Apple TV and Peacock Bundle Feels Wrong
In a press release, Apple writes:
Apple and NBCUniversal today announced the launch of the Apple TV and Peacock Bundle, available beginning October 20. … Customers in the U.S. can save over 30 percent by subscribing to the Apple TV and Peacock Premium bundle for $14.99 per month, or Apple TV and Peacock Premium Plus for $19.99 per month, through either app or website. Apple One subscribers on the Family and Premier plans can subscribe to Peacock Premium Plus and receive a 35 percent discount — the first benefit of its kind for Apple’s all-in-one subscription bundle.
This bundle gives me a slightly queasy feeling—it’s like finding a coupon book while unboxing a MacBook Air or seeing SALE! stickers on an Apple Store window. Apple’s brand is built on the pursuit of excellence—in user experience, industrial design, hardware performance, and reliability, among other areas—all of which justify its self-contained ecosystem and premium prices. The discount math calculations involved in evaluating the Apple TV-Peacock bundle come across as transactional in a way that recalls the cable era, rather than Apple One’s internal bundling. Pairing with a rival service for a percent-off deal feels less “Think Different” than “Think Discount.”
As far as I know, Apple has never offered a cross-service subscription bundle like this before. I can’t say it’s necessarily a bad business move, but I do feel that it diminishes Apple’s brand message. I can’t see anything so special about Peacock to explain why—if this bundle proves financially successful—we wouldn’t see future bundles with Disney+, Paramount+, Prime Video, and so on. Bundling may save users money, but it makes Apple look more like it’s selling sugar water—to borrow Steve Jobs’s jab at Pepsi while luring John Sculley to Apple—than changing the world.
I’d say the door to this most recent bundle was opened by offers like this:
AppleTV+ On Us - T-Mobile
and
Get AppleTV+ With EE Plans
I believe that Apple TV has been bundled for a long time with various T-Mobile and Verizon cell phone plans and has been part of sales plans for multiple TVs and at least one retailer (Best Buy).
One significant aspect of the Peacock bundle is that it is the first offer to include Apple One plans. So, it’s one that I may be able to take advantage of.
To me, Apple TV being offered by other vendors feels very different from Apple selling the bundle itself. After all, lots of retailers resell Apple products. Slightly closer is Apple selling third-party products online or in Apple Stores, but even then, it’s a one-time purchase, not an ongoing discounted subscription.
I was curious about what shows Peacock was currently including - took a look at their web site and didn’t see a single thing I was interested in. It all seems a bit “low-brow” to me. But then, the only thing now on Apple TV that we are interested in is Slow Horses. I have a discounted 3-month subscription that I will let expire when Slow Horses finishes the 5th season.
What? You consider Eurovision to be low-brow???
;-)
Peacock (as the name and ownership implies) is the place to find most shows broadcast by NBC’s networks.
Similarly, Disney+/Hulu are where you can find ABC programming and Paramount+ is where you can find CBS programming.
Of course, this is a general rule - there are noteworthy exceptions across the board. And all have a broad spectrum of movies/TV shows produced by other channels/networks.
We subscribe to Peacock almost exclusively for Premier League football. Occasionally I will watch a movie that’s exclusive to the service as well, but maybe once or twice a year.
Last year I canceled my subscription when the PL season was finished in May and started again in August when the next season started, but now the price for a year is slightly less than 10 individual months, and the off-season is just a little short of three months, so now I’m subscribed for the year.
I see some clarity to the recent confusion surrounding multiple Apple TV monikers. (At least one will go dark.)
“AppleTV+” gets a new lease on life.
I bet it’s seen internally as a sign of some weight finally achieved compared to the huge libraries of the other players. They’ve produced some good high value shows which has been the right strategy given the low relative numbers
Any way I can cut these subscriptions down is welcome. Not a fan of Peacock particularly but my son loves the old cop shows. As an Apple One subscriber there’s no benefit to us.
I kind of think that is the definition of most network TV now. Lots of game shows.
David
Paraphrasing an old saying, “It’s not your father’s Apple any more.”
Then again, it seems it may not be our Apple any more, either.
I’m sure I’m the oddball here, but I find absolutely nothing I have any desire to watch on AppleTV+, or whatever they want to call it today. I also don’t recall seeing anything I want to watch on Peacock, although I haven’t looked in awhile. But, I see this only as offering a discount on two channels I don’t want to watch.
But you cannot save time, so when are you going to watch all that extra stuff? In the end you’ll only be paying extra money without any actual benefit if you ask me
It is perhaps just yet another instance of ‘too much stuff’.
We are swamping ourselves every which way.
We subscribe to Peacock (lowest price tier) and Apple TV. Peacock for two years now. Peacock carries Olympic sports, some highlights of which used to be shown on NBC over the air, but hardly any now.
