Why am I getting Apple ads on my PlayStation?
Apple's advertising so many subscriptions, another free trial?
More ads for subscriptions? Don't I already pay enough?
Wait, how much do I pay?
Even my bank is trying to get me to subscribe?
Like seemingly all companies, Apple is participating in the cost that never ends.
Subscriptions to services. For some reason, they've never grabbed me.
At launch, Apple Arcade and TV Plus had laughably small lineups.
Fitness Plus was limited to those few who own an Apple Watch, and Apple Music doesn't
have a cool year in review. However, they've been with us for a few years now, and so I'm curious if the value proposition
has changed. I mean, Apple services do offer a lot, so much so that you could probably cancel everything
you already have and save a considerable amount of money.
Which gives me an idea. Steven.
He's the new guy here at Mac Address. You have a lot of subscription services.
I do. How much do you spend a month on them?
Like easily over a hundred bucks. Perfect.
Cancel them. You're only going to use Apple One for a whole week.
Me, Apple TV, only Apple Arcade, the whole thing. If I'm going to have to give something up, so are you.
So you're going to be doing this with me. Say goodbye to whoever you're watching.
Alright. Fine. One week, only Apple services.
One week of avoiding spoilers, not talking to my friends, staying off Twitter.
It's better be good, Apple.
Apple's not known for making great services, even though the Lord knows they've tried.
There was the much derided Moel me, and then before that there was the dot mac.
But that eventually evolved into iCloud. And following that success, Apple launched so many subscriptions that they needed to
make another one to include them all.
Apple One. Available in three tiers, the high stand bundle gives you everything.
Two terabytes of iCloud and photo storage, TV Plus, Apple Music and Classical, which
is a thing apparently. Arcade, Fitness Plus and News Plus.
And you can share it all with up to five members of your family.
Now you can of course get everything piecemeal from other companies.
Google One is $2 a month, Netflix, 20, Spotify, 16, Game Pass 10, Fitbit Premium 10 and Readly
412. But all this ends up costing a lot more, over twice as much in fact, $70 a month.
The question is then, are you giving up anything by going with Apple One?
Hello sir. How was your week? Good.
How was yours? It felt like any other week was yours.
Mine got better as it went on. I was annoyed at first.
I thought this was going to be a hassle. I thought this was going to be a huge effort of giving up everything else.
I did have to fight you for this. Yeah. Didn't end up being that much of a hassle.
I'm actually still pretty much just using Apple services. I kind of just got myself hooked now.
So yeah, it wasn't too bad. The service that got you hooked.
Apple TV. See, the service that I've been using the most is Apple Music.
And I feel like of all the services, that's probably the most established and compelling.
Now, to me, Apple Music's the easy choice.
Yeah. Would you get it? I personally would love to get it, but there's one thing that I'm just like, no, I can't.
And that is it doesn't have anything comparable to Spotify Connect.
What I love about Spotify Connect is that, like, I'm somebody that very often will start
something from my laptop and then want to control it from my phone or vice versa.
You know, I have used Spotify and Spotify Connect, and there is a certain magic to that
that is surprising that Apple hasn't supported that.
I think for me, the thing I really like about Apple Music is I love that it's in loss list,
especially at the price tier it is, though it did go up in price a little bit recently.
I would easily pay that for the higher quality. If I wasn't giving up the connectivity, Apple Music in my opinion is probably the best value
music service because you get lossless at no additional cost.
Spatial audio just included with Apple Music. To the extent that I would say if I listen to a good spatial mix on Apple Music and then
listen to the stereo mix on Spotify, on Spotify, I feel like I'm getting an inferior version
of that song. Like I feel like I'm actually missing out.
And now you have the classical app. It's pretty good if you're into classical music, which I'm not, but like it's great
for someone that is. It is really great for someone who's into classical music.
Basically what we're going to do is we're going to see what of these services you'd
subscribe to. You'd be willing to subscribe to with your own money just on its own.
So Apple Music, would you subscribe to Apple Music? I wouldn't hate it, but it's not my first choice.
So no, X. See, I would subscribe to it, but I have used Apple Music when I did the trial and I enjoyed
it. Yeah, it would definitely be like a very close second choice for me.
I'll give it that much. The next one, which has kept you engaged all week remarkably, is Apple TV Plus.
Which I didn't expect.
So TV Plus, it's a lot cheaper than all these other services, but you're getting a lot
less. The big thing I found is that when you had just everything, like all these services
to choose from, you sit down and you're like, cool, what do I want to watch?
And I found that that would often lead to me just making very safe choices of I'm going
to choose something that's in a genre I know I like or from a director I know I like.
By being limited to Apple, it was like, okay, there's not as much content here.
I've watched the stuff that already really appealed to me.
Now I'm going to watch stuff that's maybe on my radar, but hasn't really grabbed my
interest enough to bother watching it. And so what I watched was Servant.
