1. On the Home screen, tap Settings.
2. Tap iTunes & App Store.
3. Tap your Apple ID at the top of the screen.
4. Tap View Apple ID.
This has always seemed like a horrible user-hostile dark-pattern on Apple's part. When you subscribe, Apple says to go to Settings to unsubscribe or turn off auto-renew, but it's very opaque. It's also hidden behind a username/password prompt.
It would be much better if there were a Subscriptions option directly under 'iTunes & App Store' – even if there were still a password prompt behind this, at least people would know how to find it.
But Apple have long, long needed to modernise their entire iTunes Store experience, of which subscriptions are just one small problem. Does anyone know if it's still running on WebObjects? The whole experience has always felt slow and un-responsive, which felt normal when it first launched, but now feels very behind the times. It wouldn't surprise me if the subscriptions issue is a result of this too. Would be interested to hear if this is the case.
It's always felt like poor discoverability and lag were big reasons behind their social efforts (Ping/Connect) failing too. Not every social network needs a web presence, but presumably it'd help to be able to access/link to this content on the web at large, rather than it being buried deep inside existing apps.
Redacted example from my site: http://imgur.com/a/cL0t7
The Settings app built-in search doesn't work either. If you search for "Subscriptions" it doesn't appear, because it's behind hidden behind this password prompt (to be more generous, that entire screen is probably only generated once you've logged in, but it doesn't have to be that way).
Additionally, the "View Apple ID" button itself is also non-obvious: you have to click your email address first for it to come up as a pop-over. I recognise my email address in blue is a link to my account information, but a less experienced user might (reasonably) think otherwise. It would probably be better for your account name to have a right disclosure arrow next to it (taking you to a new view with your account options inside) to specifically indicate that touching it takes you to this new screen, because that's the way everything else in the Settings app works.
To solve all of this, you could just as easily put the "Subscriptions" button one level up in the "iTunes & App Store" screen, before the password prompt, and only prompt for a password after the user has clicked it. This would solve all of these problems.
If this sounds confusing, that's because it is. That's the real problem here.
This, of course, is part of why it's such an awful phrase. It's too nerd-cool to avoid being overapplied by cool nerds.
WebObjects has been discontinued, presumably for a reason, and while it was ahead of its time back in the day, it wouldn't be surprising to me if its age is starting to show when trying to deal with the huge amounts of traffic the iTunes Store must handle. But I really don't know. I only asked because I've seen it mentioned in this context before.
I've personally experienced a lot of flakiness with the Apple ID infrastructure though, especially with 2-factor auth enabled (their old 2-factor auth, not the new system which I haven't tried yet). Most recently when trying to purchase AppleCare after the fact, I just couldn't log in. I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes.
I'm a relatively-infrequent Apple user who signed up for HBO Now when it first came out and you had to sign up exclusively via an iPhone App. As it turned out, you could use the credentials obtained from that signup to sign in with any web browser and stream content. You didn't need to use the app itself.
Apple was literally just handling payments and subscriptions for HBO Now, exclusively, for 3 months.
Imagine my frustration at trying to find out when my subscription was set to renew. Why am I supposed to know that iTunes and App Store settings is where I should look for anything to do with a subscription for something that isn't visibly tied to either iTunes or the App Store?
Taps #3 and #4 are truly banana-pants insane though.
They're huge companies.
Turns out that the process to do this involves first configuring the city in an app within the iPhone, and then on the watch doing a series of UI actions: a force-touch, a swipe, a tap and turning the "digital crown" to find the right city within a UI element that is a list although it doesn't look like one. Several of these actions are entirely undiscoverable (the force-touch and digital crown in these contexts are just actions you have to stumble on by trying all the possible combinations, I guess).
I don't think there would have been any way to figure this out without googling it. And this is a feature that's prominently displayed in the default view of the Apple Watch screen, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that users will want to change the city.
It's hard to believe that this device was designed by the company famous for the one-button mouse. I do find the physical design attractive though.
Simple is great, but not when you try to make simple do complex.
Windows 10: will upgrade your computer while you are sleeping without consent
OSX El Capitan: free upgrade requires you to create an account and type in your credit card number
Found out, unless you have the pro version, you can't even tell Windows not to do that. You can only set a period of time where Windows will do it (like 2 am) so it doesn't do it at more inconvenient times.
OS X upgrades are worse, in my opinion. For any given version, Apple just nags me to install it. But if I go from major version to major version, suddenly selling my MBP gets complicated, because I can only install the version that it came with after I wipe it. It's up to the person who buys it from me to log in to Apple and update the OS to a more recent version.
Then there's iOS which nags you constantly to install updates that have been known to brick some devices...
That isn't true. You can install a fresh copy of the most recent OS.
Apple also historically had a small fraction as many users as Microsoft and had Steve Jobs, who didn't seem to care if existing users were bothered and instead wanted the experience to always be perfect.
Once you reach a certain number of users, any menu or UI change becomes increasingly painful for your current users, at the expense of new users and, sometimes, what feels like common sense.
However, this may only serve to compound the problem.
I personally don't see what benefit putting the subscription management behind an unrelated UI widget that doesn't even appear to be clickable could possibly bring to an end-user. Or how such a design got through usability testing in the first place. Hence the likelihood for a dark pattern seems pretty high to me here.
Still, if Apple's barometer has become "just to be less sucky" then Google and MS, they're still doing awesome.
6. Tap Subscriptions > Manage
7. Tap on a subscription
That's a crazy convoluted flow. It's hard to believe it was made that way on accident. Hopefully this change in iOS 10.
1. Play Store
2. hamburger menu
3. Account
4. Subscriptions
Not a lot better, but at least makes more sense than "View Apple ID" I think.
apple isn't new to this kind of outsourcing