This was the day Apple fans were waiting for – Apple's Showtime event on 25 March at the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino. True to expectations, Apple rolled out a series of announcements mainly on its new services.
Here's a quick snapshot of what Apple announced tonight:
Apple’s Big Announcements
Apple News+ subscription service for $9.99 a month
Apple Pay using iPhones
Apple Card as a virtual credit card for iPhone users which includes cashbacks
Apple Arcade gaming service that works across Apple devices (pricing not revealed)
Apple TV app that’s now improved and available on different platforms including Amazon Fire TV
Apple TV+ subscription service that will produce exclusive content with some big Hollywood names
In typical Apple fashion, the announcements came thick and fast. But, to those who aren't in the Apple ecosystem, a lot of the service announcements did seem like Apple was catching up with the times. Here's a summary of the announcements. Do follow our individual stories on these services for more details.
Apple News+
Apple News+ is a subscription based news service available to Apple ecosystem users. It will be available only to users in the US and Canada for now, followed by UK and Europe later in the year. It costs $9.99 per month, with the first month being free.
Apple News+ will have over 300 titles of magazines and newspapers to start with, quite like a regular newsstand. Tim Cook, Apple CEO, did mention that Apple would not allow advertisers to track users behaviour through this service (unlike Google). News+ will have a dedicated app that will track your reading habits and make recommendations. It will automatically adapt to the device it is being used on from the iPhone to the Mac.
Apple Pay & Apple Card
Apple announced improvements to its Apple Pay feature for iPhone users. It functions quite similarly to Samsung Pay on the iPhone. However, Apple has taken it a step further by announcing a virtual credit card on iPhones, called the Apple Card.
The Apple Card is a part of the Wallet app, and is accepted wherever Apple Pay is used. It has tied up with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard for this. Apple Card is also available in physical form as a titanium card with no CVV or signature panel needed.
Apple has also started exploring the world of cashbacks that it calls Daily Cash, promising up to 3 percent cashback on some transactions.
Apple Arcade Gaming Service
Apple also announced a premium gaming service that works both offline and online, called the Apple Arcade. The service will allow Apple users to play games across all of Apple’s devices from the iPhones to the iPads and Macs.
These games will be downloadable from the Apple App Store and will also support offline mode where users will be able to play the games without the need for the internet. No pricing for the service has been revealed as yet. It goes live in September.
Apple TV and Apple TV+
Apple TV gets an improvement. It will continue aggregating content, but can now keep a better track of content. It can pick up where you left off across devices and personalise recommendations for content (kind of like Amazon Prime or Netflix does).
The Apple TV app will be available on iOS this summer, and also on MacOS in September. It will also come on smart TVs from Samsung, Sony and LG, as well as be available to Roku and Amazon Fire TV users.
In addition to Apple TV, Apple is working with some of Hollywood's big names to create original content for Apple TV+ subscription service. This include Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell and Oprah among others.
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