Just a few weeks after raising prices on Macs, iPads, and other devices, Apple has hiked prices on yet another of its products: Apple Music. In a quiet change to its website, Apple has adjusted the pricing for all Apple Music plans as well as Apple One.

Apple first increased Apple Music prices in October 2022, when it went from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. This update raises the price by another buck, to $11.99 a month. Here’s how the new pricing looks across all tiers:

• Individual: $11.99/£11.99 (was $10.99/£10.99)
• Family: $19.99 (was $16.99/£16.99)
• Student: $6.99 (was $5.99/£5.99)
• Apple One Individual: $19.95/£18.95 (no change)
• Apple One Family: $27.95/£24.95 (was $25.95/no change in U.K.)
• Apple One Premier: $39.95/£36.95 (was $37.95/no change in U.K.)

Apple Music still costs less than Spotify, which raised the price of its Premium subscription by $1 to $12.99 per month earlier this year. Last August, Apple raised the price of its Apple TV streaming service to $12.99 a month, a $3 increase. At the time, Apple didn’t adjust Apple One pricing.

In a statement to the press, Apple blamed the price hikes on “rising licensing costs.” Apple’s Services division, which also includes in-app purchases and subscriptions through the App Store, has been a consistent source of growth. Last quarter, the company posted revenue of nearly $31 billion

Has Apple focused too much on AI over the past few years, or not enough? It depends on who you ask. On the one hand, the topic is faddish, inescapable, and faintly apocalyptic, and I get thoroughly depressed listening to AI buzzwords at Apple events. But on the other, can the company afford to be left behind? Yeah, I know: the food’s terrible, and such small portions.

It turns out, however, that Apple may have played this one exactly right. With the benefit of hindsight, the company’s curious mixture of enthusiastic lip service and wait-and-see standoffishness appears perfectly judged. Apple is part of the AI conversation, while remaining far less committed than its quicker-acting, more reckless rivals. It’s enjoying the benefits, without having to suffer the consequences.

Let’s start with the benefits. Following years of substandard performance and delays, the new AI-powered version of Siri has emerged as a genuinely useful chatbot. It can’t do everything ChatGPT offers quite yet, but it’s reliable for quick questions, is clued into the iPhone data like no other chatbot, and is set up for a wide range of actions. It’s private, fast, and, in typical Apple fashion, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

For the vast majority of iPhone owners, Siri AI was worth the wait. It does everything it needs to, and it should calm the negative voices clamoring about its place in the AI ecosystem. The real trick, however, is that Apple has achieved this without exposing itself to the trials and tribulations currently afflicting more AI-forward rivals.

Take OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and perhaps the biggest name in this field. Apple recently sued it for theft of trade secrets, but this was hardly unprecedented. In 2023 alone, the company was sued three times (one, two, three) for copyright infringement by a total of 21 authors and The New York Times, while a fourth suit that year representing 16 anonymous plaintiffs alleged “an array of harms from copyright violations to wiretapping.”

In subsequent years many more lawsuits followed. These related to (among other things) stalking, murder, suicide, and two separate mass shootings (one, two). Legal challenges will likely continue for the foreseeable future, as will the keen interest of regulatory bodies.

In terms of public perception, OpenAI is divisive, to say the least. It has some intense supporters, but the company is associated in many eyes with slop videos and images, drought, unemployment, and a cavalier approach to other people’s intellectual property. Even Elon Musk, no stranger to global unpopularity, calls the CEO of the company “Scam Altman.” That gentleman doesn’t do himself any favors, to be fair.

Apple

It might seem like I’m giving OpenAI a hard time, but it’s really only one example of the backlash. Each time a company commits itself to AI, it risks financial and reputational damage. Such as Google and its racially diverse Nazis, Samsung and its confusing data consent terms, and Microsoft and its harmful responses. When not dunking hilariously on its owner, Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot is getting him in legal hot water by creating deepfake pornography and denying the Holocaust.

