Apple Services

AppleCare

AppleCare acts as an Apple-specific insurance program to protect against device damage and theft. While products come with a one-year limited warranty, users may want more coverage for a longer period.

Some types of damage, like breaking the back glass on an iPhone 14, will require a full-device replacement. AppleCare can reduce the costs of such repairs significantly since users would only pay a deductible rather than full price.

Apple One

Apple offers many services and paying for each individually can add up fast. The Apple One subscription bundle brings all of Apple's entertainment and cloud services under one monthly payment.

Customers can save between $8 and $26 per month, depending on the tier chosen. Family and Premier plans offer family sharing versions of the services.

iCloud

iCloud is a data storage and syncing service for Apple users. Anyone with an Apple ID automatically has 5GB of storage for free, and that can be upgraded to 4TB of storage through various plans.

Apple TV+

Apple TV+ is a streaming service for Apple original content. It started with a small slate of original shows and movies and has expanded slowly since.

While Apple TV+ doesn't have the back catalog of Disney or the breadth of content on Netflix, instead, it aims for quality. Apple offers Apple TV+ for $6.99 per month or in each tier of Apple One.

Apple Music

Apple Music is a streaming service with over 70 million songs built around human curation. There are playlists generated by curators, radio shows hosted by musicians, and simple social aspects throughout.

Apple has one major advantage over its competition due to the prevalence of iTunes — catalog. Users can listen to everything on Apple Music, anything purchased via iTunes, and all of their personal additions ripped from CD's or downloaded from apps like Soundcloud.

Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade is Apple's first big attempt to address the gaming market. It is a service that offers over 200 games for on-demand download and no additional purchases.

Unlike other gaming subscriptions, the Apple Arcade library is download-only. Apple's competition in the space targeted streaming games, which hasn't caught on in large numbers.

Apple Fitness+

Apple Fitness+ is an exercise subscription platform featuring videos of expert trainers and on-screen metrics. Participants with an Apple Watch will see their heart rate on the TV screen along with other data.

Apple News

Apple News is an aggregator app that collects articles from various publications and displays them in an algorithmic timeline. Apple hoped to enhance the news reading experience with a proprietary format and limited ads, but it hasn't had much of an adoption due to lack of incentives for publications.

Apple News+ is a paid service within the Apple News app that enables readers to access exclusive articles from otherwise paywalled publications. Apple One includes Apple News+ in the Premier subscription tier.

Apple Maps

Apple Maps is a maps and navigation app that uses proprietary mapping data collected by Apple. It had a rocky start when it launched in 2012 due to mismatched map data from TomTom and other providers.

Apple introduced proprietary mapping data to the US and UK in 2020 and is mapping other countries around the world in a global initiative. Its data sources also include COVID-related data points for pharmacies, hospitals, and airports.

Apple Pay

Apple Pay is a digital payment system for use at NFC payment terminals or on compatible websites. Users can store multiple cards within their Apple Wallet and quickly pay for things without the need of a physical card.

Apple Pay is also built on privacy with tokenized card numbers used at every transaction and full encryption of stored data. Retailers will also have a harder time tracking customers when they use Apple Pay.

Apple Card

The Apple Card is a credit card built for the digital era. It is provided by Goldman Sachs and is meant to be used primarily within Apple Wallet. Once approved for the card, customers are also sent a physical card made of titanium.

Purchases made with the Apple Card via Apple Pay are subject to 3% cashback at select retailers and 2% cashback everywhere else. The physical card will always yield 1% cashback.

Siri

Siri is Apple's smart assistant across all of its platforms. It uses machine learning to determine suggestions for users, answer queries, or control devices.

The more someone uses Siri, the more it learns about the user. The smart assistant is considered to be behind other assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant, but there are advantages and disadvantages of each.

App Store

The App Store is where customers can find apps and purchase them for download. The App Store is the only source of third-party software for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. The Mac is the only platform with the ability to download apps directly from websites.

iMessage

iMessage is a messaging service available across many Apple products. It uses end-to-end encrypted communications to secure conversations and prevent external snooping.

Apple has expanded the utility of iMessage to include apps and sticker packs. Conversations between iMessage users appear in blue text bubbles, and SMS appear in green.

FaceTime

FaceTime is a video and audio call system that connects calls over the internet. All calls are end-to-end encrypted and no information about the call is saved or recorded.

Users can participate in group video calls of up to 32 people. There are various video effects, stickers, and Memoji that can be used during calls as well.

Find My

Find My is an app and service for locating lost devices. All Apple devices can be found via Find My as long as they are connected to the internet or to a device via Bluetooth.

Find My utilizes a crowdsourced system for showing devices that have lost connection to the internet. The same system can be used by third-party accessory makers and will be used by Apple's upcoming "AirTags."

AirPlay

AirPlay is a streaming protocol used by devices to share audio or video feeds to other devices. Users can share video to an Apple TV or audio to a speaker from their iPhone. The HomePod and HomePod mini communicate via AirPlay 2 and can play audio across the home in perfect sync.

Apple as a services company

Apple got its start as a hardware business that built desirable computers, phones, and tablets. However, investors worried as time went on that Apple was becoming too reliant on hardware sales like iPhone.

Apple's pivot to becoming a services company has been a major success. The company is expected to churn out more Apple Services to monetize its vast user base over time.