I just said no to Apple One’s latest price hike and I’m feeling pretty good about it | Tech – Buy Aussie News

It feels like everyone is putting the squeeze on me, or at least on my wallet. Every one of the best streaming services that I use is raising its prices, and while I generally just grimace and take it, last night I said, “Nope.”

In case you missed it, Apple is a streaming company, too. Its Apple TV Plus service currently offers some of the best series and movies among all the streamers. Hijack was a hoot. Coda was an emotional triumph. Shrinking is some of Harrison Ford’s best work, and The Morning Show is soapy but gripping.

A year ago, when Apple raised the price from $4.99 to $6.99 I took note, but I also appreciated that it was still a bargain compared to Max or Netflix. Then, this year, Apple raised the price again to $9.99 / £8.99. I was annoyed but assumed I’d probably eat this extra cost, too.

However, it’s not that simple. You see, I’m an Apple One customer, and I have been since it launched in October 2020.

Apple One, a comprehensive, money-saving subscription plan for all its services, was a natural extension of Apple’s multi-year push into the services business. It’s been adding them like charms on a Pandora bracelet for years, and now we have six:

Since I used at least half of these services, I appreciated Apple’s effort to bundle and maybe save me some money. To be honest, I signed up for the Apple One Premier tier because, at the time, I was running into a storage crunch (we share the iCloud storage across my entire best iPhone-owning family) and realized that I just kept paying more and more for space, while still paying for Apple Music Family Plan separately (I initially had a free Apple TV plus account thanks to a newly purchased iPhone).

There were obvious efficiencies with Apple One, plus I’d get to use all those other Apple services.

Fast forward three years and I rarely use anything beyond the storage and Apple TV Plus, and with the latter, use is…