I could very well be misremembering, but I seem to remember a discussion about a mix and match for Apple services, with a discount for multiple subscriptions combined. I can’t find that info though, including the Apple store site.
I subbed to the family trial version of Apple One, since we all use Apple Music and thought we could try out the other services too. As it turns out, everyone in my family only uses Music - we don’t have much use for other services except storage. We have a little fun challenging each other with some games on Arcade but that’s not critical. I’d like to start relying on iCloud for sharing libraries and having remote access, and 200MB shared is not going to be enough. It seems that just doing a la carte is the only way to do this, or am I missing something? I either get Family music + 2TB shared for $27 or just piecemeal bits and pieces to get everybody what they want.
Please be merciful. I grew up and continue working in mom-and-pop environments and being super scrupulous with purchases is just hard-wired into me now, and I can’t help obsess about this stuff. I can’t pay for services I don’t use and always have to figure out how to get the discount, often creating comparison spreadsheets to calculate out to the penny. And those “combo deal discount” packages always catch my cheapskate’s, err, cost-efficiency manager’s eye.
Believe me, it’s a problem. I know. But I guess there are worse problems to have.
Apple Family:
Without subscribing to anything, you can setup an Apple Family of up to 6 people. This allows things like Shared Photo libraries and sharing of some app store purchases where the developer allows it. You can also share any Storage the main person in the family (I forget the name) has. So if you subscribed to 2TB of storage and were the main person, you could share that without subscribing to a bundle.
Without a Bundle:
You can subscribe to any single services you wish in any combinations. With Apple Music you can also subscribe to a Family version which costs about 50% more but allows all members of a family to use their own profiles.
Apple One bundles:
Your other option is to take one of the three Apple One Bundles. Individual (Just you) Family (up to 6 people in an Apple Family) , both include storage, Music, TV+ and Arcade. With the Premier Bundle you also get Fitness+ and News +.
I don’t know what you mean by Remote Access. As far as I’m aware there’s no functionality in the Family functionality or any of the bundles for this.
I may have been a bit stingy with the above explanation. We’ve had the $17 family sub to Music for a while. I took the trial Apple One sub very recently to see how it worked for us, and other than the storage, we don’t use the other services. I vaguely (hence the post) recall a discussion a good while ago about a “build your own combo” option for various services with some associated discount.
Also, my poorly worded “remote access” comment was referring to being able to view a large photo library without have to carry the entire library on every device. I have a side gig that would benefit greatly from remote (i.e., not at home) viewing of more photos than I can store on the phone or ipad.
Unless of course I don’t understand how icloud+ works, which is certainly a strong possibility.
Even though we don’t use some of the Premier bundle it was still cheaper since we needed the iCloud space along with News, TV+, and Music. I’ve used a couple of games from the Arcade.