Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+ Receiving Price Increases

[msackey]

I think I'm cancelling my Apple News+ subscription. The jump from $9.99 to $12.99 is a 30% jump; that's just ridiculous.

Edit: I'm going to cancel after this last round of $9.99 renewal fee. Looks like the price increase will occur after my renewal on October 29.

 

[MdRuckus]

Hmm... I may be getting out of my Apple One subscription, in this case. Sad.

Agreed. I didn’t like the $3 increase previously. Now it’s another $5. An $8 increase so close together is no longer worth it.

 

[Stromos]

You know there is some exec at Apple watching people cancel/reconfigure their plans/options going this is exactly why we shouldn't have made it so easy to manage subscriptions.

 

[LlamaLarry]

The jump from $9.99 to $12.99 is almost a 25% jump; that's just ridiculous.

Sure, I mean, ~30% is almost 25%.

 

[msackey]

Some of these Apple price increases likely have much more to do with the increased content, increased costs of content (due in part perhaps to the recent actor and writer strikes and resulting contracts), etc.

Disagree with the bolded part. We never hear about price increases due to CEO salary/benefit increase but we always blame the workers.

 

[TheColtr]

I had Apple One because between 2TB iCloud storage and Apple Music family it was only a few dollars more. Now it’s almost 12 dollars more. Hard pass.

 

[filmgirl]

I had Apple One because between 2TB iCloud storage and Apple Music family it was only a few dollars more. Now it’s almost 12 dollars more. Hard pass.

I was thinking the same but Apple TV+, Apple Music Family and 2TB iCloud is the same price as Premier so I guess I’ll continue to have unused Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness+ services, alongside rarely used News+.

If it were just me, I’d cancel since for individuals, it would be cheaper — but I put my parents on my plan two years ago so now I'm stuck.

 

[Velin]

You know there is some exec at Apple watching people cancel/reconfigure their plans/options going this is exactly why we shouldn't have made it so easy to manage subscriptions.

Many states have laws that require it. If you can one-click your way into an online subscription, you have to simultaneously provide simple online cancellation, without having to "speak to" the BS retention algorithm.

 

[Abazigal]

You know there is some exec at Apple watching people cancel/reconfigure their plans/options going this is exactly why we shouldn't have made it so easy to manage subscriptions.

I see this more as Apple trying to nudge users towards their Apple One bundle, which looks like it was designed to reduce churn. It’s easy to subscribe maybe 3 months a year when there’s content you want. It’s harder to terminate your subscription when it’s tied to your iCloud storage which you would rely on every day.

It’s also a formidable moat because every Apple One subscription is potentially one less family using competing services like Spotify, while also tying them to Apple hardware.

Pretty clever if Apple can pull it off.

 

[Student of Life]

This thread posted today has over 400 comments. This clearly hit a cord with people here.

 

[Populus]

In all price hike scenarios, there is a concept called price acceptance and another called price rejection. Consumers reward the price hike with acceptance and punish with rejection. The voting mechanism is measured in dollars. Vote!

And key here: action speaks louder than words. Seller can't measure whine... but they'll notice cancellations... if the masses opt to reject price hikes.

Bonus: the fastest way to tame inflation is this SAME way: stop paying ever-increasing prices. If the masses do too, inflation will very quickly halt... and prices will start working their way back DOWN to levels where the masses opt to again part with their hard-earned money. If people roll over and "just pay" any price, "any" will simply rise and rise and rise again.

More people need to read this comment… Sadly many people outside MacRumors won’t. But this is the way.

 

[webkit]

We never hear about price increases due to CEO salary/benefit increase but we always blame the workers.

I certainly wouldn't say "never" as plenty of people complain about CEO salaries/compensations. However, as far as company costs are concerned, the CEO is only one person and their salary/compensation increases typically aren’t nearly as significant to overall costs as increases (even though much smaller per person) going to potentially tens of thousands of employees.

For example, if a company has 150,000 employees and each one on average received a salary/compensation increase of even just $2,500, that would amount to $375 million. If the average increase per person was $10,000, that would be $1.5 billion. These numbers are far greater than what a CEO would typically receive in an increase. Therefore, it would make sense to "blame" worker salary/compensation increases more because they can cost the company way more than CEO increases.

 

[Premium1]

Can't wait to see how they spin this due to "inflation." I guess Tim needs another vacation home and yacht...

 

[azentropy]

Not how it works. You'd keep the 200GB and add on the 2TB plan for a total of 2.2TB iCloud storage

By mistake then. I could have sworn the "fixed" that.

 

[Will Co]

Like everyone else, I’ll be looking to ditch something subscription related if only to send a signal.

 

[boss.king]

Wooof. I’ve been trialling iCloud+ as a photo backup solution for the last month and have been considering getting the family Apple One subscription for the whole family… but damn, that price is really creeping up to becoming unjustifiable.

 

[chouseworth]

Can't wait to see how they spin this due to "inflation." I guess Tim needs another vacation home and yacht...

Last I heard, he lives in a quite modest home and certainly does not own a yacht. In addition he has already committed to give most of his fortune away through philanthropic efforts when he leaves Apple.

 

[JosephAW]

What's next? Removing password sharing between all my devices or reducing the number of family plan size so each device has to have their own plan?

 

[FriendlyMackle]

A 43% increase for ATV+?!!
40% and 30% for the others?
Take it. Shove it.

It definitely bothers me! Everywhere I turn, there are price increases. I was going to just cancel ATV+ after seeing this, then I checked and was still able to renew the annual plan at $69 for one year! So that reduces the cost to $5.75 per month. After this year, I’ll see whether I still want to keep it. And just to be safe, I switched my Apple Music sub to annual as well. Between the ‘savings’ (price reduction) for these two, my News increase is offset.

News bothers me, but I’m keeping it for now. And iCloud storage. Whatever it’s called.

 

[aapl owner]

All of these services REALLY want me to go back to old school cable don’t they. This is getting ridiculous.

Yes it does. I remember a number of years ago I had a heated debate with an clueless coworker that said he hated regular cable because it was too expensive and wanted to only purchase individual channels and how much cheaper it would be and I said he would not save any money and would be spending more since every service will be charging $10-20/month. He thought I was dead wrong then, yet here we are and with multiple streaming services (most only have a few good shows and rest is filler junk shows) plus Youtube TV and we all are spending much more than enhanced cable was - and I have less choices.

 

[swajames]

add me to the Apple TV+ cancelation list.

 

[millerlite]

JFC. ANOTHER $5 a month? I can’t cancel these services fast enough. I just killed Max, Hulu, and Prime. Greed is insane. They don’t need such a price increase.

 

[Ghengis LeMond]

Remember that George Orwell 1984 themed Apple commercial with the rebel throwing the sledge at the movie screen and breaking out? I’m throwing in the towel on the whole ecosystem thing. Watch, Mac, tv, subscriptions, and, alas, iphone. The iPad I’m keepin. It’s a big world out there and the choices and options are too numerous to count. Not to mention I’ll save a mint. Done and for a number of reasons.

 

[G&N]

Price increases across all categories are inevitable. You either accept it or leave it. Let's forget about Apple or Netflix. Can you imagine a Toyota Prius costs almost 40K already?

 

[rushmere]

Are they changing any of the icloud storage allowances as well?

I have an Apple One subscription, plus I buy an additional 50GB of icloud storage each month.

Apple made a charge to my credit card for my last monthly 50GB of storage, but then mysteriously refunded it 2 days later. I’ve had no contact from Apple other than receipts for the charge and for the subsequent refund. I wondered if they are making other changes as well as the price?