By contrast, Apple has got off incredibly lightly. Criticism of its AI efforts has mostly revolved around the company being slow to market. The worst scandal has probably been iOS AI notifications sometimes getting confused. But here it is, with a working AI chatbot just a couple of months away from debuting on billions of devices.. And without the substantial investments in AI infrastructure, which make it harder for rivals to step back. Why build your own unpopular data centers when you can use Google’s?

Success isn’t just about what you gain, but what it costs you. And on those terms, Apple appears to be winning AI.

At long last, Apple finally announced its Back to School promotion, and at first glance, it seems similar to previous years. You can get a gift card valued at up to $150 for buying a new MacBook Pro, or $100 for buying a MacBook Air, iPad Pro, or iPad Air. But when you dive into the details, you’ll see just how limiting this limited-time offer really is.

First off, it’s shorter than ever. While previous sales have lasted more than three months, this year’s offer ends on August 27, just six weeks from now. So not only did it start about a month later than usual, it’s ending more than a month sooner than recent years:

• 2026: July 16 to August 27
• 2025: June 17 to September 30
• 2024: June 20 to September 30
• 2023: June 5 to October 2
• 2022: June 24 to September 26

So students will need to make their decisions on what to buy sooner than ever, many of them before the school year begins. And they’ll also have fewer products to choose from. As expected, the MacBook Neo isn’t part of the promotion, but you also won’t find any desktop Macs. In previous years, Apple has offered iMacs and Mac minis alongside MacBooks, but not this year.

And then there’s the offer itself. After offering buyers a choice of accessories valued at up to $199, including AirPods, an Apple Pencil Pro, or a Magic Keyboard, Apple has returned to giving away gift cards this year: $150 with the purchase of a MacBook Pro, and $100 when you buy a MacBook Air, iPad Air, or iPad Pro. Not only is that less than in 2024, when buyers got $150 when purchasing a MacBook Air, but it also doesn’t take any of the recent price hikes into consideration.

That $100 gift card you’re getting on the iPad Air doesn’t even bring it down to the price it used to be before Apple raised prices by $150. MacBook Pros still cost $150 more than they did just last month, and if you’re planning to use that gift card on a HomePod or Apple TV, well, you might as well just throw your money in the trash.

Unfortunately, this promotion is still among the best “deals” you’re going to find on a MacBook or iPad. Prices on Amazon and other stores have all been adjusted to match Apple’s new prices, and we’ve yet to see much in the way of major Apple discounts yet (although we do recommend looking at the Apple Certified Refurbished Store where prices are more favorable). But remember you’re need to act fast—the clock runs out on the Back to School deal a lot earlier this year.

We’ve known for some time that adverts are coming to Apple Maps. The leaker-analyst Mark Gurman claimed as long ago as February 2025 that Apple was exploring the idea, and it became official when the company announced its new Apple Business platform in March of this year. Now the project is becoming a reality, with the publication of rules which advertisers will need to follow.

In the updated document, advertisers are told to steer clear of the usual forbidden topics: drugs, profanity, discrimination, crime, politics, sex, guns, violence, and anything that competes with Apple hardware. But there are new prohibitions in the section devoted to Apple Maps.

Most notably, no adverts will be accepted for home services. This includes “plumbing, electrical, locksmith, HVAC, pest control, roofing, or general contracting services.” The document doesn’t explain why such services cannot be advertised in Apple Maps, but it may be related to liability if a user is physically injured or financially harmed by substandard work. Confusingly, however, Google Maps absolutely does accept ads in those categories; a quick search for “roofing” gave me two sponsored results for roofing companies before I got to the organic results.

The section also states that Apple Maps will not carry adverts for cryptocurrency ATMs and bail bond services. And while ads for medical services may be accepted, the company reserves the right to evaluate these on a case-by-case basis.

It isn’t yet clear when exactly the ads will start to appear in Apple Maps. They aren’t currently showing for anyone in the Macworld team, and are still labelled as “Coming soon” on Apple’s website. Apple has said only that they will launch this summer, beginning in the U.S. and Canada.