Huh… This seems to be a pattern with iCloud. I would expect a cloud system to NEVER mess with what’s on my computer unless I explicitly authorize it to do so and can control the results. In particular, a cloud service should NEVER assume it is authoritative; it should allow me to override what’s in the cloud because I know better which copy of data is correct. (Apple tier 2 tech support admitted to me there’s no way to change/override contacts stored in the cloud, and when I pushed really hard on that as a “significant use case failure,” the Apple rep did not disagree.)
Deemery, have a look at Howard Oakley’s Bailiff and his Cirrus (Cirrus & Bailiff – The Eclectic Light Company) — these great little utilities may help you resolve some of your iCloud+ issues. They may even have you glad you have the 50G plan 
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I wish there was a version of a roll your own Apple One where I could pick which services I want. 
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I use Apple TV+ but don’t pay for it directly because a subscription is bundled into another service I subscribe to.
Further, I used to be in the “who needs streaming music?” camp as the owner of a lot of vinyl and CDs, but when I began using my streaming subscription, I became a convert. Streaming is a great complement to physical formats because exploring genres and checking out artists is quick, easy, and “free”.
If I lost my bundled access to streamed music and Apple TV+, I probably would subscribe to Apple One-Family because I like a lot of (currently on hiatus) Apple TV+ shows and want the combination of pop music and dedicated classical app Apple Music offers…and at that point, it seems to make sense to do the Apple bundle.
I’ve had iCloud+ forever, though still at 50GB - in part, my primary backup for my laptop is an external SSD. I’m in and out of Apple+ if there is something I really want to watch -out right now. First world problem, I cancelled Sirius Radio when I got my Tesla since it doesn’t support it, and decided to subscribe to Apple Music (instead of Spotify) - so far, happy with it. No interest in the other services.
I subscribe to Apple One family plus an additional 200 GB storage for a total of 400 GB. Works for us. Some of the arcade games are OK, but I am not much of a game player and neither are the other family members. We get good use out of the other three services and save money with even just three family members using the plan.
My husband and I enjoy News+ and TV+. We also use 200 GB of iCloud+. We are considering adding Music for the classical music but have not bitten yet. TV+ is our only streaming service. I can’t imagine subscribing to more than one streaming service. We gave up our TV several years ago. I enjoy not seeing the ads. TV+ gives us all the TV we crave.
I have Apple One, have never used Apple Fitness (and probably never will). I rarely download anything from Apple Arcade past getting something new for a long flight (which I delete after the flight).
I have subscribed to iTunes Match for years and still find it useful.
I have 2TB if iCloud+ and will probably up it to the next level next year (merging my wife’s iCloud plan into mine on the family plan and dropping DropBox which has become really expensive for what I use it for).
My wife uses Apple Music (and our 100’s of ripped CDs) almost daily.
We occasionally watch Apple TV+.
Both of us use Apple News+ daily.
And iTunes Match.
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I tried Apple Music. Even getting a coupon for a 6 month trial was awful to get to work. I had to call support. Music on myOS is utterly unusable so that I didn’t even make the 6 months. Has anything changed in the last 3 years? I don’t think so.
iCloud likes to stop synching. This week I had to kill iCloud synching because it was using 22 GB of RAM. I would never trust iCloud with important files.
I refuse to pay for extra storage despite Apple’s ridiculous limitations on it because I know once I am in I’d never ever be able to turn it off. It is a challenge to avoid it, mostly dealing with Messages which has no reasonable way of finding and deleting old large messages.
I like AppleTV+ but recently unsubscribed (timely, just before the price increase!). I try to limit the number of TV subscriptions and will undoubtedly resubscribe to AppleTV+ in the future to watch For All Mankind and other good shows - but I’ll unsubscribe from some other service. Since you can binge watch shows it makes far more sense to limit the services and rotate through them.
I read news in Apple News, which it turns out is really just one big ad for News+ but I don’t need that much news - I just wish I could turn off showing all the News+ content I don’t want to pay for, but of course that is not in Apple’s interests.
It saddens me that Apple’s drive to push up services revenue goes largely counter to the original goal of good UI for everything, but such is life and progress in a commercial society. One day perhaps we’ll find a better balance.
