Re Match vs Apple Music, I think much depends on how much your music library / tastes changes and varies. I used Match for many years (yes, it’s a great deal!) but dropped it for Music when I realised I could now have access to almost anything, not only my library!
I really like having access to new music and the personalised station has brought up a significant amount of new music that I would never have otherwise discovered.
The downside is that I am now completely sucked into the Apple system - dropping Music would mean losing access to a lot of what I now regularly listen to.
As ever, a timely and interesting survey. Even though our kids are in their twenties, it’s still useful and economic to pay for a family subscription to this and share some apps from the App Store. We all used to use iTunes, the original shared app., but everyone has gone different ways with the kids using Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube while I am a convert to Qobuz & Roon. News is good, but also the kind of content overload we should all be avoiding for our mental health. Apple TV content was very disappointing to begin with but has improved. Unexpectedly the Fitness app gets regular use and saves subscribing elsewhere for yoga and other training.
I subscribe to iCloud+ 2TB for the additional storage for photos. I make full use of Hide My Email, and I have been using iCloud Mail as my primary email service around the time Custom Email Domain becomes available. I did not subscribe to the other services except for Apple Music.
I use iCloud+ as a family service. Between 5 of us we are using 1.2 TB from the 2 TB limit and, as we are all Mac users, make good use of the Apple ecosystem.
My son and I use the Apple Music family subscription extensively but not the rest who prefer Spotify.
I’ve got a free 3 month subscription to Apple News and fitness. I hardly use Apple News as my (UK) library provides free digital access to a very wide range of national and international newspapers and magazines.
I’m not interested in the fitness subscription so have not enrolled. I’ll cancel Apple News when the free trial is over.
With Apple TV I wait until a series/film has fully dropped then subscribe for a one month binge only. I do this with other streaming subscriptions. I’m wondering when the streaming services will get wise to this.
I’ve been an Apple Music and iCloud+ (as it’s called now) subscriber in the past, as well as an iTunes Match subscriber for a time before Apple Music was a things.
I would probably still be an Apple Music / iTunes Match subscriber if either service was reliable. Alas, the opposite has been consistently the case throughout my time using both services, to the point where I can consider them a liability to my existing music library rather than an asset. I’m very thankful that I still have all my old CDs stored away, and that Bandcamp and other services allow me to re-download (most) old digital purchases.
I tried iCloud+ custom email domains a year or so back, and it worked. But iCloud Mail isn’t Fastmail, or any other dedicated email provider, and you are getting what you pay for in terms of control over your email, in my opinion.
As for iCloud Drive and iCloud Photo Library, those are great when they work, but infuriating when they decide not to for some reason. Particularly so with Photos. Apple seems to have a deep aversion to telling users that there’s a problem, which doesn’t help matters. I’m still using the free 5GB iCloud plan for now, but only for iPhone backups and as a way to pass stuff from the phone to my Mac.
I subscribed to Apple TV+ for a long time. There’s a lot of good stuff there. I still use it but now I pay for it indirectly because I switched to T-Mobile and my plan includes subscriptions to ATV+ and Netflix.
We subscribe to the 200Gb level of iCloud+ mostly so my wife can have her photos there. Three bucks a month is close enough to zero that I don’t mind spending that.
I got a free three-month subscription to Fitness+ with my iPhone 15 but never got around to using it so I canceled it before the trial ended.
I subscribe to Apple Music and love it. I like being able to listen to anything I want without having to gamble on buying a CD that I end up not liking. If I like something enough I will buy the CD. Honestly, though, my CD purchasing has plummeted since I started subscribing. The decrease in spending on CDs probably offsets the subscription price.
I have a huge CD library ripped into Music and definitely don’t have sync to the cloud turned on. I’ve spent a lot of time making sure album art is correct and I’m pretty sure syncing would wipe out all that work.
I’ve used Apple Classical a little bit. I’d use it a lot more if it wasn’t iPhone-only. I use my Mac for music at home (through AirPlay to my stereo) and at work (through headphones). I know I could play Classical through AirPlay at home but I just don’t go to the phone for music.
I use iCloud at the 2TB level, essentially to provide safe backup and syncing between the family devices (3 Macs, 2 iPhones, an iPad…). Maybe there are other ways to do this, but I suffer from not having the motivation to understand all the Apple offers in detail. For example, I’ve rejected Apple News because I subscribe to the online versions of four UK newspapers, and I like it that way - but maybe I’m wasting a load of money… I use Apple TV+ which gives me enough entertainment for now, but the increase in price is making me rethink it. I hate games, don’t do organised fitness (too old) and I’ve never even explored Apple One. As to Apple Music, I have enough of my own stuff, plus there’s a family Spotify. All mostly classical, and the Apple offering doesn’t seem attractive.
A few years ago, I bought an Apple TV on which I watch Apple TV+, have a subscription to StudioCanal, and bought some films (owing to caring responsibilities and then avoiding Covid I’ve not been to a cinema since 2017). I use a handful of “players” to see programmes that were broadcast on terrestrial tv and have an Amazon Prime subscription. I never bothered with a Netflix subscription.
I’m about to cancel 2 newspaper subscriptions because I have far too many books to read.
The Apple Music subscription is always a future possibility but I still tend to buy [1] CDs [2] individual tunes on iTunes [3] albums on Bandcamp to upload to my iPod. Musician friends recommend Bandcamp because they get a better payment via this platform. Currently, my iPod is playing my music in sequence by title from the English and Gaelic “A google all” by Sean Monaghan to “47002” by Eastfield… and I’m as far as ‘D’.
