Photo : Tony Avelar ( AP ) Apple’s highly anticipated, celebrity-studded services event didn’t disappoint in two specific regards. One, there were a lot of celebrities present. Two, there were also a lot of new services announced. It’s hard to say which was more exciting. Advertisement In a way, the celebrities were an afterthought. Apple opened the event with several major upgrades to existing apps and services, starting with a new magazine and newspaper subscription offering called Apple News+. Then, came a new, apparently very slick credit card called the Apple Card. There’s also an entirely new gaming service called Apple Arcade. Then the new Apple TV app and the completely new Apple TV+ service, which was the part all the celebrities talked about. It was a odd Apple event, if only because there’s never really been one like it. While it weirdly felt like an awards ceremony at times—with Hollywood A-listers patting themselves and Apple on the back for doing great things—some of the new Apple services look pretty cool. Let’s talk through them. Apple News+ Tim Cook opened up the event with a cute little story about how he likes going to the newsstand and look a t all the magazine covers. This is quaint because it’s increasingly hard to find a newsstand, which is probably why Apple talked about enlisting over 300 magazines—including National Geographic, Popular Science, Billboard, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, and Variety—for its new Apple News+ program. Apple News+ will show up as a new tab in the Apple News app. The new tab essentially looks like a redesigned version of Texture, a digital magazine subscription service that Apple acquired last year. Screenshot : Gizmodo Apple News+ is pretty straightforward. For $10 a month, you get access to all those magazines as well as some newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. You will not get access to The New York Times or The Washington Post, apparently, because Apple wanted to keep half of the subscription fees. Apple News+ will work on the iPhone, iPad, as well as the Mac. Apple also says the new subscription service will not allow advertisers to track what you read and target ads accordingly. Advertisement Apple News+ will be available through a software update later today. You can get a free one-month trial once you update and, again, it’s $10 a month after that. You do get family sharing for up to six members included for that price, which makes the whole thing pretty darn cheap if you’re a family of six people who love to read. Apple Card Tim Cook says that Apple Pay is incredibly successful, so successful that Apple is expanding it by offering its own credit card (with help from Goldman Sachs). For now, the new Apple Card will only exist in digital form inside of Apple Wallet and will let you it through Apple Pay. A physical card made of titanium will be available later this summer. It’s all white with a little Apple logo on it but won’t have your name or credit card number or anything to ensure your privacy. (This information will be available in the Apple Wallet app.) Advertisement Screenshot : Gizmodo The new Apple Card actually sounds a lot like a regular credit card. You do get some rewards: 3 percent cash back (Apple calls this “Daily Cash) on Apple purchases, 2 percent on other purchases, and 1 percent on purchases made with the physical card. You also get some tools within the Wallet app that help you track and categorize your spending as well as make smart decisions when it comes to making payments. Notably, there are no annual fees, no late fees, no hidden fees, no international fees, no over-the-limit fees. According to Apple: “No fees.” As the fine print on Apple’s website points out, however, missing payments will lead to increased interest charges. Our friends over at Lifehacker say it’s a pretty “average rewards card,” and we’re inclined to agree. Advertisement The Apple Card will be available later this summer. You can sign up to get notified about availability on Apple’s website. Apple Arcade Because March wouldn’t be complete without another video game service announcement, Apple just gave us a preview of Apple Arcade. The name is actually handily descriptive because the service is basically a whole section of games built just for Apple devices and only available on Apple devices. To be more specific, Apple Arcade will become a new section of the App Store, and for a fee, you’ll get access to over 100 exclusive titles made by some of the top studios. There will even be a Sonic the Hedgehog game and a new version of Frogger. Advertisement Another cool thing about Apple Arcade is that all the games work offline, so you can play on a plane or the subway. The games also work on different platforms, so you can start playing on an iPhone and then pick up where you left off with an Apple TV device. Apple Arcade games will be ad-free and won’t have any in-app purchases. As far as how much the service itself will cost, however, we don’t yet know. Apple says the service will go live this fall and will cost money. You will also get family sharing for up to six people included in the price. Advertisement Apple TV and Apple TV+ Okay, these were technically two separate announcements, but we’re rolling them into one section here because it’s otherwise confusing. Basically, Apple is updating the Apple TV app that’s already on millions of iOS and Apple TV devices. Apple is also making a version of the Apple TV app available for Mac as well as a bunch of smart TV platforms made by companies like Samsung and LG. On top of that, Apple will also make Apple TV apps for set-top boxes from Roku and Amazon. Advertisement Screenshot : Gizmodo Apple TV+ is a whole new thing on top of the new Apple TV. Some might even say it was the star of today’s event, since announcing all of the new shows and celebrities involved took like an hour and a half. The new paid subscription video service appears to resemble an HBO competitor more than, say, Netflix. It will live in the new Apple TV app. The exclusive programming frankly sounds pretty cool. There’s a