Feeling subscription fatigue? You’re not alone. Consumers everywhere are frustrated as more and more companies charge monthly fees to use basic features of their products. One tech giant’s latest pivot-to-subscription may be the most egregious example yet: Apple will now charge MacBook users $2.99 per month in order to use their keyboards’ vowels.
This is just plain greed. Shame on Apple.
In a press release this morning, Apple unveiled a new service they’re calling “Vowels”—an opt-in feature that grants MacBook users “fluid, unlimited access to the alphabet’s most premium letters—A, E, I, O, and U.” For MacBook owners who choose not to pay Apple’s new monthly premium, these five basic keys, which typically come with the base cost of a computer, will no longer function or be backlit along with the rest of the keyboard. In tandem with the announcement, Apple is rolling out new advertisements that frame “free consonants” as some sort of innovation or consumer incentive, including a series of billboards that feature taglines like “All your favorite consonants, whenever you want them, on one computer” and “You can’t spell ‘Your MacBook’ without ‘Y’—now free on all Apple keyboards, all the time.”
Though $2.99 may not seem like much, especially for people who use vowels frequently, it’s bound to force some consumers to reconsider their budgets for subscription serivces. Soon, thousands of MacBook owners will be debating whether they use vowels enough to justify the cost or if they should instead go consonants-only in order to afford Disney+ or Spotify Premium.
We truly are living in subscription hell. Apple’s got some nerve pulling this crap.
Apple could’ve at least invented a few new vowels as part of this service, to prove they’re still innovating and not just wringing customers for every penny they’re worth. But nope. Apple’s just another company using subscription models as a shameless cash grab. Ugh.
