Apple Announces ‘Apple One’ Bundles with up to $25 in Monthly Savings

When Apple greatly expanded its service offerings early last year, many of us were surprised that the company didn’t have a bundle ready to go right out of the gate. The addition of Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+ seemed like a perfect fit for bundling with Apple’s existing Apple Music service, and yet there was no sign that Apple was combining them in any way, leaving users to simply pay for each service “a la carte.”

Of course, there were probably lots of things going on behind the scenes that were complicating Apple’s ability to bundle its services, not the least of which was the intransigence of the music industry, which was unwilling to adjust its take to make room for Apple to discount Apple Music, and this was probably only the most obvious of Apple’s struggles.

However, despite this and whatever other problems Apple was dealing with, we began hearing last month that Apple had finally figured out a pricing model with which to offer a collection of its services for a single price, saving customers money and reducing the subscription fatigue in the process.

The result is Apple One, which Apple announced at today’s “Time Flies” event, in a nice segue from its introduction of the new Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Fitness+ service, which, as predicted last month, will also be forming part of the new bundle.

It also appears that the rumours we heard of multiple tiers have also come into play, although the pricing model is somewhat different than we expected, with the highest-end bundle offering some pretty significant savings.

Instead of allowing for a “mix-and-match” style of bundling, Apple is instead offering three specific bundles, as follows, with the two lower-end bundles distinguished only by the amount of iCloud storage offered and family sharing limitations.

?One Individual ($14.95)

The Individual Bundle combines the $9.99 individual Apple Music plan with Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade, while also adding 50GB of iCloud Storage.

• Apple Music
• Apple TV+
• Apple Arcade
• 50GB of iCloud Storage

It’s not a bad discount over purchasing each service individually, saving customers about $6 overall, however it’s unclear whether Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade will still support Family Sharing in this bundle. While Apple Music has always been available in two tiers (you can thank the music industry for that), and the 50GB iCloud Storage plan isn’t eligible for family sharing, Apple has made a pretty big deal about how Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade offered full family sharing support for their base $4.99 price tags.

If Apple has restricted these as part of the individual plan as well, the bundle may not be nearly as great of a deal as it sounds at first blush, but considering that there’s no cheaper way to get Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade, it’s still technically cheaper for those who don’t have families to share their subscriptions with anyway.

?One Family ($19.95)

On the other hand, the Apple One Family Plan is clearly intended to be shared with up to five other family members, and includes the $14.95 Apple Music plan, along with the Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade, plus 200GB of iCloud storage.

• Apple Music Family Plan
• Apple TV+
• Apple Arcade
• 200GB of iCloud Storage

At $19.95, this is a net savings of around $8 over purchasing each of these services individually, and of course here there’s no argument that you’re getting the full family sharing capabilities of all four services.

?One Premier ($29.95)

The Premier bundle, which Apple noted will only be available in select countries, is the best deal of all. While Apple hasn’t listed which countries it will be available in, it stands to reason that it will probably simply be limited to those countries that also have the additional two included services available: Apple News+ and the just-announced Apple Fitness+. If true, this would basically limit it to the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom — the only four countries where Apple News+ is currently offered.

• Apple Music
• Apple TV+
• Apple Arcade
• Apple News+
• Apple Fitness+
• 2TB of iCloud Storage

The bundle itself includes the four core services from the other two bundles, while also adding Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+, and taking users up to the 2TB iCloud storage plan. With the latter three services normally offered for $9.99 each, this provides significant savings over purchasing all of the services individually, which would run you around $55 in total. With Apple One Premiere, the company is basically giving away News+ and Fitness+ and offering the iCloud Storage at half price.

When’s ?One Coming?

Apple hasn’t yet announced a specific date when the new Apple One Bundles will be available, beyond saying that they’re “coming this fall.” Apple will also be offering a 30-day free trial, and although it’s not clear how that will be handled for existing subscribers to the individual services, it sounds like even users who already subscribe to the entire collection may be able to take advantage of a 30-day free window when switching over to one of the Apple One bundles.