What do you get the Apple fan who has everything for Christmas? How about a subscription to Apple One, a new service that bundles together every other subscription service Apple currently offers.
San Cupertino diehards can now pay once for Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud storage, while the really committed can pay even more to get Apple News+ and the just-launched Apple Fitness+ thrown in too.
That means the base plan gets you music, TV, and game streaming, plus 50GB of cloud storage, for just £14.95/$14.95 per month – a saving of £6/$6 compared to individual subscriptions.
That’s enough of a saving to make the package immediately attractive to anyone who’s already subscribed to at least two of those plans already, but might not be enough to tempt those unsure if they want to pay monthly for mobile games in Apple Arcade, or sign up to yet another TV streaming service.
The family plan is perhaps a bigger lure, giving up to six family members access to those same four services, plus a bump to 200GB of storage, for £19.95/$19.95 per month.
Then there’s the big daddy: Apple One Premiere. A cool £29.95/$29.95 monthly fee gets you the family plan, plus subscriptions to Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+, and a big bump to 2TB of iCloud space.
The saving grace of the Premiere package is that it still supports up to six family members. So covering all of your cloud storage and streaming needs, plus replacing a few gym memberships, makes £30/$30 feel like a bit of a bargain.
Whether Apple One will be enough to lure new users into Apple’s ecosystem remains to be seen, but it’s more likely to tempt existing iPhone owners to start paying Apple monthly, rather than every couple years.
That sort of steady income is exactly what the company wants right now, as hardware upgrade rates decline, and this sort of aggressive bundle pricing could be what it needs to overcome consumer resistance to switching their subscriptions from Spotify and Netflix over to the House of Apple.
Apple One will launch in the UK, the US, and select other countries some time this autumn, and will offer a 30-day free trial to new subscribers.
Author: Dominic Preston, Deputy Editor
Tech Advisor's Deputy Editor, Dom covers everything that runs on electricity, from phones and laptops to wearables, audio, gaming, smart home, and streaming - plus he's a regular fixture on the Tech Advisor YouTube channel.