On Peacock we can watch all events in the Grand Prix Figure Skating Competitions, US Nationals, European Championships, Four Continents, and World Championships, as well as Olympic events that are not shown over the air. It is much cheaper than buying tickets to the events in person and traveling to Asia, Europe, or wherever!
The first competition was last weekend. Everyone is preparing for the Winter Olympics which is coming up in February. It keeps us busy!
We subscribed to Apple TV a few months ago to watch the new series, Murderbot, which is well done (as a slightly alternate universe to what is in the book). I had intended to cancel after watching the series, but my wife wants to watch it again.
Check out Silo and Slow Horses if you’re keeping it.
This isn’t the first Apple TV+ plus competing service bundle. From August 2020: Apple TV+ subscribers get CBS All Access and SHOWTIME bundle at a great value - Apple
Definitely. Where’s ScreenTime for the Apple TV?
Right you are—I completely forgot about (blaming the pandemic) that bundle, but Josh covered it briefly for us.
It wasn’t long-lived, being quietly dropped five months later.
https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/cbs-showtime-bundle-apple-tv-app-paramount/
Oh come on. Apple has done free/discount content for ages. Free iTunes songs from Starbucks was a Jobs era promotion. Fundamentally this is no different.
Frankly, I do not understand why you care about how the Apple TV & Peacock bundle may somehow dilute Apple’s “premium branding” which allows the company to charge higher prices with a commensurately inflated net profit margin.
I would like to see Apple give consumers a break and reduce its prices so that its hardware and services are more affordable. The company will still rake-in billions in profits although its stock price may take a bit of a hit, at least temporarily. . . Of course, you and I may disagree about the real-world value of Apple’s much-vaunted ecosystem’s benefits.
That just triggered a flashback: free iTunes songs from Pepsi (codes in bottle caps).
Apple has tried that in the past. For example, Performa-series Macs. Offering “value priced” machines at Sears. iPhone 5c. In any case, I don’t think any of Apple’s attempts to move below its premium pricing (or “mass luxury”) position have worked in the past for a variety of reasons. Building products for price-sensitive customers—and marketing to them—just isn’t part of Apple’s DNA.
I agree. We are looking forward to to another 5 weeks of Grand Prix skating. We tend to set up recordings for all sporting events ahead of time and watch them at our convenience.
Pick contest. Click the yellow button (+ MY STUFF) at the bottom of the screen and the + plus sign changes to ( ✓ MY STUFF). The recorded file will be saved to the + My Stuff in the list to the left of the main display that is headed by the Search button
Good memory from 2007!
That feels different to me because it’s Apple that’s promoting Peacock as much as the other way around, whereas it was Starbucks promoting iTunes back then. Apple does lots of deals that get other companies to promote Apple, but you don’t see Apple regularly plugging other companies’ products.
I worry about it being a slippery slope that causes Apple to make ever more marketing and design decisions aimed at driving additional non-Apple purchases rather than the quality of the user experience. On the far end of that spectrum are Amazon’s Echo products, which are constantly trying to nudge users into buying things.
What’s ok by me is that, as an AppleOne subscriber (so, I already get Apple TV+), the only notifications I have received about this promotion are from external websites (like Tidbits) doing stories about it. There was no notification on my iPhone, iPad, any of my Macs, or any of my Apple TVs about this. As a separate subscriber to Peacock, I also never heard from them about this. It was all covered in the tech press.
What worries me (I guess) is that Apple is leaning more and more on services as new revenue / profit sources rather than new products. That said - after the iPhone, they will likely never see again another hardware or software product that fundamentally changes the company, so I guess you go where the money will come from.
Well, if anybody could foresee such a change and its effects—such as Intel moving from memory to microprocessors, Apple from desktops to mobile, or Amazon from retailing to AWS—they would be insanely rich!
;-)
Seriously now, I think Apple could be transformed in the future by an as-yet unknown product or service. Creativity and design are embedded into its corporate DNA deeply enough to enable it to move beyond its current incrementalism. It may take a new set of senior managers or a revolution of sorts somewhere in the organization but Apple has both the financial resources and institutional memory to allow it to be innovative if it chooses. In contrast, I have a hard time seeing companies like Dell or Meta ever being different from what they’ve always been.
Still my only “purchased” music tracks.
(to clarify: only music that iTunes lists as “purchased”, the other 4,000 are tracks I’ve ripped from CDs that I own.)
I had Peacock for a year (for free) and frankly, it sucked.
But, then again, it depends on the person.
Will never subscribe to it again. Waste of money.
Thank you for saying that for me. lol
When an Apple One Premier customer subscribes to Peacock Premium Plus, is Peacock also shared with the members of that customer’s Family Sharing group?
I had Peacock during the Olympics in Paris and it gave me access to everything going on there. I loved it. I will certainly subscribe to Peacock during the month of February this year to see all of the Winter Olympic games.