> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Which kind of implies it will be a pay for service after two years.
If I were the product manager there, I would fight tooth and nail to only make a short term commitment to support it at all. Two years in, if it's un unmitigated disaster costing $1B/year and generating zero rescues and zero PR, kill it. You can't do that if you've promised "free for the life of the phone" or something.
Much more likely they'll just add P2P messaging as a paid feature.
Don't think they want to look like they're charging people to keep their lives.
So I think this is an advantage. If, lets say, it costs 4.99 a year, I think a good percentage of people would do that (me included, even though I'm not an iPhone user).
And don't require the payment to go through before unlocking the feature, obviously. There will be some people who you can never collect payment from, but not that many.
I think it's a shitty thing to do to not at least say what the cost will be at least given today's information.