new apple news april 2019

Apple Credit Card? Apple News+ and Apple TV+!

First, starting with Apple News+, it’s basically a subscription that gets you access to over 300 magazines, digital publications, newspapers and all kinds of things like that. So basically taking magazines and newspapers and articles and beautifully curating them into very well-designed pieces for your iPad, iPhone, Mac, whatever. They made a mention in the keynote that if you were to subscribe to all of the outlets that you get with a 9.99-a-month subscription, it would end up being like $8,000 a year or something crazy. Granted, I don’t think anybody would ever actually subscribe to all of those publications. I’m kind of excited to try this out, because I used to read magazines all the time, and then I just kind of stopped. I’m not really sure why. I still do read Wired. That’s probably one of the only magazine subscriptions that I have, ’cause my grandmother actually gets that for me, as a gift, and it’s so sweet, because it not only reminds me of my grandma, but I get to read all the latest tech news. And that’s basically the only thing that they have available, is the News+.

I haven’t even signed up yet, but I’m going to right now. Try it for free. So you have to make sure that you update to the latest iOS. You’ve got Stupid Apple Rumors, Popular Science, Entertainment Weekly, Time, People, Vanity Fair, Wired, Mac security– my only magazine subscription. That does not look like Taylor Swift. National Geographic, oh this is exciting. It’s cool, because they said that they’re gonna have like animated covers, like look at that! This is basically kind of just reinventing the way that magazines are displayed. Take a look at this. Wow. This is actually pretty neat.

Okay, all right, National Geographic, I’m into it. Let me see something else. Okay, let’s do People Magazine. Let’s see what this is like. Britney Spears, so People Magazine definitely isn’t as well designed as National Geographic, that’s for sure. Basically, it’s curating things that it thinks that I’m going to want to see and read. So that’s Apple News+. I’m excited about the magazines mostly.

Another cool thing is a lot of these features that they’re adding, all of these different services, is they are available to your entire family. So if you do have a family plan, with other people underneath of iCloud account, they’ll also have access to the subscriptions. Speaking of subscriptions, in case that wasn’t enough, later on, they’re gonna be coming out with something called Apple Arcade. But I think what they’re trying to do is further push the iOS development. So by having Apple Arcade, it seems like Apple’s now becoming a gaming publisher, so they’re gonna be funding these different games from different companies. And then you’ll have access to these exclusive titles under that subscription. So this is something I think is gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. Will there be enough games that it keeps people coming back and wanting to subscribe for more? I’m not really sure how this is all gonna work, so I feel like we don’t really have enough information or enough titles or enough games to really be able to see how this is all gonna play out.

I do think it’s a great thing especially for families and kids. If you just want to play a bunch of mobile games, you’ve got a subscription and endless access, well, I guess it’s not that endless, ’cause I think there’s only 100-plus games right now, and I think what’s been happening in this free-to-play market is, yes, a lot of these games are free to play, but to actually play them, you have to spend so much money, buying supplies, buying power-ups, buying all these add-ons that by the time you get sick of playing the game, you’ve wasted so much money it’s insane.

And I know this, because I’ve definitely made a lot of mistakes on some of these free-to-play games, like even Clash of Clans, and FarmVille, back in the day on Facebook, I spent so much money on FarmVille, I’m embarrassed. When I think about it, I’m disgusted. I still feel like there’s a lot of details that they haven’t announced about Apple Arcade, like how do developers submit their games and things like that, so that’s gonna be cool to see how that all plays out, because they basically are giving a platform for indie developers to really get their games out there, and I think that is something that is so important, because there’s so many incredible games.

But it’s like how do you get people to play them? I’m definitely excited to try that out, and then when I want to subscribe to all of these subscriptions, I can use my brand-new Apple Card (laughs). What? Apple has a credit card now. Can you even believe it? I mean, I sort of believe it, but I also don’t believe it, and this was honestly one of the last things that I thought that they would have ever announced at this event. And when it popped up on the screen, it was, I just, I don’t know. I didn’t even know what to think. The main selling points of this credit card is the way that it integrates perfectly into Apple Pay and into your Apple Wallet.

It also gives you cash back daily. A lot of credit cards, you have to accumulate points, and then you can use it for other things, and you have to cash them in. Well, every day, no matter what you spend, you will get cash back. So you get 2% cash back on things that aren’t Apple related, 3% cash back on things that are Apple related. And I think you get 1% if you use the actual card for places that don’t accept Apple Pay. Like, look at this. This is the Apple actual credit card. This is optional, because everything basically is supposed to take place on your phone. So you don’t really have a credit card number. You don’t really have an expiration date. So on that card itself, which by the way, is freaking titanium, with your name laser-etched onto it, of course.

