No crowd, no turtleneck... Apple unveiled a bunch of new hardware at its big product event yesterday. The TLDR: a new fancy iPad, a new basic iPad, and two new watches. On the software side, the iOS 14 iPhone update drops today (so we can finally understand App Clips and reply to iMessages in threads). But the announcement that really interested us might have Peloton sweating:
Club Apple is here... Yesterday, Apple also officially announced its "Apple One" services bundles — they'd been rumored since August. The $15/month tier bundles Apple: Music, TV+, Arcade, and iCloud storage. The $30/month tier has those, plus Apple News+ and Fitness+ (plus plus plus).
Apple wants you more connected than ever... Including Fitness+ in the bundle could be key to that, since Apple TV+, News+ and Arcade aren't exactly hits. For customers, bundles cost less than subscribing to each service individually. For Apple, bundling helps score more subscribers and ensure that you're interacting with its products every waking hour. The goal is that you never leave the Apple ecosystem. Apple anchored you with iPhone and Apple Watch — now it's leveling up its lifestyle control with services.