It was the first one I sat down to watch and within like three days I was done the first
season, like it just it hooked me to the point that when this challenge was over, I always
just kept coming back to Apple TV. I would like go play a game for an hour and I'm like, no, I need to watch more Servant
or I'd go on Disney Plus, watch a couple episodes is something I'm like, no, I need
to go watch more Servant. And there's a bunch of other shows that I still haven't watched.
There is so much content there that it would take me months to get through, even if I was
just subscribed to Apple TV and nothing else.
So I had a bit of a different experience kind of surfing through there.
Like I think, you know, the big show that drew me to Apple TV Plus a couple of months ago
obviously was Severance, which everyone was talking about and it was a really great show.
And I actually watched it with friends using SharePlay.
This week I kind of find myself surfing through Apple TV Plus and I was struggling to find
a show that I wanted to watch. Don't get me wrong, there is some hot garbage on there as there is any service.
But I think if you're looking for like high quality shows and you're not super picky about
genre, I think there's enough there.
Would you subscribe to Apple TV Plus? Already do, half for years will continue to.
Whoa, okay, big check. Hard yes.
I'm a little on the fence. This good stuff, this good stuff.
It's not that expensive. I want to do like half check mark with it and then it's an X.
It's like I would subscribe to it and I wouldn't subscribe to it because I did this in the fall.
Just subscribing for two months to watch Severance.
If it's not going to be an ongoing thing, it doesn't count. Okay, I'll do an X.
So the next one, it's kind of a little bit of an interesting one because I think everyone
has experience with this is iCloud. And so with Apple One, it ranges obviously, or even just if you get iCloud Plus itself
from 50 gigabytes to two terabytes above the standard five gigabytes, I've now put myself
in a position where I've had to pay the upgrade to 50 gigabytes and I'm mad about that.
Are you? I'm all the way at 200 because I split with my parents.
What do you use your iCloud for? If this is the entire thing, like this much is backups, this much is iMessage, and then
like this much is everything else. My majority is iMessage and then Documents, kind of one of those things where it's like
you kind of have to get it and I'm mad about that.
So would you get iCloud Plus? Yes, I'd buy it.
And how many gigabytes? If it was just myself, 50, I'm only on a higher plan because I'm on a family plan.
Okay, I'm the same way, I'm 50 as well.
There's the one thing that's included in all the tiers that we're covering and that is
arcade. As we know, gaming on Apple has been a thing.
We've discovered when we looked at the Mac Mini, I don't know if you're much of a mobile
gamer, I've managed to avoid that, but what do you think of an Apple Arcade?
No I'm not a mobile gamer.
That said, Apple Arcade importantly is not just mobile of course, it's also on Mac and
Apple TV. And on Apple TV, it's not bad.
What did you plan on with TV? I was pleasantly surprised. So I found in Apple Arcade a few games that I had played before on my PlayStation, Sayonara
Wild Hearts and Gree, I believe is how it's pronounced.
I was like, okay, I want to see how comparable this experience is.
So I just hooked up my PlayStation controller to my Apple TV, hooked it up to the exact
same TV I use for my PlayStation. And man, if you just handed me that controller and I had not seen what was hooked up to what,
I would just assume I'm playing on PlayStation. Okay.
It is genuinely comparable to a console experience for those games.
The asterisk is that I could probably count on one hand how many of those games there are.
Looking at the way Apple Arcade has come along, we don't have to deal with free to play games,
you can actually like play a game normally. But even like going into some of the games, I'm like, these interfaces look very much
like free to play games. Even though they don't quite operate like that, it's kind of like a little disconcerting,
especially with the two games I played. But then looking at that list, like they just added the city builder game, whose name I
can't even remember now. And I played a bit of it and I was kind of not into it.
And then it's this car game that I was playing and I don't even remember the name of that
one either. A little bit more interesting, but I couldn't get the controls right.
It's tough. The other thing is the release cadence. For a while there, you're kind of just getting like one game every couple weeks.
I was kind of worried. I was like, oh, is Apple Arcade kind of like running out of steam here?
But then as we're making this video, 20 new games in one day, which as far as I'm aware,
aside from like their initial launch, is the biggest release day they've had.
I hope this means that more developers are getting interested.
I hope as well they start to support like the Mac side of things way more.
Would you pay for Apple Arcade? I would not pay for Apple Arcade.
In paying for Apple One, there's some games there that would be worth my time.
No, me neither.
The next one's interesting because it's not one I would ever have thought of.
It's the biggest surprise to me when it came out, which is Fitness Plus, which basically
means Apple is effectively making workout DVDs.
If Apple released this service 20 years ago, it would be a DVD box set.
Yeah. You do workout. Yeah.
And you did forego the gym this week. Yeah.
How'd it go? I didn't dislike it as much as I thought, but it's still not for me.
They offer 12 workout groups. Of those, three are Stationery Bike, Rowing Machine, Treadmill.
So now you're down to nine groups, basically.
One of the other ones, Strength Training, has over 300 workouts available.
If you choose to filter, to only see videos with no equipment, it goes down to about 10.
