Apple’s highly anticipated, celebrity-studded services event didn’t disappoint in two specific regards. One, there were a lot of celebrities present. Two, there were also a lot of new services announced. It’s hard to say which was more exciting.
Apple’s highly anticipated, celebrity-studded services event didn’t disappoint in two specific regards. One, there were a lot of celebrities present. Two, there were also a lot of new services announced. It’s hard to say which was more exciting.
In a way, the celebrities were an afterthought. Apple opened the event with several major upgrades to existing apps and services, starting with a new magazine and newspaper subscription offering called Apple News+. Then, came a new, apparently very slick credit card called the Apple Card. There’s also an entirely new gaming service called Apple Arcade. Then the new Apple TV app and the completely new Apple TV+ service, which was the part all the celebrities talked about.
It was a weird Apple event, if only because there’s never really been one like it. While it weirdly felt like an awards ceremony at times—with Hollywood A-listers patting themselves and Apple on the back for doing great things—some of the new Apple services look pretty cool. Let’s talk through them.
Tim Cook opened up the event with a cute little story about how he likes going to the newsstand and looking at all the magazine covers. This is quaint because it’s increasingly hard to find a newsstand, which is probably why Apple talked about enlisting over 300 magazines—including National Geographic, Popular Science, Billboard, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, and Variety—for its new Apple News+ program. Apple News+ will show up as a new tab in the Apple News app. The new tab essentially looks like a redesigned version of Texture, a digital magazine subscription service that Apple acquired last year.
Apple News+ is pretty straightforward. For $10 a month, you get access to all those magazines as well as some newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. You will not get access to The New York Times or The Washington Post, apparently, because Apple wanted to keep half of the subscription fees. Apple News+ will work on the iPhone, iPad, as well as the Mac.
