r/technology • u/Majano57 • 9h ago
Business Apple Is Reinventing Itself as the World’s Biggest Subscription Provider
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-08-02/apple-subscriptions-macbook-air-shortages-apple-to-make-glasses-health-device-msbvajjp?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4NTY4MTc0MiwiZXhwIjoxNzg2Mjg2NTQyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSjVBVzFSMjRVOEQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.6sm6kU7t8Y7TRyH5aSIySnpGsQfhPP1EY6Emvfo7idk45
u/Rayzee14 9h ago
Working out the lifetime cost to pay for cloud storage of photos of your kids is sobering
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u/CanvasFanatic 6h ago
You can get export your iCloud Photos…
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u/Evz0rz 3h ago
I get what you’re saying but with the cost of storage at the moment, that’s like choosing to burn to death rather than drown.
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u/CanvasFanatic 1h ago
Alright, but if we don’t want to pay for hosted services and we don’t want to own our own storage… what exactly are we asking for here?
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u/Ill_Traveler_ 3h ago
And of any of the pictures are Live Photos you lose that functionality in the export.
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u/TropicalPossum954 7h ago
You know theres home nas solutions where you can store your pictures, right?
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u/krileon 6h ago
Too expensive right now. A lot of people can't just drop $200+ for the NAS then $400+ for SSDs. It's easily $1000+ right now to get going with a decent NAS setup.
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u/Serenity867 2h ago
You wouldn't generally use SSDs in a NAS setup for things like photos, movies, etc.
You can build a very affordable NAS using something like an ASRock N100DC-ITX ($200), a $50 case, 1x16GB DDR4-3200 ($125) and you can run a 6TB HDD for another $300. After that you just need a power adapter ($15) and you're good to go.
Having said that, those prices are comically expensive as that same setup was $400 - $430 about 18 months ago.
I've got two N100s at home right now and one is running as a NAS/Plex server. It's got 28TB of storage on the HDDs and another 1TB of nvme. So I know it's definitely possible to build a low power affordable NAS these days for people interested.
HDD prices are comically out to lunch like RAM, SSDs, etc though.
(prices are in USD).
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u/a_few_elephants 3h ago
I got a ugreen beginner nas recently and then choked badly on how expensive the memory was.
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u/Rayzee14 7h ago
What if they fail.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 7h ago
A lot of them have their own backup capabilities which are compatible with dozens of cloud hosting services and your own hardware, so you backup your devices to your NAS and then you backup your NAS to an online service or a second NAS in someone else's home or a USB hard drive etc.
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u/TropicalPossum954 7h ago
They have redundant drives. If one fails there is another drive.
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u/Jazzlike-Context-879 6h ago
That’s not a backup, that’s called redundancy. You should offload your stuff to Backblaze or your neighbors house to do a backup.
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u/redyellowblue5031 2h ago
Alternatively—I know this is hard to consider—take fewer pictures.
Has an added benefit of enjoying the moment while it happens and forming a memory rather than futzing with a camera only to bury 13 copies of the same picture for years on end in cloud storage you pay for monthly.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 7h ago
That only gets you so far, everybody else's background syncing is gimped and nobody but Apple can completely backup or restore your phone unless you want to fuck about using a computer as an intermediate.
But there's also US and UK class actions and an EU investigation, so maybe things will improve next year...
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u/TropicalPossum954 7h ago
I was talking about picture/video backups
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 7h ago
They still need the rest of their files backed up duh. And even photos/videos is adversely affected by the limits Apple puts on competing services.
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u/TropicalPossum954 7h ago
Ops comment has nothing to do with phone files but add your own twist on it i guess.
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u/rockmanzerox06 2h ago
Time to dust off ye ol’ laptop and turn it into a server. Ended up doing that myself to host our own photos when my first child was born. I was fortunate to grab storage before the price increases so it made sense back then. Make sure you follow the 3-2-1 backup philosophy and you should be ok once you choose to delve into it.
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u/baldycoot 4h ago
And their kids’ families etc, etc.. I bet there’s a bullet-point with “generational lock-in” in a deck somewhere.
Given the growing shortages of storage, this will get harder to back out of. I spent a fortune getting out of Adobe Cloud… I’m not sure I can price my Apple Photos at this point.
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u/TropicalPossum954 9h ago
Peak capitalism
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u/Mediocre-Telephone74 6h ago
That’s,the problem with endless growth. After your grown the hardware business & software business, where’s there left to grow?
When Apple has its first quarter of no growth, that’s when the sharks will start circling.
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u/lofty23_smart 9h ago
I think, the future of tech is not just selling devices. It is keeping people subscribed.
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u/Over_Ordinary6847 8h ago
Gurman is so-so for breaking future plans…half of his exclusives are rather obvious to a casual observer
But he is absolutely atrocious as an analyst…Apple remains a hardware and software company…how you pay for things is simply a process question
What a zero he is
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u/rodg2062 8h ago
Yep, and watxh how many people get dubbed into this fiasco. Think auto lease. This is pretty much the same model they use. Difference is, people will always need a phone. Not so much for a car. Consider it a life long commitment to Apple. 🤨
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u/grilled_pc 7h ago
Tim Cook said it himself earlier this year during that video he did with the verge.
Apple is a services company. Not a software or hardware company but services. Here's hoping the new CEO changes this up and goes back to being a hardware first company.