Apple News+ was never going to work as a stand-alone subscription offering, M.G. Siegler writes for 500ish. What needs to happen is obvious: Apple needs to bundle Apple News+ into an “Apple Prime” offering.
Part of the problem is counterintuitive. If anything, News+ is too good of a deal. There is simply too much content to consume for too low of a price that it’s a weird value equation in most peoples’ heads. The game is actually zero sum. The game is life and the metric is time. None of us have enough of it. But in the era of streaming TV (not to mention music and games and apps and everything else), we really don’t have enough of it…
So, what to do? It’s so obvious that it’s already rumored. Make News+ a part of an Apple bundle. Yes, yes, “Apple Prime” as it were. Flip the script so that News+ isn’t yet another cognitive load on us. Something that may be a good deal but will I really have time for that? To: oh wow, this is included in what I already pay for? Awesome.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
We’d really like to see a way to pay for all of the Apple services we choose for one price. Give us a bunch of tick boxes and let us choose our combination of iCloud storage, Apple Music, iTunes Match, etc. and let us pay a single price for all of our choices. — MacDailyNews, October 17, 2016
As soon as Apple launches their original content video service, an “Apple Prime” will make even more sense. — MacDailyNews, August 29, 2018
Apple could make a more compelling “Prime” bundle than even Amazon can offer because their original content sounds like it will be better and Apple Music + Apple News/Texture are unmatched. If they rolled some iCloud storage deal into it, it’d be tough to resist for many, many people! — MacDailyNews, February 14, 2019
Hopefully, some sort of bundle option will also be available for us all to be able to the combine Apple services we want for a single fee, lower than the cost of subscribing to them à la carte. — MacDailyNews, March 25, 2019
As we wrote last September here and here:
$99 per month gets you an iPhone and every Apple service. Presented like that, it’d be insanely irresistible. And every “new to iPhone” customer will immediately and irrevocably be steeped in Apple’s Hotel California ecosystem… We bet if Apple offered iPhones along with services bundled into one monthly fee – offer tick boxes for Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, iCloud Storage, etc. – they’d have a winning sales strategy (Apple Prime) on their hands!
I 100% agree..it should be bundled in w/ the trash…and chucked out
News+ is fantastic. I had several paid digital subscriptions but now they’re all in one, and it’s cheap (actually free for now). Compared to what I used to pay for WSJ, etc…wow!
My biggest complaint with Apple New+ is that it is biased toward mostly liberal newsfeeds. Too lopsided towards the anti-conservative bent and will likely detract from viewers who just want a fair two sides to the story.
I love all Apple products and have tried Apple News+ twice hoping it would be more fair but it just does not play fair so I cancel!
10$/month for (limited) music, 5$/m for news, 5$/m for some dev games of Apple’s friends, 5$/m for VOD of other TV/Film friends, XX$/m for a workable iCloud(Apple is really greedy here), App store with no more $1 game. Applecare because Apple price… Geesh… I am beginning to feel the rip… And not like the good old days of “rip,mix and burn”…
Long gone are the days of Apple’s mentallity where sharing the wealth and beeing on the edge of technologies for the sake of their users. Now, we are numbered customers with ca$h walled into their garden…
As a user, I am angry. As a shareholder, I am happy.
Realistically, if they want a winner, 7.99 (Apple TV, News, Games) and 14.99 (Apple TV, News, Games, Music).
But knowing Apple, the prices would be more like 19.99 and 29.99.
You do know that the prices that Apple sets are influenced by the content providers. I expect Apple is going to charge enough to meet the fees they pay to them, plus their costs, plus a certain profit. Or did you think the Wall Street Journal gives Apple access to their content for free?
I don’t pay for any news websites. I don’t even waste my money on Cable or Satellite TV. There’s too much crap on TV that I will not pay for it. I’m happy with my HD antenna TV, internet only and my SiriusXM radio. I see enough free stuff on my Roku with Pluto TV and other free sites.
Apple needs to make News+ worth more than close to zero, zip, nada. It’s almost useless if you want to search within a publication or among for specific content; and at least for ones I have tried many many of the links lead to a You Must Subscribe text in order to see the actual content. USELESS.
I would add in some kind of bundle with audio books. I’d love to get away from audible.com, owned by Amazon.