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Subscriptions are taking over our lives and our devices. With more and more apps and services moving to subscriptions, choosing what to keep and what to ditch is a challenge.
So why is it happening? and how do you manage or cancel your iOS and Apple subscriptions?
Apple's Support Doc on Managing subscriptions: https://apple.co/1ScntrG
Awesome Shortcut to manage subscriptions: https://bit.ly/2E78CQb
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0:00
What's going on, everybody
0:07
Ian here for Cult of Mac. And if you spend any time looking at the App Store, and I'm not talking about Facebook and
0:13
Instagram or whatever those top free apps on the top free app leader board are, you might
0:18
have noticed something. Damn near every good third party app these days seems to offer a subscription of some sort
0:25
And that can be really frustrating or even downright annoying. At times, apps that used to be $5, maybe even $10 for a really high-end app are all of a sudden
0:34
switching to this recurring revenue stream of $1 a month, $6 a year, stuff like that
0:41
And it can be really exhausting if you're always feeling like you're paying a little
0:45
bit to use an app every month or every year. Total BS, right
0:50
Well, not exactly. Most subscription-based apps these days offer some type of free tier or at the very least a free
0:57
trial, which means that you as a user can use the app or try out the app without having
1:02
to spend anything. I've wasted tons of money on downloading an app that sounded promising or seemed like it
1:08
might be promising, only for it to completely suck. Now as a user, you get the chance to try something out and see if it meets your needs
1:14
From the developer perspective, subscriptions allow for a much more sustainable income
1:20
With one-time purchases, a developer would release an app, it might see a boom at some point
1:25
And then sales would pretty rapidly dwindle. There's only so many iPhone users out there, and with only so many iPhone users, there is
1:31
a finite number of people who can buy your app With subscriptions that becomes a little more sustainable As long as users continue to subscribe to the app the developer can count on some revenue
1:43
every month or every year from their users. Subscriptions also help to offset this whole
1:48
software should be cheap mentality that seems to have crept into the market over the last few
1:53
years. For example, you might pick up a task manager that cost you $2 a month to use
1:59
Over the course of a year, you spent $24 on that piece of software. If you continue to use it, it's $24 a year
2:05
That's not too bad. On the flip side, if you bought that app one time for $5 and never paid for it again
2:11
that software developer is not incentivized to continue working on it, which makes the app worse for you and makes the developer less inclined to work on the app in the future
2:22
With so many different things in our lives becoming subscription-based from all of our streaming TV packages
2:28
to our news, apps, your coffee and underwear, subscription fatigue is becoming a real thing. And the idea of subscription fatigue is basically
2:36
that as a user, you stop subscribing to new things or you're tired of subscribing to new things
2:42
because you subscribe to so many things already. It becomes hard to keep track of. Everything
2:47
feels like it's taking its little piece out of your wallet. And eventually you just can't do it
2:52
anymore. Now I can't tell you how to unsubscribe from your favorite coffee of the month
2:56
Club or your CD of the month club, but I can help you how to manage your subscriptions
3:02
through your Apple account. So if you've decided to change or cancel your subscription to an app or a service of some
3:09
sort that you subscribe to through your iOS device through your Apple ID I include a couple of links down below Apple has a really great post on their website that explains how to manage subscriptions on your iOS device your Mac or even your Apple TV and I also include a shortcut
3:23
that'll save you a bunch of time and I'm subscribing to some stuff. So there's a couple way to manage your subscriptions on your iOS device
3:30
The first of which is to open the Settings app. From there, tap in on your name at the very top, tap iTunes and App Store, then tap your Apple
3:39
ID. Once that pops up with the dialogue box, choose View Apple ID, use your touch ID, your face
3:46
ID, or punch in your passcode or password, whatever it asks for there, to actually
3:51
load into your account. Once you're on your account settings page, scroll down about halfway
3:55
on that list, and you'll see a subscription setting. Tap into that, and you should see all your currently
4:01
active subscriptions on your iOS device. From that page, you can tap on any of the subscriptions
4:07
listed and either update or modify your subscription or simply set it to cancel
4:13
Another way to manage your subscriptions on iOS is to go through the App Store app itself
4:19
So pop up in the App Store app and then on the Today View, tap your personal icon up in the top
4:25
right corner. It may also be your initials in a little circle if you've never set a display
4:29
photo for yourself. But from there, you get an account page and you can tap manage subscriptions
4:36
and this will take you into that same page we saw before with all of your subscriptions listed out
4:41
and the ability to tap into any one of them to manage whatever your subscription to that service is
4:47
You can also get out of the bottom and see things you subscribed to in the past that you no longer subscribed to if that something you done Apple made it pretty easy to manage the subscriptions right on the iOS device for any app
4:58
or service without any major difficulties. So like I said, subscriptions can be a great thing, but they can also be really exhausting
5:06
The more and more things in our lives that becomes subscriptions, the more we don't want
5:09
to subscribe to new things. It's the reason that most of us don't subscribe to every TV service that's out there
5:15
You pick the one that has the most or the best for you and you kind of just deal without the rest
5:22
Or you switch things on and off depending on your needs. And that's one of the great things that Apple has enabled here, is that if you need an app sometimes and you need the features of an app, sometimes, you can turn that subscription on when you need it and turn it off when you don't
5:37
Unlike a gym membership, which requires you to write a certified letter and mail it off to Timbuck 2 and have them sign off on something and then bill you an extra month anyway, because
5:45
That's how they work. Apple makes it really easy to manage your subscriptions
5:50
So hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully you understand why things are moving to subscription and why that's good for the
5:56
app store for you as a user and for developers on the whole
6:00
Have any questions or want to know more about how to manage things like this on your iOS device
6:05
Let me know in the comments down below. Hit that thumbs up if you found this helpful
6:09
Share it with somebody that subscribes to way too many things because we all know somebody
6:13
who does. I'm Man for Cote the Mac, and I'll catch you in the next one
#Consumer Electronics