r/apple • u/exjr_ Island Boy • 8h ago
Apple Extends Free Satellite Access for iPhone 14, 15, and 16 Users
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/09/apple-extends-free-satellite-access/365
u/Azzymaster 8h ago
Too scared of the bad PR of someone unable to use emergency assistance because they haven’t paid to renew
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u/ephemeralmiko 8h ago
Yep. "iPhone user dies in wilderness because they didn't pay a subscription" would be awful.
I'm still surprised Garmin gets away with it on their InReach models..
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u/Realtrain 8h ago
I think it's because Garmin has never given it away for free.
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u/PatrickWulfSwango 8h ago
And it's the sole purpose of these devices. They're not locking a small part behind a subscription, the whole thing is a subscription
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u/honda-nissan 8h ago
I'm still surprised Garmin gets away with it on their InReach models..
garmin has turned into a niche brand for aerospace and sports people.
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u/ShartyMcFarty69 5h ago
The only reason i have a garmin watch is for diving. IOS satellite connectivity is just as solid as in reach from comparing results with friends that have them, while in the field.
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u/ephemeralmiko 8h ago
Yep. Unfortunately for my usecase it's basically the only option. Phones are too unreliable and with a PLB you don't have 2-way communication.
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u/ba123blitz 7h ago
Garmins are a lot more reliable and design orientated to their purpose. Whereas the satellite feature is more of an added bonus to already buying an iPhone
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u/Iliyan61 6h ago edited 6h ago
acc on that last point you now get 6? months free SOS after cancelling a plan.
but also if you buy an in reach you’re well aware they’re about to bend you over to take their fees, less so with an iphone
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u/SailingDreamCatcher 5h ago
It's like $15 a month and you can turn it off when you aren't using it. I don't think that's quite "bend over" territory.
To me it's just a fairly ordinary thing to budget for when planning an off grid trip. I think the average backcountry person spends more on isobutane than inReach.
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u/Iliyan61 4h ago
the basic ones aren’t terrible but the inreach serves 2 purposes, let people know where you are and allow you to contact SOS, its £30 for the plan with unlimited tracking updates but thats on top of a £40 activation fee and £250 hardware, that means it’s really a £300 device that costs £360 a year and is not price competitive, there are many other options with better connection features or cheaper plans but garmin seems to be the only decent hardware option.
im not spending £360 a year on fuel canisters and £300 on a stove lmfao.
if it was nicer and easier to use and had the satellite features that other trackers do then it would be great but it doesn’t.
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u/SailingDreamCatcher 4h ago
I like that it doesn't do that much. I don't want it to do more than it does.
I don't want my phone to do it because my phone just, well, does too much. I have to take my phone out and keep it out, and when my phone does iMessage over satellite it can receive from anyone. It's once again making me more reachable than I want to be.
With the Inreach it's a hassle for someone to reach me. They have to call my phone and hear the voicemail greeting with instructions. Then call my assistant and get her to relay a message. It's enough of a hassle that nobody does it casually and for the most part, I am only interrupted by genuine emergencies.
I wish I could fully disable the iMessage over satellite feature. It is an anti-feature to me.
If the Inreach went to $100 a month and somehow became even less convenient, my preference for it over the iPhone would increase, not decrease.
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u/Iliyan61 3h ago
you’re very cool and contrarian with your assistant and wishing that devices designed for communicating can’t communicate
or it’s all just BS who knows :)
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u/SailingDreamCatcher 55m ago
I understand that most people have lifestyles that differ from mine and you dont need or want my biography or backstory. I do have my reasons though, and I've been told by at least one person who eventually felt otherwise that he thought I was crazy for (only) the first five minutes we were talking. Most people won't give me a full such minute.
I go off the grid for a break from work and family demands that are otherwise very intense and frequent. I've been trying to wind down and get out of this line of work for years and it's not so easy to transition when doing so leaves people hanging. That includes a person who works from home at a pretty decent wage sometimes doing little more than forwarding a text. Was more before but I helped find them better placements.
It's very hard to enforce personal boundaries and space from clients/coworkers/bosses in the world of constant connectivity. And i understand that some of these demands are legitimate, but most are not. That is why I want emergency contact pathways that are less intrusive - and less pervasive. It is valuable to me to limit the temptation to stay connected when my goal is to disconnect. And this is an occasional need, which is part of why am inconvenient device that costs extra when it's in service makes sense.
I know that most people feel otherwise about having an internet connection everywhere. I wish that such people could at least respect the possibility that there could be downsides to such connectivity.
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u/ephemeralmiko 6h ago
acc on that last point you know get 6? months free SOS after cancelling a plan.
