Sunday Reboot: Stadium iPhones, Epic messaging fail, and Plex

In this week's "Sunday Reboot," Apple shoots soccer with iPhones, Epic Games misses the mark with its messaging, and Plex's astounding price rise.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.

This week, Apple faced protests over the closure of the Apple Towson Town Center store, the first unionized store. It also elected to continue the never-ending lawsuit with Epic Games via the Supreme Court, and it turns out some server schematics were stolen in the May cyberattack of Foxconn.

Fortnite returns to iPhone with a misguided celebration

The lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple has been excruciatingly long, painfully expensive, and seems like it just won't end. And yet, somehow, Epic has taken what should've been a happy promotional event and made it melodramatic.

Fortnite, the game that started the whole lawsuit shenanigans, is back in the App Store in most countries. That's a big thing for Epic to go on about, and it did, complete with an Apple-like social media ad.

This is something we can expect from Epic Games. It's a big song and (video-based) dance, promoting its moneymaker by shaking its moneymaker

This is great for gamers, but it is overshadowed by two things. First, that Australia is excluded from the revival due to cases still being processed in the country.

The second and more unfortunate thing, is the press release that Epic created. One that ominously says "The Final Battle Approaches."

This is in reference to how the U.S. federal court will "force" Apple to be transparent over its App Store fees. Epic believes that regulators around the world "will not allow Apple junk fees to stand."

It goes on to say it will continue to challenge Apple on its alleged anticompetitive practices, like banning alternative stores and payment systems.

It's an astoundingly contrasting approach, depending on where you view it from. Gamers get a bright and colorful celebration, while simultaneously, there's the highly corporate and completely stark threat.

If we're talking from a Star Wars perspective (a property that is being incorporated into Fortnite at the time of publication,) Epic is somehow trying to be the Rebel Alliance and the Empire at the same time.

Separately, they work fine. Bring them together, and it all feels a bit off.

Epic could've just stuck with the jovial messaging and kept quiet about what it wanted to do in the courtroom for another time. And it should've.

Given Epic chief Tim Sweeney's public posting habits, we would've inevitably heard something about that side of things eventually.

Inevitable: MLS uses iPhone 17 Pro to broadcast a game

On May 21, it was announced that the iPhone 17 Pro would play a very important part in Apple TV's coverage of the LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo FC MLS game the following Saturday.

All shots from the game would be shot live on the iPhone 17 Pro, from team warmups to scoring goals. Apple said it would bring "dynamic new perspectives that bring viewers closer to the action," because an iPhone is so much smaller than a regular camera.

Apple TV shot its first MLS game entirely on an iPhone - image credit: Apple

While this may sound like the usual broadcast crew were waving iPhones around, everyone knows deep down that there's more to it than that. With its extensive use in commercial projects, you can count on the use of specialist rigs and lens setups to augment the capabilities of the iPhone.

The fact that the iPhone is being used for a live soccer match is also entirely unsurprising. It was an inevitability.

It's been used for some coverage during Friday Night Baseball back in September 2025, so Apple TV's team has some experience already.

Away from the pitch, there's also feature film work, including the iPhone 15 Pro Max for the Danny Boyle horror "28 Years Later."

It's also been used in a few ways for live broadcasts. The BBC used them for livestreams during the 2024 UK General Election, while NBC used two iPhones and an iPad for the "Today Show" during COVID times.

Replacing every camera for a sports broadcast with iPhones is an interesting move. It's also a big advertising play by Apple, since it shows others what the iPhone is capable of doing.

Even so, it's something that we all knew would happen eventually.

Per-Plex-ing sticker shock

Everyone is very aware that inflation is a thing. Over time, the cost of products and services trends upward, making things gradually more expensive.

Sometimes, those price rises are high but not too much to swallow. Other times, they can be beyond belief.

On May 19, Plex said that it was raising the price of its Lifetime Plex Pass from its current $249.99 price to $749.99. That's a $500 increase, which is almost a MacBook Neo.

The lifetime Plex Pass is not great value at $749.99

That is a considerably massive increase, which Plex justified by saying it needs to sustain long-term development. The new price "reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we're committed to building and maintaining for years to come."

It almost sounds justifiable until you start working out the math.

The current Plex Pass costs $69.99 per year, ignoring any price rises that may apply to that plan in the future. You would have to be using Plex for more than ten years under the annual Plex Pass to pay the equivalent of the Lifetime Plex Pass cost, post rise on July 1.

Given that not a lot of software survives a decade of market forces anyway, it seems like a hard deal to really accept as a consumer. It's questionable whether there will still be a Plex service available to use in ten years time.

Indeed, there's more incentive for consumers to pay for the annual Plex Pass, simply because of choice. After five years, they could easily switch to another platform entirely, saving some $375 in the process from not having to pay Plex more.

What the sticker shock upgrade should do is give consumers the opportunity to think about their options.

A big one is Jellyfin, which requires a bit of effort and some knowledge to get up and running. It's free and open-source, and what you pay with is your own sweat.

Of course, free is a very attractive price point, and extremely hard for Plex to compete against.

Plex may well have good intentions to keep the software development of its platform going for years to come. To a consumer, it probably seems insane.

Last week's Sunday Reboot covered Liquid Glass getting an award, Tim Cook being taken to China one more time, and Cats and HomeKit.