My wife and I subscribe to the 50GB version of iCloud+, for which I signed us up in order to (I hope) safely & reliably maintain backups of photos, messages, and files on our iPhones and iPads, plus my MacBook Pro. She also signed us up for Apple News+ so that we could read more news and other articles. Additionally, we have subscribed to Apple TV so that we can enjoy several programs through our Roku that are exclusively available there.
Neither of us have subscribed to Apple Music. In particular, I have a rather large library of CDs, from which I have made digital copies of favorite tracks that I loaded onto my iPhone, iPad, and especially my iPod Classic, which is still my favorite device for listening to music while traveling as a passenger in an automobile or airplane. I also have purchased individual songs and albums through the iTunes Store and Amazon.
I tried Apple Music a year or two ago. I was really looking forward to syncing my play counts and played dates across all of my devices, as most of the playlists that I play regularly are based in part on music that I haven’t heard recently (I have more than 60,000 tracks that I have ripped from CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audios, etc). But I had to give it up because it kept replacing my CD-quality and hi-def tracks in my playlists with lower quality tracks matched from the cloud. When I contacted Apple support, they said that’s the way it’s designed to work. Seems rather presumptuous of Apple for them to think that I would rather listen to their low quality tracks than my high quality ones.
But I love some of the shows on Apple TV+ - Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Severance, …
Maybe iCloud is the reason why each contact on my Mac (still Big Sur) is quadruplicated (but not on my iPhones 8 or 15) ? This is a super-annoying bug that I have had for a few years and which never got fixed (well, at least not until Big Sur).
I use Apple Music and iCloud+. I use AppleTV+ but it’s included with my T-Mobile phone plan. Particularly with the price increase, I’d probably do what I do wit Max, AMC+, and a couple of others — hop in and out of the plan when there are shows I want to watch (For All Mankind, Severance …). Since it’s included, I must say I’m enjoying several other shows especially since I recently replaced my Roku with an Apple TV 4K that FINALLY solves all my annoyance with my 2nd gen HomePods. As of v17.2 beta, it’s a seamless experience for me.
I liked my free trial of Apple News+ but not enough to pay for it or Apple One. As others have mentioned, I’d love a “roll yer own” Apple One where I could pick which services I’d like to include.
I’d forgotten about Shrinking - it was great - I would renew if a new season arrived. Severance was just too weird, not for me. I didn’t mind For all Mankind but it lost me after half a dozen episodes.
Apple Music, several hours a day, every day, for myself and my sons. Despite the occasional hiccups, I think it works well, and provides all the streaming music I want. It doesn’t hurt that, at one point anyway, Apple was paying much better royalties to artists than Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube, its main competitors.
When we needed more storage, the One plan made sense, and since then, we all (three adults, one child) use News+ a limited amount (enjoying the new crosswords!), iCloud+ shared photo library, and I play a couple of Arcade+ games which (ironically) I paid for before they were added to Arcade+.
We very occasionally look at Apple TV+ but would not pay for it separately–while some shows/films are excellent, the value is not there compared to Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+.
Apple fitness is nice, but I think we’ve used it less than a half-dozen times since it was introduced.
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I also subscribe to iTunes Match.
It would be interesting to unpack use of iCloud+….
I subscribe to the basic level but my interest is more in the additional services than the expanded storage. Specifically I have configured a custom email domain, make frequent use of “hide my email”, and like the idea of the Private Relay for enhanced privacy.
Our family subscription to Apple Music is fully utilised!
iTunes Match has got to be the biggest (only) bargain of all Apple’s services — only $25/year to stream your entire library. I’m impressed by all the people here who subscribe to it. I did for a long time, as well, but it seemed redundant to the Apple Music subscription (not just rendered unnecessary because I have streaming music, but actually included with the Music library syncing — am I missing something?).
I currently subscribe to Premier for my family, but the price hike has made me resent it to the point where I may downgrade to the Family plan. I’ve used Fitness+ a handful of times and wish it were better (how about letting me pick my own playlist?). News + is fine, sort of, as a throw-in, but not worth paying even $1 for. I can’t stand how Apple, so committed to helping me control ads in other contexts, itself becomes the purveyor of putrid inescapable ads in its own app. We use Music and TV a fair bit, Arcade hardly at all.
The main sticking point is the iCloud storage (as other posters commented — once you’re in, you’re caught in a trap). We need more than the Family plan allows, and my storage is tied in from a second Apple ID. So if I can research enough to find a way to keep the storage tier but ditch Arcade/News and pay less, I’ll do it.
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