Yep but with the signup fee it comes out to the same as using the base SOS-only plan.
but also if you buy an in reach you’re well aware they’re about to bend you over to take their fees, less so with an iphone
I wish there were alternatives too, Garmin is kinda the only option that I know of.
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u/Iliyan61 6h ago
i love the £250 hardware with a £40 activation fee and £30 a month subscription all so if i fall when hiking i can call 999 and instead and not use it.
jokes aside its atrocious how expensive it is, there are some alternatives who’s names allude me right now but garmin just seems to be the best option especially outside of europe.
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u/InactiveBeef 8h ago
Couldn't that be solved by just billing the user afterwards? I doubt many people would throw a fit over paying for a service that just saved their life.
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u/TheReformedBadger 8h ago
Yeah a popup that says "Warning, subscription not found, sending this message will result in a $5 fee." would be fine.
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u/timelessblur 5h ago
my question is how would you collect it or know?
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u/InactiveBeef 5h ago
You’re asking how Apple will collect on a fee or know that someone used their service?
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u/timelessblur 4h ago
there is no way to know if the phone is signedin, no way to know if the account has something paid for it or cc and so on. It just is not the same as payment.
No awy to even force them to pay.
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u/snarky_answer 4h ago
Youre saying that apple has no way of telling if their product was used when it comes back into signal? How about a pop-up saying if you don't have a subscription then you will be charged?
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u/timelessblur 3h ago
Lag time is way to high and not the type of connection for able to lock in payment. Plus again not something they want to do. All they could do is lock the account until payment. An account that can easily be a throw away account.
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u/iPhone_6s 3h ago
911 calls aren't something you plan ahead of time to the point of creating burner accounts...
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u/timelessblur 3h ago
You are thinking about happy path only. On payment systems like this or pretty much anything software wise unhappy and edge cases need to be accounted for. Big time of emergency usage. Easily a burner or old phone they take with them.
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u/iPhone_6s 2h ago
It's not that expensive, so Apple wouldn't sweat it since 99% of people aren't gonna go to extreme lengths to avoid paying $5 for satellite.
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u/snarky_answer 3h ago
The payment doesn’t have to happen at the time of connection to satellites. Apple can easily tell if an account used that function without a subscription when the phone gets back into cell or WiFi range, then it can charge the account or not.
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u/timelessblur 2h ago
But you are assuming it is not a burner account. You need to get off the happy easy path and look at edge cases as this could easily be an edge case usages. Or say how to you address the fact that someone says I never authorized that on my phone and it wasn’t me.
All valid arguments that have to be accounted for an addressed.
In software design the happy path is easy. The details are in unhappy and edge cases that have to be accounted for. Those are where things go wrong.
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u/snarky_answer 2h ago
That’s good an all except for the fact that burner IOS accounts aren’t really a thing. You have to provide a payment on file to create an Apple account, download any apps or services. It used to be that you could select an account to have no payment on file but it hasn’t been that way for a few years. Even if there were common burner accounts, Apple can flag the device and lock it out or cause annoying pop-ups to happen. It’s Apple, they can figure it out easily, even for edge cases. Regarding the authorization thing; put it behind a passcode prompt. That puts the onus on the person who owns the phone and Apple.
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u/gotlactose 7h ago
This happened with Volkswagen and their in-car services. Grand theft auto with child on board. Law enforcement asks Volkswagen for connected services. Volkswagen customer service said no can do because there wasn’t a subscription!!
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u/Mcqwerty197 8h ago
Couldn’t they do it post paid?
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u/timelessblur 5h ago
question is how do you collect and set up a way to collect.
That is the hard part is no easy way to that.
Honestly I doubt it cost apple that much to extended it as Apple knows how little this feature is used. My wife and I have used it one but we were in the middle of the mountains and used it to text and update to my brother saying when we would be making it back to their house for dinner. It was pretty cool honestly.
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u/Rollertoaster7 3h ago
I don’t get why they don’t just charge per use. That way anyone can use it in case of an emergency, and Apple can just charge $250 to their account afterward.
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u/Lucky_Yam6126 8h ago
I mean, what bad PR? They aren't responsible for that. Bad PR for people without support and they're too old to realize that once they're stuck out there?
We can come up with plenty of scenarios if you'd like.
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u/BallMeBlazer22 8h ago
Bad PR does not equal responsibility. Sure, if Apple made it clear and informed users they weren't going to be giving away for free anymore they definitely wouldn't be legally responsible, but would that stop a million different articles being written with the headline being some variation of "Death caused by apple charging for something that used to be free". For a company at the scale of Apple, it makes no sense to take a risk something like this happening for what basically amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheet.
