It was the “show time” for Apple Inc. on March 25th, 2019 as the tech giant held the keynote Apple Event 2019 at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. Here are the four highlights from the event held yesterday – including Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade.
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After back-to-back hardware launches of new iPads, iMacs and AirPods last week, Apple didn’t even bother to speak about hardware and the Apple Event on March 25th was pretty much all about new services. Aiming to widen its service spectrum, the tech-giant announced a bunch of new stuff in the two hours long event, focusing on four new premium subscription services – for news, entertainment and games. Although some of these four services will not be around until Fall 2019, but some of them are available right away.
Apple News+
As per the company’s data, existing Apple News service has become a popular news app for iPhone and iPad users by publishing over 5 billion articles every month. During the Monday event, Apple introduced the Apple News+ subscription service to offer premium customers with more popular magazines and digital media. So the premium news subscription from Apple will include over “300 magazines” including some of the big names like Time, Vogue, People, National Geographic, Popular Science, Billboard, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune.
Like all other typical premium Apple services, Apple News+ will offer free one month trial, followed by a monthly fee of $9.99. The subscription has already been launched in the US and Canada – and next up on list are the UK and Australia later this year.
Apple Card
Tagged as “Apple’s very own credit card”, the Apple Card is really a new credit card for buying Apple products and escaping high interests that users pay for credit card payments. The Apple Card is result of Goldman Sachs and MasterCard joining hands with the Cupertino-king, and focuses on user privacy. Apple promises that there is absolutely “no way to track what you bought with the card, how much you paid, or when the transaction was done”, because there are no numbers, CVVs or passwords. The card just holds a unique number stored in a security chip, and can be used only through touch or face ID from the Wallet app – starting from summer.
Apple TV+
In very simple terms, Apple TV+ is a straight-out competition to Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime – offering ad-free streaming of hundreds of shows and movies. The service will be launched in 100 countries from fall this year, for all Apple devices – online as well as offline.
Apple Arcade
An accumulation of “games that redefine games, both curated and backed by Apple” will be called the Apple Arcade. It will have 100 games that are not available anywhere else, and more will be added all the time – with an ability to play offline, no ads, no extra money or data tracking. Apple Arcade will be launched in Fall this year across 150 countries, but the subscription costs aren’t revealed yet.
That was all for the “show time” Apple Event this year.
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