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From the small print > The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro
by nickcw 4y ago
From the small print
> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Which kind of implies it will be a pay for service after two years.
- pathartl 4y agoI would assume it's rolled into the iCloud subscription after two years
- sneak 4y agoThe product announcement for the iPhone 14 said nothing about any sort of recurring subscription costs for such a service.
- brookst 4y agoMaybe? If I were the product manager there, I would fight tooth and nail to only make a short term commitment to support it at all. Two years in, if it's un unmitigated disaster costing $1B/year and generating zero rescues and zero PR, kill it. You can't do that if you've promised "free for the life of the phone" or something.
- BoardsOfCanada 4y agoThat could be some very bad PR in two years. Imagine "X got lost and died two days after his apple(tm) subscription expired".
- president 4y agoThis could be mitigated by not blocking access to the feature after the 2 years and charging for each use.
- adrianmonk 4y agoThey could just let you use it and charge you a one-time fee. And don't require the payment to go through before unlocking the feature, obviously. There will be some people who you can never collect payment from, but not that many.
- DrBenCarson 4y agoMy guess is they're going to keep it free as long as you get a new phone every 2 years or add some more features and charge for those. Don't think they want to look like they're charging people to keep their lives.
- ausudhz 4y agoWell, the alternative is that other phones don't have it. So I think this is an advantage. If, lets say, it costs 4.99 a year, I think a good percentage of people would do that (me included, even though I'm not an iPhone user).
- Cerium 4y ago$5 a year would feel miserly. A feature like this should be free or reasonably expensive. If you can do it for free, it is a benefit of belonging to the top tier phone club. If you charge a bit you sell it as a lifestyle choice: "I go places, but I don't need to buy a separate PLB".
- lxgr 4y agoThis seems more like a legal CYA type of clause to me. I'd be surprised if emergency SOS ever becomes paid, given the reputational risk ("lost hiker dies of exposure after being unable to call SAR due to their credit card declining Apple's charge a day into their hike"). Much more likely they'll just add P2P messaging as a paid feature.
- barbazoo 4y agoAs a user I'd 100% expect it to no longer be free after 2 years. It's pretty clear from the copy and shouldn't surprise anyone. I think it's a shitty thing to do to not at least say what the cost will be at least given today's information.