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First of all, price gouging has nothing to do with this. These are luxury services, not essential goods or services that Apple is trying to take advantage of needy consumers with absurd price hikes. Second, it's not a rip-off, which implies either fraud or gross overpricing, neither of which apply here. Did you ever stop to think that Apple TV+ has original content that the other streaming services don't that you may not care about but others do? And of course if someone wants multiple Apple services and signs up for Apple One, Apple TV+ is included anyway.

So, no, it's neither price gouging nor a rip-off. It's simply that you personally don't see the value in the service. That's not the same thing.

Disney+ has 500 films, 15,000 episodes, and 80 Disney+ originals. Apple hasn't even 1/4 of that. It's price gouging and an rip-off.
 
Disney+ has 500 films, 15,000 episodes, and 80 Disney+ originals. Apple hasn't even 1/4 of that.

Once again, YOU care about those. Others may not. Not everyone likes the same things. Surely you know this?

It's price gouging and an rip-off.

You can keep repeating that until the cows come home, but it's still 100% false as I've clearly explained.
 
Our wages.😩

Gawd I miss the old days when I made half as much, but had 2x the disposable income.😐 I miss $0.80 a gallon gas, $500 rent on a 2 bedroom apartment...
Couldn't agree more - I was so much richer in my 20s. A house was 2 years gross wage. My wage has doubled but now it's 10 years gross wage to buy a house.
 
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I watched "The Great Pumpkin" last evening on Apple TV+.
I had to use my Apple ID to do so.
No biggie unless I didn't have an Apple ID.
The show was not the same quality it use to be on broadcast television.
Aspect ratio seemed tall and skinny.
Unlike old fashioned TV, the audio was up to the digital standard. Set it once and forget it.
Too loud, too soft, no adjustments. Modern day digital TV.
My hearing is not perfect, but the sound was worse than the rest of what I get on my Xfinity box.
This is why I stay with traditional cable and no additional services.
There was a very short promo before the show begin and I could have skipped it.
That should not happen if someone is paying for the service. It is basically a tiny ad.
I would only watch Apple TV+ for free with commercials.
 
It's the same price as disney+/skyshowtime for me with way less content. It's a rip off and price gouging. I cancelled it and will subscribe a single month for Foundation.
Worth noting that even though Apple TV+ is $7, and Disney+ is $8 now, on Dec. 8th, that plan will now contain ads, while the ad-free plan jumps to$11/mo.

I wonder how much time people, who have subscribed to multiple streaming services, spend per month on watching content. I find more than one or two hours per day already exhausting, because most content needs a lot of attention to follow it. Let's say you watch 50 hours per month. Then you might pay $2 or more for streaming, which seems a lot for me.
I'm assuming that people who sub to it will know that their schedules should be free (or freer), so they can put in a good amount of time to do so. Me, I can watch 1 to 2 hours per week day, and 3 to 6 hours on weekends. Some shows, I do remind for certain moments (clarity, funny, neat choreography, eye candy, action scene), but some of the other parts I can just be paying half attn and still get what I needed out of it.
 
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FWIW, I also cancelled my Disney+ subscription due to their price increase.

I rarely watch either Disney+ or Apple TV+. Yet, at the reasonable yearly rates they used to have, I was willing to just let the subscriptions ride. They royally f'd up by raising the prices.

Netflix made the same mistake. I rarely watched Netflix either. But when their 4K level of service was under $15/mo, I just let it ride. When the price finally went over $15/mo, I said screw this. Millions of others did the same thing.

The vast majority of subscribers to these services do NOT watch them daily. And those are the people that just don't see the value once prices start increasing.

Mark
 
Not worth the massive price increase.
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Moving devices to standard USB ports, need to adjust the revenue of lightning cables to Cloud Services to make investors happy. More about money than innovating for value. They are on a road to falling apart. When the next big thing hits in technology, apple will be in the dust. This is apple 1990's all over again. I cancelled the full package deal as it hasn't changed since it started. Went back to iCloud storage only. That at least has a daily value for data safety. The music apps is such a pile of garbage with probably the worst search feature I have seen in a piece of software. Nesting searches in tree structures? Who is the idiot that thought that was a clear concise way to make it easy for normal people to use.
 
They're increasing their prices, because like every other company out there, things cost more to provide. It's basic economics.

You're going to see everyone increasing prices of their products and services. This isn't just an Apple thing.
Apple isn't selling gas or food. Not sure how sending data gets more expensive. I assure you the price hike is more to prepare for the slow growth of the economy and make their quarter revenues look in line.
 
Good timing since Amazon just opened up their entire music library to Prime users. Looks like I’ll be canceling my Apple One and just going back to iCloud storage, which is pretty much all I use from those products anyways.
 
My personal opinion is I think it's still a good value. I use apple music daily and apple news+. I often watch shows in TV+ as well.

It just sucks because I like all the products in the group, and I really feel like this increase wasn't necessary. They increased the price of TV+ but they are very slow to release new shows/movies. They increased apple music, but their app for all platforms is still lacking in basic features and simple ease of use. This would be easier to swallow if they had done some major releases/updates and the increase might have been justified?
 
Apple Music online features not working with VPN enabled, ads in paid Apple News and now price increase. It's getting more difficult to justify paying for Apple One.
 
A $3 increase on Apple One Family (4 users) is still cheaper than 4 separate accounts.

I’m not thrilled with the increase but I’m not going to cancel.

Yet.
 
Apple isn't selling gas or food. Not sure how sending data gets more expensive. I assure you the price hike is more to prepare for the slow growth of the economy and make their quarter revenues look in line.
Data centers take lots of power to run. Have you checked the price of electricity lately, in comparison to even a year ago?

