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iPhone owners won’t have to pay to watch Apple’s original programming

Apple’s move to give away its original content is just another reason to buy into Apple’s ecosystem.

iPhone owners won’t have to pay to watch Apple’s original programming

[Photo: Daniel McCullough/Unsplash]

BY Michael Grothaus1 minute read

Well, that’s one way to differentiate yourself in the crowded streaming video market. Apple has long been rumored to be launching a Netflix-like streaming video service in 2019, and indeed it is known the company has hired big-name talent to act in or produce its original content, including Chris Evans (Captain America himself), Jennifer Aniston, and Steven Spielberg.

While many streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have a back catalog of third-party content, it’s the original content the streaming services produce that is seen as the reason a customer chooses one service over the other.

Yet Apple doesn’t seem to care about using its original content to get people to pay for its upcoming service. As CNBC reports, Apple will offer its original content for free to owners of Apple devices, including Macs, iPhones, and iPads. If people want to watch other content through Apple’s video service, such as content from HBO, they will need to pay for a subscription service.

Apple’s move to give away its original content may seem like not the smartest thing to do, but in actuality it’s just doing what Apple has always done: provide great ancillary products–such as free video, photo, and music editing apps, free operating system updates, and even free office productivity tools, that are just another reason to buy Apple hardware.

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And now consumers have another reason to choose that iPhone over an Android phone: free original content. Let’s just hope that original content is of the quality users are used to seeing on competing video streaming services.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Grothaus is a novelist and author. He has written for Fast Company since 2013, where he's interviewed some of the tech industry’s most prominent leaders and writes about everything from Apple and artificial intelligence to the effects of technology on individuals and society. Michael’s current tech-focused areas of interest include AI, quantum computing, and the ways tech can improve the quality of life for the elderly and individuals with disabilities More


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