platform that I was remotely interested in. No way would I pay for it.

Likewise with Disney+. My boy got 6 months free with his new phone contract. I watched The Mandalorian, but there's nothing else there of interest to me.
 
SaxPlayer said:
I'm going to sound like Mr Grumpy, but despite being eligible for the free year when I purchased an iPhone 11 Pro Max last year, I didn't bother with AppleTV+ as I can't get the app for it on my 2017 LG 55" OLED C7 TV.

*Please* don't tell me that I should plug an AppleTV into my set. I like LG's WebOS and it has all the other streaming services that I use. I'm really not going to buy what is now ancient AppleTV hardware just to watch AppleTV+ because Apple (or LG) can't be bothered to release the software for "older" sets that would easily be able to run it.

So pleased I got that off my chest! 😂
Click to expand...

Another crybaby who thinks the world should revolve around them. Buy an AppleTV off eBay for goodness sake.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: JagRunner, compwiz1202 and jbachandouris
SaxPlayer said:
I'm going to sound like Mr Grumpy, but despite being eligible for the free year when I purchased an iPhone 11 Pro Max last year, I didn't bother with AppleTV+ as I can't get the app for it on my 2017 LG 55" OLED C7 TV.

*Please* don't tell me that I should plug an AppleTV into my set. I like LG's WebOS and it has all the other streaming services that I use. I'm really not going to buy what is now ancient AppleTV hardware just to watch AppleTV+ because Apple (or LG) can't be bothered to release the software for "older" sets that would easily be able to run it.

So pleased I got that off my chest! 😂
Click to expand...

As someone who owns a LG TV with WebOS after using Samsung, a Roku Smart OS TV and Sony with their AndroidTV smart TV OS I have to say I tried to use that before getting my 4K Apple TV and will say this:

You're freaking nuts WebOS is the ABSOLUTE WORST SmartTV OS. The damn thing was built by Palm in their attempts to be relevant again once iOS and Android pushed them out of the smartphone business, then HP bought it and Palm trying to do something with it and even they couldn't. Then LG bought the OS, and while I'll applaud them that it's the best use of WebOS out of all its iterations it doesn't change the fact its the WORST Smart TV OS.
 
  • Like
Reactions: centauratlas and jhollington
w5jck said:
generou
Click to expand...
tgwaste said:
generous? lol. I expect a free year every time I buy an iphone. I would never pay for ATV+ (well.. i would pay for one month to watch mythic quest and then cancel).
Click to expand...
Well, as far as free trials go one that is for a whole year isn't exactly all that common at all and fairly generous in terms of the timeframe that it covers.
 
JBGoode said:
So you've surveyed ' practically everybody'?

I plan on paying for it once my trial has expired. It's only 5 bucks a month and they have some great shows. Even if I only watch 1 show/month which is several hours of entertainment, it's the price of one movie rental and money I won't even notice is gone.
Click to expand...

Another option is $50/year. Which then works out to $4.17/month, or 14 cents a day. Money I won't miss.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JBGoode
It was nice to get when my wife bought her iPhone 11 but after having it for 10 months I don't use it much. Some good stuff but not a lot and most you still have to pay extra for. Also found out that when I bought my SE in the Spring I don't get a free year because we do family sharing and I had access to her free trial. I guess that makes sense. I'll look at it again sometime in the future to see if it's improved. Until then I think there are better options.
 
jhollington said:
Yup, 90 days from when you registered a new Apple device. Although since any Apple device that can used to watch Apple TV+ is eligible, even an iPod touch, you can still get it as long as you've bought any qualifying Apple device in the past 90 days. It doesn't have to be the first new one you bought.
Click to expand...
Supposedly it's supposed to go off of the time you actually set up and started using the device vs. purchase time (at least going by the terms of the trial), but it's somewhat hard to say if that's what's actually being used as I've come across some devices that were bought some time ago and even though they were only set up later it was past the 90 day period since the purchase and the offer wouldn't come up (and Apple support would keep on saying that the 90 day period is based on the purchase date, despite what the trial terms say).
 
C DM said:
Supposedly it's supposed to go off of the time you actually set up and started using the device vs. purchase time (at least going by the terms of the trial), but it's somewhat hard to say if that's what's actually being used...
Click to expand...
I have a hunch that maybe devices purchased directly from Apple are already considered "registered" at the time of purchase, especially if you buy them online, since they'd have your Apple ID. Otherwise, it's difficult for them to know when it was actually purchased, especially via a third-party retailer.

You're right however that the terms specifically say "after first setting up your new device," and frankly I'd point Apple support to that, since there's no ambiguity there at all. While Apple's support is better than a lot of companies, it's still not all that hard to find someone who is poorly misinformed when it comes to Apple's policies, especially for stuff like this.
 
masterleep said:
Practically nobody wants to pay for Apple TV+.
Click to expand...


Apple needs and "Apple Prime" bundle that includes this, storage, Apple Music, News, Arcade etc. Then wrap it all up in a $129/year price including 2TB of storage and many people will go for it.

Essentially like Amazon Prime's bundle. If they purchased Target then they could include the free shipping like Amazon and then hit Amazon on the e-commerce front.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ and compwiz1202
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back