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It's doubtful they'll ever charge for SOS. The "one year, one more year" thing is likely to make the accounting and liability work out. If they had just said "f
by brookst 2y ago
It's doubtful they'll ever charge for SOS. The "one year, one more year" thing is likely to make the accounting and liability work out. If they had just said "free for the life of the phone" it would have locked them into providing the service for many years, and required revenue deferral for many years. Easier to just under-promise.
- MBCook 2y agoThat’s kind of what I expect. It will simply be free forever but maybe the other services that they might add in the future, such as iMessage over satellite, will cost extra. “A man got lost in the woods and died because he didn’t pay Apple two dollars a month“ is probably not a headline they want to see. It’s also possible they didn’t know how often it would end up getting used and so they said that is a hedge in case it ended up too expensive on their end. Now that they know it’s not they don’t really worry about it.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y agoI mean they they don't have to choose between "100% free forever" and "not free and literally kill the people who didn't pay in advance." They could just leave it enabled for everyone, and then retroactively charge them for a (moderately hefty) 1 year subscription if they end up using it.
- roca 2y agoCharging a fee for using it is a bad idea because then people will delay using it until it's too late. That's why in New Zealand, at least, there is no fee for a rescue callouts in general.