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Could you imagine crashing in a plane or hiking in a remote part of the world and your subscription just ended?
how much is this supposed to be after the free is over !!
I just don’t get how they are going to go about charging for this service.
“We understand you have a broken leg, lost 50 miles from the closest road, the temperature is about to drop below freezing and you spotted the same bear 5 times, but you have not paid for this service”
Like can you pay for it with Apple Pay when you realize you need help and don’t have the service?
My guess is the service might come with Apple Care and each phone gets the service for 6 months to a year.
Maybe Apple can get your life insurance carrier to cover it for you? However, insurance might not want to find the body right away and keep that 5% coming in for an extra year for that $1,000,000 they owe your family.
I have an on-off emergency beacon that I turn on before I do canoe trips in the BWCA. It is my responsibility to understand the risks of wilderness travel and take reasonable precautions to mitigate those risks where appropriate.
In my opinion, this is one of the last bastions of true self-responsibility and self-reliance in modern society.
So paying for the service ahead of time and testing it before I leave is part of my pre-trip process.
Apple selling phones with this capability does not mean they are taking responsibility for the safety of everyone in the wilderness with one of these phones.
I don’t know how handy it would be in America, but in Australia it’s very very handy. I do a lot of driving for my job and there’s a lot of dead spots. Having that backup is very good
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Seems like something that even if you didn't subscribe to it, you should be able to use and then just pay for it later. Imagine being somewhere lost in the Australian outback and not being able to call for help because your subscription ran out 😭
Yes, and you shouldn't have to pay insurance premiums. You should just have to pay after you file a claim.
I think there is a difference. They could even make the fee for the call a crazy high amount, like $100 a minute or whatever.
Imagine you are lost somewhere without any chance for help, and you literally have the technology that can save you in your pocket with you, you just can't use it because you haven't subscribed, so you just die. lmao
With an insurance you pay money in advance so you pay less when something actually happens. I think when you are lost somewhere in a life or death scenario you don't really care how much the call costs, as long as they let you make it.
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I don’t think it’s something I would subscribe to after the free trial. I think Apple knows this as well, that’s why everyone is getting it free for another year.
I don't think Apple is ever going to stop giving it out for free because it would cost them a lot more in bad press if just one person died.
I mean, other similar services also charge money for its usage, I'm not sure why this should be free if those aren't?
Most reasonable people understand why it wouldn't be free. But the negative press if someone dies for such a well-known giant like Apple could be deterrence enough for Apple to keep it free.
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Why not instead of a monthly fee just charge me $100 to use it or something.
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Not really, gm reputation wasn't destroyed from people crashing who didn't pay for onstar.
I feel like that’s a different situation, though.
Let’s be very clear: Onstar in 1996 only around 16% of Americans owned a cellphone of any kind. Connectivity of any kind was a high-end luxury product, and it was self-obvious a service like Onstar required some kind of revenue stream to continue functioning.
From there, consumer expectations that this was a paid service were set in stone. So of course no one has really questioned why the service that’s been subscription based before some of the people reading this were even born….is still not free. Apple should never have offered this service for free for so long if they expect to make money off of it.
Not today, when emergency connectivity is largely assumed on devices capable of it. Particularly on smartphones, where it’s actually mandated by law regardless of whether you have an active plan in a ton of western countries.
Combine this with the reality that news travels far faster and easier than in the 90s and early 00s, and that Apple is (so far as any of this mega-companies are) already known for high-quality safety features in their products…..it all makes gating the service behind a paywall seem a deeply penny-wise and pound-foolish idea.
It’s anyone’s guess whether a viral story around someone dying after their trial on this ends pops up, and the PR and goodwill from keeping this service free more than likely makes up for the operating costs unless it’s truly an absurd amount of money being lost by the company(in which case I doubt they’d be extending it like this anyway).
It’s a worthwhile loss-leader, imo, in a way Onstar in the late 1990s never possibly could have been.
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Story: we stopped paying for Mercedes whatever service. Somehow my wife locked our (then) 2 year old in the car and the Mercedes service said “sorry mam, you don’t pay for this service.” Luckily they were at Disneyland and Disney had a swat team of emergency services and had it open in minutes
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They should include it for free with Apple One or iCloud. I probably wouldn't pay for this separately.
Also posted this elsewhere in this thread. With Garmin you pay €19.99 for this per month*. That is almost as expensive as all of Apple One. Probably Apple can let scale play in their favor, but offering satellite coverage is not a rounding error.
* https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=Z0mdgyBwqaAHP4QLy78UcA
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And honestly with as little as most people would use it, I don’t see why they couldn’t offer it as a part of Apple One even if they add a limit to number of uses or something like that so the people that actually would subscribe still have an incentive to
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too bad apple on is a trash program.
How? I find it great. Too bad you included nothing but a vague, unsupported statement.
I gave facts. You need support, the mental kind, if you pay for apple one.
Still looking for any single reason that you think it's trash. Legends say you're still trying to think of one. What facts have you provided? Your comment was "it's a trash program". I asked why, you spew some more nonsense...
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This should stay free. Apple should swallow the cost.
It’s one of those things fairly unique on iPhone and it would just be bad optics to say “oh, sorry. your phone will have this life-saving software disable if you don’t pay up”
Only for a little bit more time. SpaceX has already launched hundreds of next-gen Starlink satellites that will give basic cell coverage everywhere on earth. It seems safe to assume they'll turn it on pretty soon.
I would rather use smoke signals than use Elon’s sattelites.
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Yeah the first time someone dies because they haven’t paid their Apple subscription will look very bad.
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LOL "Thanks for investing all the time and dollars into R&D. Now you should just give away the service for free!"
Do you work for free?
For a premium €1000+ phone I think such a service could be included in the price. It’s not for free.
Maybe it would mean marginally lower profits for Apple, but it would not be free. It is a service that would be bring value to their products and make them more competitive on the market.
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Honestly wish it got moved to required to be free in for everyone. At least in certain countries forcing it. It cost relatively little support.
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I do a lot of driving, often in and through rural or remote areas, and knowing this is in my back pocket has been some great peace-of-mind for my wife and I. It's the reason I upgraded to a 14 this year.
However, I'd completely forgotten it was a free-for-a-limited-time thing. I'd've subscribed to it, if reminded that I'd needed to, but I appreciate the extra free time.
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I just thought it was free anyway.
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I drive a lot for my job, a lot in rural areas with no mobile signal. I’ve never had to use it, but I have seen the SOS symbol and it is reassuring to know if I needed help I could get it.
Depending on price, I’d seriously consider subscribing to it, maybe one to bundle with Apple One.
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Do you get another free 2 years with every purchase of a new iPhone? Do they stack? If I got a 14 Pro Max on launch day I would get SOS until 2024, then when I got my 15 Pro Max do I have it until 2027 (1 from 14 and 3 from 15 + 2023)?
"The free trial will be extended for iPhone 14 users who have activated their device in a country that supports Emergency SOS via satellite prior to 12 a.m. PT on November 15, 2023"
They just added 1 year to iPhone 14/14 Pro users, 15 wasn't extended and is still 2 years. So the 1st 14 and 15's will have to start paying November 2025, at least that's the current plan.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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