Apple's New Money Making Scheme

So there's been a fresh Apple event

Apple! Turns out, Apple is shifting gears a little bit. They're moving into services in a big way

They want some more of your money. Can you blame them? I can't. That's kind of what they do

They're a business after all. But, you know, for a long time, the focus has been solely on the hardware

At least mostly on the hardware. You buy an iPhone, you buy a MacBook, you buy an iPad, and they leave you alone

We all know the smartphone marketplace, it's slowed down a little bit

It's a little bit less red hot compared to what it used to be

And so because there was speculation for a while that Apple was going to diversify its product offerings in the form of services

And that's what this event was all about. Apple wants you to subscribe to a billion things, starting with Apple News Plus

I love the feeling of being at the newsstand. Is that that's the thing, right

with the magazines we're bringing magazines to apple news news stand i don't know the last time

i ran a magazine i don't know about you but uh i guess they want to participate in this throwback

they want to boost up some of those traditional brand names in news and magazines and some of

these have their own subscription fees previously associated with them they're trying to put it all

in one place so you have this news plus subscription you pay them ten dollars a month

It feels a bit odd to me because obviously so much of our consumption now, it happens on the internet, on the relatively open internet with the exception of a few locations, a few sources like the New York Times

You pay some money for that to get past the paywall. But nonetheless, Apple is dipping their toe in the News Plus pond, river, stream, and they're looking for $10 a month

But that's just the start of it. It doesn't end there. Okay, beyond News Plus, they're gonna get into your finances as well

So they got your news. Now they your bank That kind of weird Well not exactly your bank your credit card I should say They launched something called Apple Card And to me this is probably the most interesting thing

they announced as far as the services are concerned, because, you know, credit cards

for the most part, not a particularly innovative segment or product category. Well, Apple has this

card that's integrated with Apple Pay, even though it will be a physical card as well

which is going to give you cash back on purchases, allow you to track and see graphs of your spending

and supposedly authorize you for access to this credit card within moments right on your smartphone

If you're unfamiliar with finances, business, banking, and so on, credit cards

they earn money through interest, through you carrying a balance, through the creation of debt

That's how the business operates. So the way I envision this now is that Apple, they can create a bunch of debt right in the store, in the Apple store

You could be there, it's like, I really like that new laptop, and they're like, you know what

you don't need to pay for this today. We'll give you the Apple card

All right, pay for it later. No problemo. 3% cash back. Why would you not use our card

I imagine a tremendous amount of debt creation through this particular product

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but like, let's not get it twisted. Apple has an agenda here

It's a money-making proposition, and this is going to generate revenue for them

in the form of interest payments. Next up, they're gonna continue into the gaming realm

Apple has their own service here called Arcade, which does appear to be a type of Netflix for gaming

These are mobile games by the looks of it, though your subscription will grant you access to 100 titles

which you can then download, play offline if you want to, and across multiple devices

But they are mobile-oriented games. They work on iPad, iPhone, and then the Mac sort of seems like an afterthought

This is going to come down to the games. Because they're not AAA titles, it's not Assassin's Creed or Doom or anything like that

If the games are good the service is going to be good They did not announce a price But if there some compelling titles in there I can see this being popular for a certain subset of casual gamers but it different than Stadia in the sense

that it's not going after the next degree of gamer, those looking for the AAA titles

All right, next up, the things start to get confusing at this point in the presentation, because we're talking about the TV product

Apple TV, which is an actual product. It's a box you can put under your TV

That's called an Apple TV. Then there's the app, Apple TV, And then there's Apple TV Plus, which is kind of like an app within the app

So Apple wants Apple TV, the app, to be your kind of hub for all your entertainment

They built it into some smart TVs to get you started. But of course, it'll also operate on all of your Apple devices, whether it's the phone, the iPad, and even on the Mac, actually, for the first time

So this is like an amalgamation of your cable subscriptions, your independent subscriptions to channels like HBO

and then Apple-specific content like TV+, if you choose to add that as well

They're even going to make the Apple TV app available for Fire TV and Roku

So they really want you to use this thing. They're blasting it everywhere. All right, now next up, things get wild

I don't even know how to describe what happened next within the keynote

Apple! They just started marching celebrities out. Lights on, lights off. Tim Cook, celebrity, Big Bird

It was unpredictable. It was very bizarre. Almost like endorsements. Like, hey, we're attached to Steven Spielberg

We got Reese Witherspoon. That's Jennifer Aniston. We're Apple. Things are happening

By the way, here's Oprah. They told you, I guess, what the shows they were working on were going to be like

But there were no trailers, no teasers, at least not comprehensive ones to showcase what they've been working on

Presumably Apple is spending a boatload of cash to get into the content business similar to something like Netflix Now I skeptical of what they going to be able to achieve here especially since they didn talk about a cost in this case as well Like how much can you really charge for these Apple originals

What are people willing to pay? It's going to be ad-free subscription service

exclusive Apple originals available in 100-plus countries and coming in the fall

Let's do a quick breakdown. Why does this matter? What is Apple trying to do here

Well, I talked earlier about the fact that, you know, phone sales in general

smartphone sales, tech sales, and so on, they've kind of stagnated a little bit

And as a company like Apple matures, they got to figure out new ways to profit

The companies they're up against, like Amazon, Google, and so on, are really diversified

Now, Apple has the hardware piece fairly well figured out. So how can they just plug in some new monetization streams

If they've already got a $1,000 phone in your pocket, well, why not get your credit card

Why not get your content subscription? I mean, if we're talking about having each one of these subscriptions from Apple

like what is your monthly fee looking like? You got iCloud, you got News Plus, you got TV Plus

and they still expect you to have the Hulu and Amazon Prime subscription when they showcased the regular Apple TV app

It's like, wow, it's getting out of hand here. I don't know how many people are prepared for all of these subscriptions

Tim Cook's trying to print some money. They want all your money. If you got any left over at the end of the month

Apple will happily take it. Let me ask you a question. Are you walking in? Are you marching

into an Apple store to get an Apple credit card to buy an Apple MacBook? Is that you

Or are you a little bit nervous here? Are you a little bit skeptical? Are you sick of subscriptions

Are you done with it? Are you like, Lou, I'm already subscribed out of control here. I got

to cut back on my subscriptions, not add more. I mean, think about it right now. You could have

YouTube Premium, you could have Netflix, you could have a wide variety of subscriptions as it stands

and Apple seems to want a dozen more. So you tell me, subscription fatigue, do you feel it

or are you up for a couple more? Let me know in the comments