Steven Spielberg-led reboot of the sci-fi series Amazing Stories; a comedy about a TV morning news shows starring Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carrell; something called Sea with Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard that sounds simply trippy the way Momoa described it at the event; and Little America, a show about immigrants and children of immigrants produced by Kumail Nanianji. Those are just to name a few. Oh, and Ophrah is going to do a couple of documentaries. Advertisement Screenshot : Gizmodo Again, Apple declined to offer any details about exactly how much Apple TV+ would cost. It will start rolling out this fall with new programming being added every month. There are also a lot more celebrities and TV people involved than the ones that were on stage at the event. We can’t wait to see if all this very expensive-looking programming will be better than Apple’s first attempts at original content: Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps. It’s honestly not a very high bar to clear.<doc-sep>On March 25, 2019, Apple held a special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino that was aptly called an "Apple Special Event." Unlike most conferences that Apple holds, there weren't any hardware announcements. Instead, this was all focused on new services being launched by the company. None of the announcements really apply to Android, but if you want an idea of what our iPhone-touting friends have to look forward to, here's a quick breakdown of everything that was announced. Apple News+ The Apple News app has been around for a few years as a way to find the latest news from a plethora of outlets, but with Apple News+, Apple's now integrating digital magazines into the experience. Magazines have been designed to work seamlessly on supported devices, making it easy for photos to pop, browse through what's included in an issue, and more. VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more Apple News+ costs $9.99/month and gives you unlimited access to over 300 magazine subscriptions — including the likes of National Geographic, Time, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and much more. In addition to all of those magazines, you'll also get access to The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Apple News+: Everything you need to know Apple Card Apple now has a credit card — seriously. It's called Apple Card, and it honestly sounds kind of interesting. You'll apply for Apple Card on your iPhone, and if you're accepted, you'll get instant access to it through Apple Pay. There aren't any fees, Apple's promoting low interest rates, and you'll get unlimited 2% Daily Cash (essentially cash back) on all purchases and 3% back on purchases direct from Apple (at Apple Stores, App Store payments, etc.) While it's clear that Apple wants you to primarily use Apple Card with Apple Pay, there is a physical card you can also get. You'll only get 1% cash back when using it, but it's made out of titanium and has a laser-etched Apple logo on it. Apple Card: Everything you need to know! Apple Arcade<doc-sep>
Apple today held its first ever services-centric event, where the company introduced several new and upcoming service products with no hardware announcements at all. It took Apple almost two hours to introduce Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Card, and Apple TV+, but we've recapped the entire event in just six minutes for our readers who want a no-frills overview of everything Apple announced today. play The only service that's available today, ‌Apple News‌+, is designed to provide access to hundreds of magazines and a handful of paywalled news sources for $9.99 per month. Everyone on a Family Sharing plan can access ‌Apple News‌+ for that $9.99 per month fee. ‌Apple Card‌ is a new credit card Apple's offering in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Starting this summer, you can sign up for an ‌Apple Card‌ right on the iPhone and start using it immediately for Apple Pay purchases. You can make digital payments with ‌Apple Pay‌ using the card, but for non-Apple Pay payments, Apple is giving customers a slick titanium card with no visible credit card info like number and CVV (all of that info is in Wallet, though). With ‌Apple Card‌, you get 1% cash back for standard card purchases, 2% cash back for ‌Apple Pay‌ purchases, and 3% cash back for Apple purchases. Cash back is provided to you on a daily basis and you can use it for paying your balance, making purchases, or sending ‌Apple Pay‌ Cash in Messages. There are also unique budgeting and tracking tools for monitoring spending along with support via the Messages app. There are no fees, and Apple plans to offer low interest rates. ‌Apple Arcade‌ is Apple's new cross-platform subscription gaming service that will provide access to more than 100 iOS games from publishers like Disney, Sega, LEGO, Cartoon Network, Konami, and more when it launches this fall in over 150 countries. Apple hasn't announced pricing, but an ‌Apple Arcade‌ subscription will include full access to all games with no additional in-app purchases necessary to unlock content. Apple's final services announcement was ‌Apple TV+‌, which will house all of the company's original TV content. Apple has more than a dozen original shows in the works from creators like Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, and Oprah. Pricing hasn't been announced because it's not launching till the fall, but ‌Apple TV+‌ will be available in Apple's revamped TV app, coming in May. The new TV app, which will be available on iOS devices, Apple TV, Mac (in the fall) and third-party Smart TVs from Sony, LG, Samsung, and Vizio, features better than ever recommendations built on machine learning and a new "Channels" option that will let you subscribe to and watch content from providers like Starz, Showtime, and HBO. Below, we've rounded up all of our coverage from today's event if you missed it: Make sure to stay tuned to MacRumors because we'll have more coverage of Apple's new services including detailed guides coming this week.