I was surprised by an article I read today. I’m hoping to get some feedback because I’d like to understand how others react. The article from mactrast is titled: 50% of Survey Respondents Say They’re Willing to Pay at Least $10 per Month for Apple Intelligence.
Subscriptions
I don’t like subscriptions. I understand I need to pay utilities but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. In 2009, I got rid of cable TV. I’ve worked hard to lower our monthly cell phone and internet bills. I added solar panels to eliminate my monthly electricity bill.
A few months ago, I bought a new iPhone SE and got 3 months free of Apple Music. I became addicted and after lots of agonizing, I signed up for the $10.99 per month plan. Ouch.
I canceled Cable TV in 2009 and I won’t pay for streaming. Prime video comes with my Amazon subscription, and T-Mobile pays my Netflix.
I’d rather spend the money on golf, a trip or a nice meal.
But I know others are more liberal about subscriptions. I just read that there are apps you can download that will help you identify all of your subscriptions and remove the ones you no longer need. Wow!
Apple Intelligence
I wrote a bit about AI here and here. I’ve read a bit and its pretty clear that most companies don’t really know what AI is or how they could use it, but they know they need to have it.
Apple’s version is called Apple Intelligence and it is available on its newest phones. How cool.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive article from 9 to 5 mac that describes the capabilities. What is Apple Intelligence? Here’s everything the iPhone 16’s AI can do
At the top of the list are:
Worth it?
The writing tools may eliminate me, so that may be worthwhile, but everything these days seems to be btw and lol. How much is this going to help?
And how many notifications and emails are people getting that they need help prioritizing them?
Smart replies – yeah right. I’ve seem some of the stuff Siri comes up with. I’m going to trust Apple AI to reply? I told Siri to “tell my wife I am going to play golf. Siri sent “I’m going, f#@! off.” Seriously. I had Siri set to repeat before sending so I was able to cancel, but wow!.
Reduce interruptions – turn the damn phone off. That works. $10/month saved.
Summaries – I’m actually OK with this one. I have asked Grok and some of the other aI tools to summarize something for me or give me an overview of a topic. For folks like me with a short attention span, this is pretty nice. But I seem to get it for free today by going to a site like grok.com.
Here’s what Grok gave me for free:
$10 per Month?
From the earlier article:
I don’t understand. We don’t really understand what the potential is and the capabilities today seem a little underwhelming to me.
And 50% of us are willing to pay:
- $10 per month, which is
- $120 per year
- $1,200 for 10 years
- $7,200 for 60 years – because what 20 year old will subscribe and not continue for life?
Opportunity Cost
We have no 20 year olds reading, so let’s say a 40 year old subscribes and they will continue for 30 years. That’s the beauty of subscriptions (and why I remain a happy Apple shareholder), we subscribe and we often stick with it indefinitely. Seriously, ever wonder why you can’t buy a copy of most software packages? They’re all subscription models now. We need to keep paying…anyway…
Let’s take a look at what happens if we take that $10 and instead invest it in a nice low-cost S&P 500 fund. We’ll assume the historical average of 10% annual return with dividends reinvested.
Wrap-Up
Companies have figured out the value of the subscription model. When I was working, I watched all of the software packages that my company used transition from a purchase and own model to a subscription model. Why sell it once when you can sell it every year? Or month? Turn a one time purchase into a lifetime income stream. Duh, why didn’t I think of that?
Same for the rest of the world. Cable companies got us started – remember when TV was free over the air??? Once we got used to it, the movie, TV and music streaming services jumped in. I now have a VPN and password manager subscription. They’re everywhere. And the monthly or annual payment is usually small enough not to raise concern.
Before we know it, it’s not just the $10.99 for Apple Music, I’m spending $90 for several different software products and services. What’s the opportunity cost there?
That’s pretty significant.
It may be time to review our subscriptions. I know I’m going to. If it doesn’t make me happy, out it goes.
p.s. I have not once wished I had my $120 per month cable package back. I laugh every time I see a Spectrum cable truck drive by. I have invested that in an S&P 500 fund so it looks roughly like this.
…and cable isn’t coming back so this will continue to grow for another 20 to 30 years.
…And Another Thing
10 minutes after posting this, I have this in my inbox.
I get this about once a month.