I wrote about Apple One on September 15th and in it, I wrote:
We’re currently paying $9.99 a month for a 2 terabyte iCloud plan we share which honestly is about 1.2 terabytes of my own data (made up mostly of my iCloud Photo Library) and we’re paying $14.99 a month for Apple Music Family. Soon, we’ll be paying $4.99 a month for AppleTV+ which we’ve enjoyed a lot. Neither of us has a use for Arcade, News or Fitness.
I was slightly disingenuous because I do save 3% by using my AppleCard but Apples to Apples, the pricing is still accurate. Either way, like a good Apple Fanboy, on Friday I signed up for Apple’s Premiere tier of Apple One which was a mistake. You should wait unless you need more than 2 terabytes of storage in which case, this is the only way to increase you iCloud storage today.
Why should you wait?
Let’s pretend you’re in my shoes and you’re paying $14.99 + $9.99 for Apple Music Family and a 2TB iCloud Storage plan. You’re paying $24.98 right now for those plans.
First, go to Best Buy and take advantage of their Apple News + 4-Months free plan – https://www.bestbuy.com/site/free-apple-news-for-4-months-new-subscribers-only-digital/6419640.p?skuId=6419640
You’ve just saved yourself $40. Then, if you remember correctly, Apple has extended AppleTV+ until February of 2021. So you are still paying $24.98 and you get those 2 services for free. There is also a free 30-day Arcade plan for new subscribers that you could take advantage of in January to maximize this free-tier.
Minus Fitness+, you now have everything the premiere plan offers for the next 1-3 months. While still paying only $24.98 a month. Saving yourself a whole $15.03.
If you want Apple’s Fitness service on day one, then you can proceed with purchasing Apple One Premiere when that launches in the next few weeks but for now, the only people who should be purchasing Apple One Premiere are those who either do not have access to the News/TV+ free trials OR those who are paying for news now OR need more than 2 terabytes of storage.
About the storage tier, as a premiere subscriber, I’m entitled to 2 terabytes of storage. If I proceed with adding 2TB for $9.99, this will double my available storage. If I cancel that plan, I’ll still keep my 2TB from Apple One until I unsubscribe. This is laid out in their Kbase document – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211784
The issue will be that if your family actually ends up using any amount of two terabytes, Apple has not made a $19.99 a month 4 terabyte tier year for non Apple One subscribers so in theory, you will have to forever remain $30 + 9.99 a month Apple customers forever if you want to keep using that storage. My personal goal is to never go over 2 terabytes (I was close a few months ago) and keep that storage under so I will never be able to quite Apple if I need to (primarily financial hardship). Then again, I have a 100 terabyte NAS in my basement with some basic mirroring over to Amazon Glacier so when I exported every video from iCloud Photos & stored it on the NAS essentially saving 800 gigabytes of space on iCloud, it wasn’t a huge deal. Some people don’t want to manage their own files which makes iCloud Photos a great option.
I think anyone should consider that if they are about to decide adding more than 2 terabytes of storage to a Premiere plan.
So, while I could have waited until February to go Apple One Premiere, I joined early even though Fitness+ isn’t out yet. Why? I’m a fanboy. The process was smooth and within 2 business days, Apple did as promised issue partial refunds for Music & Drive that were now included in Premiere.