Whether you subscribe to the 2TB iCloud+ tier individually or pay for Apple One Premier, you’re getting the new Apple Intelligence in Apple Home features announced during WWDC 2026.
Apple didn’t break out exactly what customers might have to pay in order to access its most advanced AI features. While there aren’t any separate AI subscriptions or token purchase programs, users will need to spend more cash for the most access.
In the macOS Golden Gate beta release notes, Apple has confirmed that the Apple Home AI features will require the 2TB iCloud+ plan. On its own, that is a $10 a month plan, or is included with the $37.95 Apple One Premier subscription tier.
Either way, customers already paying for these products will gain more Apple Home features. The 2TB iCloud+ plan was already required to have unlimited cameras for HomeKit Secure Video.
While Apple isn’t being clear about which features are being lumped in here, it seems it is just referring to the HomeKit Secure Video AI analysis feature. It analyzes footage locally for people, objects, and events to piece together what happens in a recorded clip.
In the Apple Home app, those events can be stitched together into a series of clips, or shown as priority events. Either way, it is meant to serve as an easier way to review and search video recordings.
The notification grouping and 4K HomeKit Secure Video support don’t appear to be tied to the subscription, since they’re not relying on Apple’s AI image models. The lower 200GB and 50GB tiers are limited to 5 cameras and 2 cameras respectively.
Apple is making it clear: if you want full access to its AI and cloud features, you need to pay for its more premium services. It isn’t clear if Apple plans to offer separate AI subscriptions in the future.
I reluctantly upgraded from my Pixel 4a in late 2024, which means I spent four years clinging to a phone that still felt like a phone. Part of that was the size. The Pixel 4a was small enough to use without performing thumb yoga, a disappearing luxury now that flagships have settled into pocket-tablet territory. That’s an argument for another day.
The uglier issue is what happened after I moved on. In January 2025, Google pushed an automatic Android 13 update to Pixel 4a phones. Google’s own support page says the update reduced available battery capacity and affected charging performance on some impacted devices. Reddit users were less polite. One r/Pixel4a post said the battery suddenly had “around 40% of its former capacity” after the patch.
For poor ol’ 4a, that was basically the death knell.
When an update becomes the problem
A dying battery is normal. A four-year-old phone needing service isn’t exactly a scandal. Batteries age, screens fail, ports loosen, and gravity remains undefeated.
Google Pixel 4aAndy Boxall / Digital Trends
This felt different. The phone didn’t simply get old in someone’s pocket. Its usable life changed after a company-controlled patch, and the owner was left to deal with the result. The Verge reported that the update was tied to overheating-risk mitigation and reduced charging capacity by more than 50% on affected units. Battery safety is real. It still doesn’t erase the experience of waking up to a phone that suddenly can’t survive the day.
That’s what update death looks like. Software doesn’t just support aging hardware anymore. It can also decide when that hardware becomes miserable to keep using.
When every patch feels haunted
My wife, who’s rocking an S24 Ultra, has a different version of the same dread. She keeps running into Reddit threads about Samsung Galaxy phones and the dreaded green line, that bright vertical scar that makes a screen look like it has been reassigned to a cyberpunk prop department. One r/S23 user wrote that a green line appeared on a carefully maintained phone after about a year and a half, then said Samsung service quoted a screen replacement because the warranty was over. Another Samsung Community post claimed a green-line issue appeared after an August update, with the display allegedly working perfectly before it.
Reddit isn’t a forensic lab with avatars. A green line can come from boring hardware failure, not corporate villainy with a release calendar. Still, the anxiety is real. People don’t only worry that an update will move a button or ruin a camera setting. They worry it might be the thing that nudges a working device from “old” to “not worth repairing.”
Modern gadgets are never fully handed over. They keep phoning home. They keep asking for patches. They keep depending on decisions made long after the receipt has faded. Ownership now comes with a quiet asterisk.
The graveyard got software updates
Planned obsolescence used to sound like tinfoil-hat consumer paranoia, which was convenient for everyone selling the new thing. Then regulators started writing it down in boring official language. In 2018, Italy’s competition authority fined Samsung and Apple after finding that software and firmware updates caused serious malfunctions, reduced performance, and sped up replacement of older phones. Samsung was fined €5 million, while Apple was fined €10 million.
Apple’s battery-throttling mess made the suspicion harder to laugh off. In the US, Apple agreed to a settlement of up to $500 million over claims that it slowed older iPhones, while a separate multistate settlement required Apple to pay $113 million over alleged misrepresentations around iPhone batteries and performance throttling. Consumers weren’t hallucinating the pattern. The receipts were scattered across court filings, regulatory decisions, and phones that suddenly felt older than they had the day before.
Europe seems less willing to accept “trust us” as a product-lifetime policy. New EU rules for smartphones and tablets started applying on June 20, 2025, covering durability, repairability, battery life, and software updates. New labels put some of that lifespan math in front of shoppers before checkout.
The post-warranty graveyard used to be easy to recognize: cracked screens, swollen batteries, and charging ports full of pocket lint. Now the graveyard has paperwork, compatibility warnings, and software that slowly stops cooperating. The gadget can still turn on. It can still look fine on a desk. Then one day the company changes what “usable” means, and the thing you paid for starts practicing being trash.
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