Apple Once Innovated, but Apple TV+ Shows It Just Leverages Its Existing Power
The company’s offer of a year’s free subscription to its new premium TV services comes with hidden costs for users and the industry
Among the slew of new services and products Apple unveiled at its event this week was a deceptively tiny announcement: For anyone buying a new iPhone or iPad, Apple will throw in a year of free Apple TV+, its forthcoming subscription TV service.
I like free things, and part of me was elated by this news. But at the same time, Apple’s plan to bundle a trial of its television service with its hardware heightened a fear that has been bothering me for a while: Could Apple’s power be dangerous for the tech and media industries?
By offering a year-long free trial of its television service to device buyers, Apple is using its position of power to throw itself ahead of the competition, which has traditionally offered 30 day trials. The move feels eerily similar to Microsoft’s decision in the 1990s to make Internet Explorer the default browser on its Windows operating system — a decision that led to fines, government oversight, and new rules against such practices after a multibillion-dollar antitrust investigation into the company.