Labor costs have increased in the past year. They're most certainly paying more to support those services and keep them running than they were previously.

Costs are increasing everywhere. It's foolish to believe there's some area of the economy not being hit by global inflation costs.
 
If subscribers don't suddenly flee in droves then prices will stagnate or go up.

Enough subscribers must be sticking to their subscriptions or signing up otherwise Apple wouldn't be doing this.

Not necessarily . Some corporate idiots could hijack prices thinking they will make even more money and increase stock price then realize customers are flocking and now their company is foreclosing.
 
$2? Guess I'll have to be more careful with the change I lose in my car seats and couch.
 
Data centers take lots of power to run. Have you checked the price of electricity lately, in comparison to even a year ago?

Labor costs have increased in the past year. They're most certainly paying more to support those services and keep them running than they were previously.

Costs are increasing everywhere. It's foolish to believe there's some area of the economy not being hit by global inflation costs.
-Apple's new headquarters in Cupertino is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, in part from a 17-megawatt onsite rooftop solar installation. Since 2014, all of Apple's data centres have been powered by 100 percent renewable energy.-

Granted they do offload storage to google's data centres too.. I am not aware of how they are powered.

Apple has been laying off people as well recently to prepare for the upcoming economic turn.

Not sure I follow the cost increase justification. Especially when $3-4 dollars per person adds up to multiple millions for apple. You can believe apple is all kind and good, I guess. I have been following them for 30+ years and the last decade has been nothing but profit thirst. 2000-2010 was an era of sheer creativity. The amount of software and hardware innovation was staggering. 2011-now has been nothing but riding the wave, a watch and a pencil, old stale software... jacking the prices of every product they have to be unobtainable to average folks. Reduce expandability to force early obsolescence. Glued together, massively flawed hardware designs that under perform. Marketing spin. Oh well, the joke will be on them soon I think. I am not bitter, I am just saying I am not dropping $4g (Canadian) on a Mac studio that has no expandability and requires the apple branded 5K or 6K display (another $1600 or $5000) to view the native resolution properly without screen scaling and reducing graphics performance to display like on any other standard 4K display. It's all gamed. The entire product line is now made to suck every dollar out of you and have the hardware its ultimate cheapest to manufacture. You're fooling yourself if you think these all-in-one hardware designs aren't there to maximize profit. Now, I fully believe, cloud service prices are being jacked up to cover the cost of having to move to USB standard ports. The cable revenue and certification MFi is going to kill off a huge revenue for them. This is band-aid to help alleviate that change. Tim is a money guy, he was hired for that purpose. He hasn't changed. He is damn good at it.
 
It's anecdotal, but FWIW, the people I've known who are voicing their concerns about upped sub costs have long stopped buying coffee at Starbucks or any other coffee shop.

Some are cozy but also quite hooked into the Apple ecosystem. As creatures of comfort, I can't say I blame them. However, major shake ups would truly test those "loyalties" (like with the CASM situation, and Apple's talks of putting more ads in their services). FWIW, I think we have a solid # of people who did quit.
Barely even went for coffee anyhow. Now we haven't gone in a long while. Used to eat out more.
Now we barely go except good deals. Definitely don't do DD GH UE. I just look at the base prices and gasp.
 
Not that THAT wasn't to be unexpected, but, in a few years, things will go up enough to be nontrivial. The "frog in a pot" saying. However, prices are not too shabby (for now, for the other services I buy into), but I will have to deal with that when that day comes. For streaming services in particular, if they can keep offering deals, that does go a long way! (e.g. 40% off annual sub of HBO Max :) )
I want 40% off HBO Max :) The problem isn't just the extras going up. Needs price spikes are out of control, so we're already cutting even before the extras raise prices.
 
It's the same price as disney+/skyshowtime for me with way less content. It's a rip off and price gouging. I cancelled it and will subscribe a single month for Foundation.
We are down to only iCloud storage now.
 
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Couldn't agree more - I was so much richer in my 20s. A house was 2 years gross wage. My wage has doubled but now it's 10 years gross wage to buy a house.
And it wasn't too bad for us until the last 1-2 years. Now you can barely get anything beyond needs.
 
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I want 40% off HBO Max :) The problem isn't just the extras going up. Needs price spikes are out of control, so we're already cutting even before the extras raise prices.
That's a bit of a shame, as that deal ended on Oct. 30th (so 3 days ago). :( FWIW, there should be some decent streaming deals coming up on black friday, so stay tuned if you're still interested!

Barely even went for coffee anyhow. Now we haven't gone in a long while. Used to eat out more.
Now we barely go except good deals. Definitely don't do DD GH UE. I just look at the base prices and gasp.
I don't have kids and don't see that changing. I know people made their choices, but I still feel for those who do have kids. Even people who are making far more than I am have to go through in no small meticulous detail of how they're going to pay for many of those things.

Every now and then, I do "no outside food"* weeks, as I do have enough food at home.
* I make exceptions for social and work calls
 
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That's a bit of a shame, as that deal ended on Oct. 30th (so 3 days ago). :( FWIW, there should be some decent streaming deals coming up on black friday, so stay tuned if you're still interested!


I don't have kids and don't see that changing. I know people made their choices, but I still feel for those who do have kids. Even people who are making far more than I am have to go through in no small meticulous detail of how they're going to pay for many of those things.

Every now and then, I do "no outside food"* weeks, as I do have enough food at home.
* I make exceptions for social and work calls
Thanks I need to keep an eye out. HBO Max is my favorite. A lot of things we like and even ads is one 30s or less ad once in a while
 
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