How Apple of you. Even if I don’t use this credit card, I definitely, I have to get it. I’m gonna have to do an unboxing of my Apple credit card (laughs). What I do really like about this is the way that they’re gonna be organizing all of your spending. A lot of times, when you look at credit card transactions, they were saying that a lot of the names, you don’t even know what the heck you bought half the time or where that purchase was made. Well, using Apple Maps, they’re going to figure out the location, the time, the date and then try to give you a sense of where you actually purchased something. And just by looking at some of these mock-ups, I think it’s a really great idea, to be able to have all of your spending tracked in this way, especially for end-of-the-year taxes.

My only concern is, for me, is I have a business account. So things tend to run a little bit differently, but maybe for my personal spending, this can be a really cool card to try. Something that they didn’t mention in anything was what the interest rates were. So if you read into the fine print, it says that the variable APRs range from 13.24, based on your creditworthiness. So Credit Karma reports that the average annual percentage rate for all credit cards from banks in 2017 was 12.54, which is actually, I mean, that’s lower than what this rate is, but of course, that was also in 2017.

So I think a rate between 13 and 24 is not that low, I mean, if you have good credit, and you’re on the lower side. I would love to know what you guys think of the Apple credit card. I was seeing so many people talking about this, and some people were like, this is so cool. Some people were like, this is so not cool. I think the biggest takeaway from all of this is the actual credit card itself doesn’t have your credit card number on it, no signatures, no expiration dates. I think everything basically, mostly is supposed to take place on your phone. But for places that don’t take Apple Pay, that’s where that optional physical card comes in. It’s also cool because all the purchases are secure. So everything happens locally on your phone, not on Apple servers, which means Apple won’t know what you bought, how much you’ve spent, and it’s cool, because they also use this one-time dynamic code to keep everything super secure. And obviously, you need your Touch ID or your Face ID to actually make those purchases.

One of the highlights, though, of the event, obviously was the Apple TV+. I mean, I think this is where you guys saw all of the people talking, because Oprah came out on stage, well, actually, they opened the whole event with a really cool, beautifully shot trailer of all of the people that they’re working with, like J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon. They all talked about the shows that they’re working on and what it’s like to create and some of their passions, and it was just a really well-shot video. I mean, that’s one thing that Apple does right, is those promo videos look amazing. So once that video ended, it was kind of crazy, because the entire theater just went completely black. And then a light just shined directly on the middle of the stage, and Steven Spielberg was standing there. As I had guessed, in my predictions video, I feel like it’ll probably be celebrity-driven.

I think they’ll probably have a lot of really cool people out to talk about the shows that they’re working on. They did just that. But it was a really cool experience, because seeing Oprah onstage, she just has this presence about her, that it is just captivating. (audience applauds) (audience cheers) It’s, uh… (audience cheers) – It’s, it’s Oprah – Oprah! I don’t care who you are. If you are in a room with Oprah, you’re just gonna be like (gaps) shocked. I was actually shocked. One of the interesting things is most of the shows that they were talking about, they’re not ready yet. I mean, they didn’t really even have full trailers to show. They did have one trailer that they showed. They kind of pieced together bits and pieces of the shows that they are working on. I think that this is something that is supposed to be launching in the fall. I feel like leading up to that, we’ll definitely hear more.

It was just so interesting, because they keep calling it the platform for creative storytellers. So it feels like they’re really trying to set whatever this is going to be way far away from like Netflix or Hulu or something else. We understand you’re gonna be watching your Netflix, but hey, we’ve also got these incredible people with curated, high-quality content, over here on Apple+.  Also, in addition to all of this, they also talked about Apple Channels. Basically, you’ll be able to subscribe to individual channels, so HBO or Starz or any of the other networks that they have available. Instead of just subscribing to a whole cable package, I guess you’re gonna be subscribing to iCloud, Arcade (laughs), TV+. I’m not even sure. I have so many subscriptions. It’s so overwhelming when I just think about it.

Either way, I think that the Apple TV+, the streaming service, is gonna be really cool. If there’s one thing that Apple does right, that is creating content. Now I just keep thinking back to Planet of the Apps. That was just a fluke. I don’t think that is anything that we can even compare to what this is gonna be like. Seeing J.J. Abrams up there on stage, I don’t think you guys understand. I’m a huge J.J. Abrams fan, like massive. I feel like we are so just saturated with content, to be able to watch some shows that are extremely high quality and produced by really incredible people, and obviously, they’ve got massive budgets behind, that’s something that I can’t wait to see.

Forgot to mentioned, I love the rave about buying Airpods Clone.

Here is an article about Best Fake Airpods.

I am looking forward to purchase these clones and make a comparison with the Real Airpods 2.

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