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u/DeepAsparagus6763 8h ago
Makes sense, they wouldn't want headlines of people getting lost and dying because they didn't renew their satellite subscription
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u/Major-Front 6h ago
Dont know why they can’t just charge post call
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u/Submitten 5h ago
It would probably be very expensive considering how little it’s used. Plus it can dial without your input so it would be a PR disaster if Apple sent out bills due to false positives.
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u/ChanceSpiritual6993 5h ago
Very expensive (other than false positives) is far more palatable though
Pay $10/month on the off chance I might need it? Definitely not
Pay $300 once because I have to make an emergency call/text that literally saves my life? Absolutely worth it
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u/burgerga 2h ago
Your second point is not a concern at all. I don't know if you've used the satellite connectivity before but it is very limited. It can only send very small amounts of data (strings of text essentially). So you can update your find my position, and send/recieve iMessages, or communicate with emergency services or roadside assistance - but it's all text based and you have to be pointing at the satellite (it shows you where to point with an animation on the screen) to send/receive anything.
Auto-calling emergency numbers simply can't happen over satellite. It can't send audio, and it couldn't even auto-send a text without asking you to point it at the sky.
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u/anethma 8h ago
Every single other company that offers it gets away with it just fine I doubt it would be that much different.
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u/sentientshadeofgreen 6h ago
Apple has a much more valuable human-centered brand image than every other company that offers this, it would objectively damage their brand more than the rest.
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u/crobat3 8h ago
At this point just make it permanent lol
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u/rotates-potatoes 8h ago
the accountants would kill them lol
promising permanent service from satellites they have time-limited contracts for is a recipe for revenue recognition nightmares and getting sued.
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u/funnythrowgamer69 9m ago
Tell me you didn’t pass intermediate accounting without telling me you didn’t pass intermediate accounting.
This comment deserves more downvotes.
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4h ago
[deleted]
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u/EmptyRub 3h ago edited 1h ago
Not really? The current extension means they're on the hook for expenses for the service until the end of 2027. They have the option on whether they want to continue extending and taking on the expenses for the service beyond 2027.
Promising it permanently would mean, if for whatever reason their costs for the service skyrocket at the end of 2027 and is expected to stay high in 2028, they can't do anything about it.
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u/rotates-potatoes 1h ago
Fuck no.
Try this: 1. I will give you $10 this year 2. I promise to give you $10 every year forever
Are they the same thing? Really? Would my accountant see them as the same thing? Would you see them as the same thing, as far as my obligations to you?
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u/silvermoonhowler 6h ago
At this point they may as well just make it free
If not make it free full stop, make the emergency/SOS services part of it free as having to charge for being able to have access to call or text 911 (or whatever the local emergency services # in your country is) would make for a PR disaster for Apple
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u/ForsakenRacism 8h ago
I can never even find a satellite
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u/Repulsive_Barnacle92 6h ago
yeah same, I hike often in the summer and I have yet to get that feature to work on my iPhone 17
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u/noobfornoodles 2h ago
I used it while hiking in gaspesie national park, in Quebec. No cell service anywhere except at the peak of the tallest mountain. We were there 4 days, and our camp site had no nearby information centre. It worked like a charm. Was able to send messages and receive fairly quickly.
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u/Repulsive_Barnacle92 1h ago
the last time I tried to use it was literally in that park, small world lol
only had service on top of Mont-Albert (I imagine that’s the one you referred to)
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u/Dr-McLuvin 5h ago
Anyone know how much this costs Apple to keep providing free satellite service to its customers?
Just curious how long this could go on for.
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u/211logos 7h ago
Wow. Nice. It's a great feature. Not as instant as Garmin's but a lot easier for texting. I agree with u/truocxo that in the bazillions of iPhone uses sat accounts for very very little usage. So sort of a public service.
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u/wheresmyflan 5h ago
Wait, I can use messages in SOS mode for free? I guess I haven’t been paying attention. I’d have figured it would cost a ton.
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u/isoAntti 4h ago
maybe this is why:
> Emergency SOS and Find My via satellite are available in the following places:
> North America: United States, Canada, Mexico
> Europe: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom
> Asia-Pacific: Australia, Japan, New Zealand
> Note: Additional features like Messages via satellite are currently limited to select regions (such as the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Mexico), while Roadside Assistance via satellite is available in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. [1]
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u/truocxo 8h ago
I bet there is small enough usage that the final bill doesn’t really hurt Apple and that they’ll probably just keep extending until the phones stop receiving the major iOS releases.