The other half and I decided to go with the Apple One subscription back when they first started it.
Both of us were paying for Apple Music and individual iCloud Storage. We’d purchased Apple TVs for the living and bedrooms, but Apple’s original programming wasn’t anything we were interested in at the time.
I knew that I was going to be interested in Foundation when Apple released the first season.
When we did the math, we found we were already spending nearly the initially high 29.95 monthly fee for Apple One individually, since we could share the Apple One subscription we went for it.
Honestly we were only interested in the Music and iCloud storage. There was a high probability that Apple TV+ would become interesting to me. Although to date I’ve only watched Foundation and Invasion. There are some Apple produced movies that looked somewhat interesting but not enough to captivate my attention so that I sat down and spent 2 hours of my life watching them.
I was interested in the Apple Fitness guided training. I’ve used it a few times just to get a feel for it. At first it only worked on the Apple TV so training had to take place in the Living Room or the Bedroom. Honestly, that didn’t really work. Since then Apple has expanded the functionality to iPhone and iPad so it’s a little more portable.
It’s understood that Apple is a “Woke” company. Okay, that’s fine, I’ve always known Apple was full of blue haired people with so many piercings they can’t get through a TSA metal detector. However, recently I thought I’d get more familiar with Apple Fitness and take advantage of regular workout routines during the Winter.
Opening the Fitness+ tab on the Apple TV I was a little put off. It wasn’t that DEI was front and center, it was.
It was that so many of the workouts appeared to be geared for way younger folks than I am. After some digging I was able to find some things geared toward older adults. I’ll try a sampling to see if Apple Fitness+ is for me.
The other half and I also liked being able to share our purchases and subscriptions to many applications.
Neither of us cared about Apple Arcade, we were adults, while I looked at some of the games, none were interesting to me and so that part of the Apple One subscription was never used.
Apple News+ is okay but neither of us were really interested in much of the magazine offerings and I literally locked out of my news feed, the extremist news organizations both left and right. The other half eventually got tired of News+ and stopped using it altogether. I know this because he needed help turning off all the News+ notifications. He generally preferred BBC and NPR until the age of COVID. Then he, like me, found very few news organizations that passed the reliability test.
At this point I could take or leave Apple News+
All of this has come to mind because of a few things.
1) The other half is dead.
2) Apple One increased its prices from 29.95 which was already expensive to 32.95 back in spring. At the time, I wasn’t capable of making too many decisions and chose to let that go.
3) Apple sent a notice of another rate increase either Friday Night or Saturday morning, (which is kind of chicken shit, because NONE of the executives will be in over the weekend so the folks answering the phones get to take the brunt of the complaints,) The new rate is 37.95 a month.
At this new rate, we’re starting to approach old Cable TV rates. (Yes I know the Cable TV people charge far more obscene rates these days. That’s why I don’t have Cable.) As a point of interest, that’s also why I’m looking at new places to live where I can receive local TV with a damn antenna. I don’t even care if it’s only one channel as long as it’s in English. (Where I live now, I can receive one channel but it’s in Korean? or Chinese neither of which I speak.)
I know I’m not getting $37.95 value out of the Apple One subscription. I no longer have a family. (I do have a family but they don’t live with me and have their own stuff going on. It’s a big pain in the ass or was, to merge this stuff or unmerge it, if necessary.) The merge / unmerge task is so daunting, my other half is still listed in family sharing on the account. Although in truth, I’m not ready to remove him. It seems so final and I’m not ready for that yet.
The problem is that when I look at what I”m actually using regularly, and try to break out only those items, I come up with a cost that’s about the same as Apple One. Obviously this pricing structure is to keep Apple One subscriptions.
As an older person, I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to. Well, I never wanted to spend more money than I had to. The problem for me now is that since I”m not employed, and living on retirement, I am far less loose with my money.
I’m sure there are a lot of people in the same boat I am. We’re either retired or nearing retirement and being forced out of our jobs explicitly, or surreptitiously. (Ask one of my friends about his experiences after 25 years or more with the same company. Ageism is real. Oh, and by the way, there’s nothing you can do to fight it! The law may be on your side, but lawyers… You’re lucky to get one of them to return your call or email! Maybe the next time I reach out to an attorney, I’ll say Trump did something to me. Perhaps then I’ll be worth calling back!)
In any case, all of us in this position are re-evaluating where our money goes and trimming the fat. If only we could trim the fat of taxation that gets us very little of use in our daily lives but might just drop a nuke in our backyards…
I digress.
Apple One has become too damn expensive! So effectively older folks or poor people are completely priced out of the Apple One service. DEI my ass!
I’ll evaluate Apple One for the next month or two. Maybe it’s time to cut this shit down to only what I find useful. If we can’t come to an arrangement that works for me, then maybe it’s time for me to stop paying for Apples services entirely.