Why I Was Wrong About Apple One

November 9, 2020
2 min read

When Apple first announced Apple One bundle during the September event, I was very skeptical to say the least. With Premier being available in a very limited set of countries and only 200 GB of iCloud storage in the Family plan it seemed like a non-starter for me. Together with my wife we use more than 300 GB right now, so I thought I would need to subscribe to the bundle and still pay for the 2 TB of iCloud storage.

What I didn’t realise at that moment is that iCloud storage expansion is in addition to the bundle, so I could downgrade my 2 TB plan and have 400 GB of iCloud storage in total. That completely changes the calculation.

Before I would have been paying:

  • Spotify — €8.99 (for Duo plan)
  • 2 TB of iCloud storage — €9.99
  • Apple TV+ — €4.17 (€49.99 a year divided by 12 months)

Total €23.15 a month.

With Apple One, I will be paying:

  • Bundle — €16.95
  • 200 GB of iCloud storage — €2.99

Total — €19.94

So, I will be paying €3.21 a month less and will have access to the Apple Arcade in addition, which I was considering renewing just last week.

Sure it is much less storage, but right now it is enough for our family without managing it at all, I could definitely delete about 50 GB from the cloud without any sacrifice.

There is only one question left and it is moving to Apple Music from Spotify. I was thinking about it before because of where Spotify is heading and I love having almost all the lyrics right there in the app. I was just hesitant to mention it to my wife because we would be changing our music streaming service for about a third time in a year, but turns out she hates Spotify and didn’t use it much. So win-win in our household.

If you were on the fence about using the Apple One subscription — reconsider, with the additional storage in mind, maybe it will be a good deal for you too.

Subscription Fatigue

September 20, 2019
2 min read

Millennials invented cable! This is one of the better memes in the long time, but it works so well. I’ve been reading tech blogs for a very long time and couple of years ago one of the most popular themes was cable cutting. There was a lot of talk, how you can cut the cable, subscribe to a couple of services, buy antenna and save a lot of money.

For some time Netflix and Hulu (in the US) were the ones to have. There was a lot of content, some old, some new, some originals. Now, every company wants to build its own subscription service and charge for it about 10$ a month. And as this is the golden age of the TV you’ll want to watch them all. Subscribing to Netflix, Apple TV+ and Disney, for example, would be about 30$ per month. Add to it Apple Music or Spotify (that’s another 10$) and probably gaming service or two (Apple Arcade and PSN). 50$ and that’s not even trying. Want to watch Office next year – another service.

This all adds up very easily. Apps are implementing subscriptions more and more. Weather apps, Twitter clients, writing apps, Podcasts apps. Everything is a subscription.

For the video services, my plan would probably be keeping Netflix and adding one other services. The service I add will depend on the content it has. There is something new on Disney+? Subscribe for a month or two, until I watch it and something else pops up on another service.

When music streaming became a thing, it destroyed piracy in some markets, as it was much easier to pay and listen to all the music you want, without the need to download, clean meta-data, upload to the phone, etc. Now, with all those video services coming out, I have a feeling, piracy will again rise. You either look for it on some shady website, where it is all lumped together or you take your time to figure out which service it is on. Sure, something like Apple TV could help (app, not a device), but already not every streaming service is in there (and Netflix will never agree to be added).

I hope I’m wrong and those services will prosper and companies will have funds and willingness to produce more great shows.