(What I did: (1) disable calendar sync with iCloud. (2) set phone to sync contacts with the local Mac. (3) there’s a ‘remove duplicates’ function in Mac Calendar.app, used that to clean up the contacts list. It took multiple passes. (4) synced the phone with the local computer.
On a related note, I’ve been unable to -permanently- change the phone to sync with my Mac. Whenever I change it from ‘essential stuff to iCloud’ to ‘everything on local Mac’, as part of that local sync process, the setting is reversed. That’s another bug Apple never got back to me as they promised. All I was told “might be fixed in a future release.”)
I enjoy having the news app, but I can’t see paying the cost of a plus subscription. I pay for the newspapers I read, only one of which is on News+. And to be fair, my Music subscription is part of my cell phone plan; whether I would keep it should that plan be changed is to be determined. I may be an outlier here, but in the occasional trials I’ve had of AppleTV, I’ve seen absolutely nothing that would make me pay a nickel for it.
iCloud is a different story. Now that I – and the rest of my family – are using it, I wish I had signed on sooner. Have tried several others over the years – still have OneDrive through my Microsoft account, but don’t like it or any of the others I’ve had. Wish my son could use it as more than read-only on his Windows PC (he’s a gamer), but the family has benefited greatly since making the change.
When I purchased my new iPhone I received a free 30-day trial for Apple TV+. I used that opportunity to binge watch Ted Lasso. I didn’t see any other programing that interested me enough to warrant paying another monthly fee for TV streaming. With Netflix, Hulu Live, Amazon Prime, and everything available on Roku, I have plenty to watch as it is. Not to mention all the channels that come in via my antenna.
Should do a poll on “why aren’t you subbed to Apple’s services (e.g. iCloud+, News+ ATV+, etc).” Since most that do are family plans or need storage for their devices.
I have ATV+ ONLY because Sony had a deal for 6months free if you have a Playstation account/PS5. I also made sure to note the expiry date on my iCal reminder to cancel as it will want to auto-renew.
I had Apple Music for 6months during Covid. It was free because I got a new iphone. But ironically, I spend 3x more on M2 Mac Studio in July and got nothing. No free anything.
Sometimes I read Apple News but most of the content now is behind the News+ paywall labels (which you can find those articles on the web via browser since most are other news sites).
I noticed that my iCloud storage (free plan) was getting notice that almost full. ??? Well, turns out your iMessages from family/friends that send picts/movies is sync’d and stored. I cleaned out 3GB of stuff I don’t need. Most Gifs and movies (humor). So for those that get notification on space, check your imessage storage.
Marc Z: if you no longer want your homepod, please, offer? I use as satellite speakers and thought to get some mini’s just to put around the house. Speaking of mini pods, WHY hasn’t Apple offered more colors (like beige/tan/off white, patterned…) ? Someone asleep in home design/marketing group?
Lastly, I’m a fan of iTunes/Music like most here. I buy CDs when cheap or songs from Apple. I’m disappointed that you can no longer get discounted iTunes/Music/Apple cards any longer. Which is how I would purchase ($100 cards for $80, netting $20 free or so). And when I get songs, I wish Apple would allow scrape of my library to notify me that “artist album/single” is available, AND to consider what others are getting in similar taste. Just because I listen to ProgRock (Yes, Rush, etc), doesn’t mean I won’t listen to George Harrison, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Black Keys, Muse, Sea Wolf or even Glen Campbell. My taste in music is mood, not a specific Genre (but admittedly AltRock if I had one).
To then buy up Classical catalogs and charge extra? I think Apple is a machine now, really too big, and reading how many are reviewing expenditures on monthly subs… is a sign.
I had to get iCloud+, possibly because I got devices with larger storage, oor possibly because I text a lot of photos and videos to clients. I ended up being just over the 5GB limit, which is where I still am: I am using maybe 15% of the 50GB.
I use iCloud. It’s the only monthly charge on what used to be my iTunes credit card through Barclays. Every month, the $0.99 charge is zeroed out, so I get it for free.
I am more or less in agreement with Simon, in that Apple does not provide that much “service”, plus, Apple does not need my monthly money !
Probably the only thing I would consider at this point might be an “iCloud+” subscription, mainly because this option would provide some privacy and security protections, which are not generally available. This is another annoyance, IMHO, in that I feel that it’s extortion on Apple’s part, to provide these added layers of security (Hide My E-mail, iCloud Private Relay), only at an additional, monthly price. Come on, Apple! I thought Apple was supposed to be dedicated to user-data protections.
If you’re coming close to exceeding the free 5GB on iCloud or you would like access to iCloud+, you do realize that the 1st bump to 50GB and all the iCloud+ features is less than $12/year in the USA.
I have an ancient iCloud account (from the iTools days) and it came to a screeching halt when I tried to subscribe to Apple One. Support couldn’t figure out how to fix it and just reverted me back to iCloud. No One for me!
I get Music and Arcade for free w my Verizon plan (and Disney+ & Hulu), and those are all things I would never pay for. Just last week I downloaded all my old music that had been matched with iTunes Match to get out of that forever subscription - nearly all of it is in the Music library these days. I rarely use either one, since I’m more of a podcast & audio book person.
I really dislike News+, since it seems to mostly be the NYT and the ads are really annoying. I get much more tailored news through the rss feeds I follow.
I do wish the storage price points made more sense, but I guess that’s where the margin is for them to feed the shareholders.