If you subscribe to one or more of Apple’s six subscription services — Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, or Apple Arcade — you may be able to save a few bucks a month by switching to an Apple One subscription bundle.
Three plans are available. The Individual and Family plans include four services — Music, TV+, Arcade, and iCloud+. The Individual plan is $14.95/month, with 50GB of iCloud+ storage; the Family plan can be shared with up to five other people for $19.95/month, with 200GB of shared iCloud+ storage. The Premier plan includes two additional services — News+ and Fitness+ — and can be shared with up to five others for $29.95/month, with 2TB of shared iCloud+ storage.
So, an Apple One bundle could save you as much as $25 a month. Our family has enjoyed an Apple One Premier subscription for over a year and consider it a bargain.
For example, I probably wouldn’t subscribe to News+ or Fitness+ for $9.99/month each, or Arcade for $4.99/month. But I admit I’ve used and enjoyed all three of them far more than I expected. And, assuming I did the math correctly, we get all three for free since we switched to the Premier bundle. Before we switched to the Premier plan, we paid $14.95 a month for our family’s Apple Music subscription, $9.99 a month for 2TB of shared iCloud storage, and $4.99 a month for Apple TV+. If you do the math, you’ll see that the Premier plan gives us three additional services — News+, Arcade, and Fitness+ — for two cents less a month.
I call that a bargain.
While I don’t use Fitness+ or Arcade regularly, I’ve enjoyed exploring both at no additional cost and hope to get more use from them in the future.
Apple News+, on the other hand, has quickly become a family favorite. With access to hundreds of publications, many of which are otherwise protected by paywalls, it’s now my go-to source for news. As a former Californian (a long time ago), I particularly like being able to read my former hometown newspapers whenever I care to. And I’m tickled to have access to interesting magazines I’m unlikely to read otherwise, such as Wood, Popular Woodworking, Guitar Player, and guilty pleasures like People, Rolling Stone, Car and Driver, Road & Track, and many more. I’m especially fond of News+ for travel; as long as I have a network connection I’ll never run short of reading matter.
Finally, my wife reminded me of one more reason we love News+. Someone had sent her a link to a story, but when she opened the link in Safari, the story required a subscription. So, she searched for it in the Apple News app, where our Apple One Premier subscription enabled her to read it at no cost.
Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus has written more than 90 books, including macOS Monterey for Dummies and iPhone For Dummies.
boblevitus@mac.com
