If you felt the Earth's rotation temporarily stop today, that's because Apple just held one of their Apple Live events in California. The big news surrounded the Apple Watch, but what really got us going was the official announcement regarding HBO's long talked-about standalone streaming service, which will be called HBO Now. At $15 a month, HBO Now will be available at the beginning of April exclusively on Apple products (here's the offical site), which is a mighty victory for the tech giant. That means, if you have Apple TV, an iPad, iPhone, and even an iPod touch, you can access every single morcel of content in the HBO archive without a cable subscription. "All you need to get HBO Now is a broadband connection and an Apple device," HBO CEO Richard Plepler told the crowd. To sweeten the deal, HBO is offering a 30-day free trial to anyone who signs up in April.
It might seem like a weird move for HBO, at least for the moment, to limit HBO Now to Apple devices, especially since their competition like Netflix and Amazon Prime are not exclusive to any one company. But as CNN's Brian Stelter reports, Apple's window is three months, which gives it enough time to draw in more users. After that, the service can be sold by other providers.
To announce this partnership, Apple debuted the new trailer for Game of Thrones' highly anticipated new season, which shoud be worth the price of admission alone. Watch it here.
(Via The Verge)