So each workout has a set playlist. You cannot change that, but each workout will have something different.
So they have workouts set to country, workouts set to pop, but it's the same for everyone.
You cannot change that, which I find a bit strange because, hey, it's already linked
to my Apple Music. I can go to the workout details and it pulls up like the music featured there and I can
just one tap on it. It brings me into Apple Music. Why can I not just say it to my own workout?
It allows you to track your calories burned and all of that, you know, whatever it is
that's in your rings. I'm going to be honest. Don't pay attention to rings.
I don't care. But they are weird. So many people are obsessed with them.
It's a service that I think if you're somebody that already goes to the gym, it doesn't have
much value. Yeah. But if you don't go to the gym and you're just trying to get into fitness or you just
want something to do at home and you like that kind of like instructor setting, it's
great for a certain person. It's not me, but I think that service for somebody who's looking for that will be well
fulfilled by it. So though, would you get this service yourself?
I'd recommend it by Wayne Gabe. Okay. So big no.
Big, big no for me. Okay.
Big no for me too. Yeah. Yeah.
I didn't even ask you at all. Was there any appeal?
Like did you even like consider trying it all because you do use an Apple watch.
Do you use it for any sort of fitness tracking at all?
When I go to walk to my friend's house, it taps me on the wrist and says, is this an
outdoor walk? And I say, sure. I think I would want to go personally would want to go beyond workout videos.
You know, to be fair, I did, I did try some in my past in a past life and they were really
nice to do. And so I, you know, no problems doing it, but looking at fitness plus, it's kind of
like, I think probably for what I would want to do, I don't know, fitness plus would really
cover the cover that now.
The next one, I will have lots to talk about because it's news plus.
I will have a lot. Did you even open up news plus at all?
I did. I read a page of a magazine.
Talking about a Corvette. So having news plus feels like this, like kind of like this like, ah, release, I can
like actually access all this interesting content and read, which is really nice.
And I think too, like if you're someone who finds yourself caught behind these news article
paywalls all the time, news plus could be a really great way to just have access to
it all at one go. What I found with news plus was that it was surfacing articles and news pieces and entire
publications that I wouldn't necessarily seek out.
Would you mostly do with it? Like, what were you mostly reading? I read a car and driver articles from whatever, Wall Street Journal and so it was really nice
to be able to do that. Now, one of the things you can run into is like somebody links to an article on Twitter
and you click the link and it takes you to the web page and then you got the paywall
there. And so if you have Apple news plus, there's a bit of like a translation layer where you
have to kind of find the article kind of manually on Apple news plus, which is really annoying.
And then if you want to share an article, you're only sharing the Apple news plus link.
And so there's sort of like a bit of a disconnect there that's not really clear.
So yeah, would you get it?
I would not. You would not get it.
Me, okay. I really want it.
I really do like it. I might give it a check. I think I'm going to give it a check.
I think it's a great value. It's not for me, but I think it's a great value.
Okay. So it appears that Apple One does give you a lot if you subscribe to it, especially if
you get the premiere plan and it does come with pretty steep savings if you're to get
everything together. But really how much you save is dependent on the services you're going to use and if
you need them. And looking at this chart, you have two things, and I have three things, which is a big surprise
here. Yeah. And this is in line with what I currently actually pay for.
Right. I do pay for TV plus. I do pay for iCloud plus.
I don't pay for any of the others. I pay $3 a month, and this would be a dollar a month.
So that is a lot less than if you were to get the Apple One subscription.
It is. Yes. The thing that would push that over the edge is Apple Music, which if they just added
that one feature, I would switch it to a heartbeat. So we got 11, that's 21, 22, but you only get Apple News plus with the premiere subscription.
Which is 32. I'm still below.
I guess that means neither of us want Apple One.
Yes. But I think that's for us, because I think this would be good enough for most people.
I pay for too many things. Yes, you do. Apple One is the solution.
You pay for, I, you wish Apple One would work for you.
It's the one. You wish. It is so close.
It is so close to make a difference for you, and it can't.
I kind of just want to anyways. There's no two ways around it.
Apple One gets you a lot, with some pretty steep savings.
But how much you save, if anything at all, is dependent on how many services you use
and if you need them. I mean, if you're on the family plan, I can see that, splitting with even one other person
makes it pretty affordable, let alone up to six. But why not subscribe then?
The real value proposition for Apple One comes down to how much you like Apple's TV plus
lineup. If there's enough to keep you subscribed continuously long term, then yes, Apple One
is great value. And you like Apple TV.
And so while Apple One does represent considerable savings compared to getting everything individually,
that doesn't mean you should just jump on it. If you're not signing up for most of the services, you won't be saving any money.
And so that means that Steven and I will be cancelling our subscriptions.
Thanks for subscribing to this Mac Address.
If you love subscriptions and paying for them, well, like this video.
And I'm curious, what amount of Apple subscriptions you would actually sign up for like Steven
and I? Would you make the Apple One thresholds? Comment below.