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Apple hardware subscription as a service

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MrMobodies:
I came across this video from Louis Rossmann Apple announces HARDWARE subscriptions: at least they're honest about you not owning it:
https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/apple-announces-hardware-subscriptions:4

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22994814/apple-iphone-hardware-subscription-bundle-report

--- Quote ---Apple will reportedly sell the iPhone as a subscription service
The service could launch in late 2022 or early 2023
By Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg  Mar 24, 2022, 1:43pm EDT

Apple is reportedly working on selling iPhones and iPads themselves as part of a hardware subscription service, according to a new report from Bloomberg, whose author Mark Gurman writes the service could arrive next year.

The move would fit into Apple’s ongoing push towards subscription services as a whole. Over the past several years, Apple has increasingly been emphasizing recurring subscriptions like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, and Apple Arcade as key new revenue streams for the company. Many of those services have already been bundled together into the company’s Apple One bundles, too.
We’ve already seen a similar shift on the hardware front: Apple added a monthly subscription model for its AppleCare extended warranties back in 2019. And Apple has offered its iPhone Upgrade Program — which allows customers to pay for the combined cost of AppleCare and an iPhone over 24 months and the option to trade in their device after 12 months of payments — since 2015. Both those programs already resemble a hardware subscription in many ways.

APPLE ALREADY OFFERS MONTHLY IPHONE PAYMENTS
According to Bloomberg’s report, the monthly charge wouldn’t simply be the price of the device divided by 12 or 24 months, but rather be a still-undecided monthly cost, potentially with the option to upgrade to new hardware as its released. And like Apple’s other subscriptions, it would be tied to a user’s existing Apple ID account, with the possibility of bundling in AppleCare or Apple One services as well.

Right now, you can pay Apple monthly for its services, and you can pay it monthly for an iPhone — but they’re still separate fees and plans to manage.

It’s hard to imagine that Apple will simply be lending out devices on a monthly basis — will you really be able to just pay to “subscribe” an iPhone for a single month, like you can for Apple TV Plus to binge a season of Ted Lasso? Similarly, a world where Apple has customers invest months of capital to rent a device only to have them return it at the end of the process seems equally unlikely.

It’s possible that Apple is simply looking to cut out the middleman and expand its installment-based payment offerings to other products. The iPhone Upgrade Program effectively has customers take out an interest-free loan with Citizens One, which they then repay over the course of the 24-month plan. Apple also allows Apple Card customers to pay for Apple products over monthly installments without paying interest, but that too is only limited to a small subset of Apple customers. An Apple-based subscription service could eliminate those requirements, and allow Apple to expand it to other hardware products (like the iPad or its Mac computers) too.

But while details are still slim, one thing is clear: Apple’s subscription ambitions are still only just getting started.
--- End quote ---

In other words it's like a rental which might work for some and I just hope they give people a choice like they had before.

My ISP tried this on me recently with these YeaLink "cloud" phones. I was told the handsets were "free" but didn't tell me until right at the end of the cooling off period that it was £10 license fee a month per handset for the privilege of using them and I wouldn't own them at the end of the contract so I cancelled it. I inquired to other ISP's about selling me VOIP services so I can use  analogue phone adapters for when landlines get decommissioned in 2025 but they didn't want to know and were at it too with these "Yea Lock you in" "cloud" crap with the same restrictive terms. Also it is the wrong setting for a home, if I am on the phone making a call and and I had everyone calling me at the same and all the other handsets go off that would distract and annoy me. It's not a call center. Now I am starting to think it is done deliberately to lock me in.

All I want is to pay for something that I see and like and does what I want  for a specific purpose that is going to work to a set of long term standards without any auto update/ no hosting/cloud dependency and for it to be left alone do it's thing.

The good thing is with Apple announcing it it will save me the aggravation and grief of ever buying their stuff that do this and finding out later just like the contract I cancelled right at the end of the cooling period when I found out last minute and confirmed the nonsense which they didn't tell me at first.

There seems to be an every increasing pattern with locking the users into things they don't own.

I remembered in 2003? when Doom 3 came out, I was in a shop about to buy a copy and when I went to pay for it I was told that it requires internet connectivity (they have to mention this to reduce the likelihood of it being returned) and at the moment I thought I would never own this game so put it back forgot about it.


Oops I forgot to ask, would you buy an Iphone this way as a subscription/rental?

tooki:

--- Quote from: MrMobodies on March 25, 2022, 11:13:52 pm ---I came across this video from Louis Rossmann Apple announces HARDWARE subscriptions: at least they're honest about you not owning it:

--- End quote ---
And this is why I hate Rossmann: he’s dishonest. A rumor from an anonymous source is not the same as Apple “announcing” something!!

And I guess he’s never heard of “leasing” before, which is literally “product as a service for a monthly fee”.



*on Bloomberg no less, which never retracted its fake-ass report about embedded surveillance components (actually, they were line filters…) on server motherboards, meaning Bloomberg is not a trustworthy site to begin with

PKTKS:
A huge deep common  grave to bury all this RENT-SEEKERS..

I will never buy hardware this way

Paul

tooki:

--- Quote from: PKTKS on March 26, 2022, 08:37:55 am ---A huge deep common  grave to bury all this RENT-SEEKERS..

I will never buy hardware this way

--- End quote ---
Nobody and nothing is forcing you to do so. Especially not an unsubstantiated rumor.

Mind you that hardware leasing is LONG established practice in the IT world. For the first few decades of computing, you couldn’t even buy most computers, they were only leased. (IBM mainframes famously were lease-only for many, many years.)

Bassman59:

--- Quote from: tooki on March 26, 2022, 12:08:47 am ---
--- Quote from: MrMobodies on March 25, 2022, 11:13:52 pm ---I came across this video from Louis Rossmann Apple announces HARDWARE subscriptions: at least they're honest about you not owning it:

--- End quote ---
And this is why I hate Rossmann: he’s dishonest. A rumor from an anonymous source is not the same as Apple “announcing” something!!

And I guess he’s never heard of “leasing” before, which is literally “product as a service for a monthly fee”.

--- End quote ---

Every time a friend sends me a link to a Rossman video or article, I tell that person: "stop sending me his crap. He's a fucking hack." That generally leads to a long discussion but they stop sending the links.

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