Gadgetory

so it's been a fresh Apple event turns out Apple is shifting gears a little bit they're moving into services in a big way they want some more of your money can you blame them I can't that's kind of what they do they're a business after all but for you for a long time the focus has been solely on the hardware at least mostly on the hardware you buy an iPhone you buy a MacBook you buy an iPad and they leave you alone we all know the smartphone marketplace it slowed down a little bit it's a little bit less red-hot compared to what it used to be and so because there was speculation for a while that Apple was gonna diversify its product offerings in the form of services and that's what this event was all about Apple wants you to subscribe to a billion things starting with Apple news plus I love the feeling of being at the newsstand is that that's the thing right with the magazines we're bringing magazines to Apple news newsstand I really last time I read a magazine I don't know about you but I guess they want to participate in this throwback they want to boost up some of those traditional brand names in news and magazines and some of these have their own subscription fees previously associated with them they're trying to put it all in one place so you have this news plus subscription you pay them $10 a month if here's a bit odd to me because obviously so much of our consumption now it happens on the internet on the on the relatively open Internet with the exception of a few locations a few sources like the New York Times you pay some money for that to get past the pay wall but nonetheless Apple is dipping their toe in the news Plus pond river stream and they're looking for 10 bucks a month but that's just the start of it it doesn't end there okay Beyond News plus they're gonna get into your finances as well so they got your news now they're your bank that's kind of weird well not exactly your bank your credit card I should say they launched something called Apple card and to me this is probably the most interesting thing they announced as far as the services are concerned because you know cards for the most part not not a particularly innovative segment or product category well Apple has this card that's integrated with Apple pay even though it will be a physical card as well which is gonna give you cash back on purchases allow you to track and see graphs of your spending and supposedly authorize you for access to this credit card within moments right on your smartphone if you're unfamiliar with the finances business banking and so on credit cards they earn money through interest through you carrying a balance through the creation of debt that's how the business operates so the way I envision this now is that Apple they can create a bunch of debt right in the store in the Apple Store you could be there it's like I really like that new laptop and they're like you know what you don't need to pay for this today we'll give you the Apple card all right pay for it later no problemo 3% cashback why would you not use our card I imagine a tremendous amount of debt creation through this particular product not that there's anything wrong with that well like let's not get it twisted Apple has an agenda here it's a money-making proposition and this is going to generate revenue for them in the form of interest payment next up they're gonna continue into the gaming realm Apple has their own service here called arcade which does appear to be a type of Netflix for gaming these are mobile games by the looks of it though your subscription will grant you access to 100 titles which you can then download play offline if you want to and across multiple devices but they are mobile oriented games they work on iPad iPhone and then the Mac sort of seems like an afterthought this is going to come down to the games because they're not triple-a titles it's not assassin's creed or doom or anything like that if the games are good the service is gonna be good they did not announce a price but if there's some compelling titles in there I could see this being popular for a certain subset of casual gamers but it's different than stadia in a sense it's not going after the next degree of gamer those looking for the triple-a titles all right next up things start to get confusing at this point in a presentation because we're talking about the TV product Apple TV which is an actual product it's a box you can put under your TV that's called an Apple TV then there's the app Apple TV and then there's Apple TV Plus which is kind of like an app within the app so Apple wants Apple TV the app to be your kind of hub for all your entertainment they built it into some Smart TVs to get you started but of course it'll also operate on all of your Apple devices whether it's the phone the iPad and even on the back actually for the first time so this is like an amalgamation of your cable subscriptions your independent subscriptions to channels like HBO and then Apple specific content like TV plus if you choose to add that as well they're even gonna make the Apple TV app available for fire TV and Roku so they really want you to use this thing they're blasting it everywhere all right now next up things get wild they just exist I don't even know how to describe what happened next within the keynote they just sort of my marching celebrities out lights on lights off Tim Cook Celebrity Big Bird it was unpredictable it was very bizarre almost like endorsements like hey we're attached to Steven Spielberg we got Reese Witherspoon that's Jennifer Aniston we're Apple things are happening by the way here's Oprah like it was they told you I guess what this shows they were working on we're gonna be like but there were no trailers no teasers at least not comprehensive ones to showcase what they've been working on presumably Apple is spending a boatload of cash to get into the content business similar to something like Netflix now I'm skeptical of what they're gonna be able to achieve here especially since they didn't talk about a cost in this case as well like how much can you really charge for these Apple originals what are people willing to pay it's gonna be ad free subscription service exclusive Apple originals available in a hundred plus countries and coming in the fall let's do a quick breakdown why does this matter what is Apple trying to do here well I talked earlier about the fact that you know phone sales in general smartphone sales tax sails and so on they've kind of stagnated a little bit and as a company like Apple matures they you know they got to figure out new ways to profit the companies they're up against like Amazon Google and so on are really diversified now Apple has the hardware piece fairly well figured out so how can they just plug in some new monetization streams if they've already got $1,000 phone in your pocket well why not get your credit card why not get your content subscripts I mean if we're talking about having each one of these subscriptions from Apple like what is your monthly fee looking like you got iCloud you got news plus you got TV plus and they still expect you to have the Hulu and Amazon Prime subscription when they show cased the regular Apple TV app it's like wow it's getting out of hand here I don't know how many people are prepared for all of these subscriptions Tim Cook's trying to print some money they want all your money if you got any left over at the end of the month Apple will happily take it let me ask you a question are you are you walking in are you marching into an Apple store to get an Apple credit card to buy an Apple MacBook is that you or are you uh are you a little bit nervous here or are you a little bit skeptical are you sick of subscriptions are you done with it are you like Lou I'm already subscribed out of control here I got to cut back on my subscriptions not add more I mean think about it right now you could have YouTube premium you could have Netflix you could have a wide variety of subscriptions as it stands and Apple seems to want a dozen more so you tell me subscription fatigue do you feel it or are you up for a couple more let me know in the comments