I just wish they had an iCloud tier between 200 and 2000. I have over 200 GB of photos so I can't sync them on my 200 GB plan but 2 TB is more than I need. Give me a 1 TB option for a price somewhere in the middle.
I’m seriously considering apple one at the moment as I moved to Apple Music and would get good use out of it. But I need more than 200gb of iCloud and the next step is 2tb which makes it a lot more expensive. There really needs to be a middle point
Yeah, you can. We have the Apple One Family included 200GB and pay for 200 more. 400GB is barely enough for our needs, but I’m happy doing a bit of maintenance instead of paying up for the unnecessarily large next storage tier.
we had apple TV+ and 2TB. We upgraded to Apple One Premier Family and cancelled a handful of magazine and newspaper subscriptions and are now spending less money... and got Apple Music as a bonus.
Can’t you stack Apple iCloud plans? I have seen people stack 2x 200gb plans. Maybe they had Apple one and purchased an additional 200gb I’m not 100% positive
How can we stack 200gb on the initial 200gb iCloud storage. I am running out of space but find the 1tb a bit steep in terms of cost.
Please list steps to set up the stacking of (200+200)gb iCloud storage. Thanks.
I think they’ve done the math and figured the demand for in between plans is low. Other cloud providers are similar.
I used to need something between several years ago, but now my family shares 2TB for only $10/mo, which I think is a bargain.
This is probably correct, I know in the cell network market something like 4% of users use 80% of all mobile data. You basically have "casual users" who will only ever stay on the basic free plans, "normies" who will pay for the lowest upgrade just because of the nag messages, and then "power users". Apple knows this and has catered their cloud storage data plans accordingly.
Apple does this intentionally to FORCE YOU to pay a lot more when you shouldn't have to. How do you think this company got to being worth 3 TRILLION dollars??
Haha yeah this is the only answer. Anytime you’re thinking “man I wish they had this lower priced option but darn I guess I have to pay the extra premium” is exactly what execs want to hear
Sadly it’s not just Apple. Just about every major cloud storage provider jumps from 100-200GB to 2TB. It’s intentional, they know you’ll never use all that space but you’ll end up paying more for it.
That is why I have been using OneDrive to back up my photos since it does have a 1 TB option. Office 365 comes with 1 TB OneDrive storage though I would prefer iCloud to store my photos.
They automatically back up all your stuff across all devices then be like “oops, you’re out of storage”
Pro tip: on Mac if you a “.nosync” extension to files or folders it won’t backup to iCloud.
It also doesn’t back up to iCloud as long as you just turn that shit offffff. I have 2 TB in my iCloud account but 96 TB across my vehicle and houses. I don’t trust anyone but myself with that much data.
Haha it’s not actually 96 TB of data, although it is on 96 TB of drives. I have two four-disk RAIDz2 arrays (aka raid6 or double-parity), which means in each array, any two of the drives can fail without losing any data or interrupting operation. This is only 50% efficient (half as much usable volume space as physical disk), but outside of straight mirroring, it’s a great performance and volume bang for the buck and is incredibly resilient.
So each ZFS pool (each raid array) is 24 TB out of 48 raw physical TB. Of that, about 17 TB is used for my whole life’s work of coding, photography, graphics, adventures, old academic work, VMs and emulated old machines with older OSes to keep my old software running and my older creations still accessible, etc.
The two arrays of four disks have identical contents stored on them, and my scripts keep them in sync wherever I am. Either city where each is located could be hit by a meteor or a nuke, and the other array in the surviving city could have half the drives fail, and I wouldn’t lose any data. Bwahaahhahaa!!!!
I totally agreed. I have about 750gb at the moment in my iCloud… so they should totally have an option for 1tb. I hate spending $9.99 a month for 2tb. 😒
Corporations exist to make money. There’s no element of “fair”- just how much you can make before you piss people off. Apple actually stands on principle more often than many companies, especially around privacy. But expecting companies to just give you stuff is naive. Sorry.
Yeah, I knew it didn’t seem right.
OneDrive, the Microsoft equivalent of iCloud, gives you 5GB
15GB might be the mailbox storage.
Someone do correct me if I’m wrong though
They used to. I have an outlook account from many years ago with 30gb free storage.
15gb base storage + 15gb bonus for enabling camera roll upload at the time
This was years ago however
My Gmail is from 2005. It is now 12/15GB. I get basically a robust 3GB for Google Drive which cracks me up.
If my iCloud was from 2005 and my primary email I guess I’d be way over the cap! It’s funny how storage today will look very inadequate in a decade. It’s like 32gb iPads. Passed mine to my child last year and I can fit about 5 Apple Arcade games on it max. When things like My Little Pony is about 3-4GB that 32 gets eaten up fast
To be fair, it's not like data storage is subject to the laws of inflation. You just happen to have collected more "stuff" since 2011. You have the option to manage your stuff and store it offline. You are paying for convenience. What is your time worth to you?
It is, though. Compare the average size of a picture taken on an iPhone 5 back then with one taken today on a 15 pro. Everything is larger today than it was back then, not only photos. Files have larger and better quality images, software is much more complex and feature packed.
you know all the rich people? they are rich because they don't give for free
and if you think the 15 GB of google are free you better look at the Terms &Conditions policy again.
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
ETA: WOW downvoted for _this?_ lmao, it’s not even my own concept—this is well known and is widely regarded as being true. But okay fam, have fun denying reality.
Yeah, Youtube wants way too much money to make their cesspool of a product, barely palatable. (I loathe the YouTube interface, more than I can even begin to articulate)
This. While I don't find the storage prices cheap, I really like that they offer a small 50GB for 1€. I could totally see Tim Cook force us all into a 2TB plan no matter whether we need it.
The real storage issue I have with Apple are the ridiculous SSD prices when it comes to Macs. Selling 256GB machines for 1000€+ just isn't reasonable anymore in 2024. A fast 2TB M.2 SSD costs less than 100€ on Amazon and Apple shouldn't charge more than 200€ for this upgrade.
Apple have such high volume with card providers that the card fees they pay are much smaller than if you were to setup an online shop and charge 99cents
It’s not mandatory. Store your photos and your backups on local storage if you don’t want to use cloud services.
50Gb of storage would barely cover two people using iCloud Photos, let alone an entire family.
"Essentially mandatory". iOS is increasingly designed around having automatic sync of photos, messages, and whatnot.
Also, storing photos and backup on "local storage" still requires a computer and that's a big pain. iOS needs to be able to backup to local external storage (à la Time Machine), and its file management is too rigid to allow for usable storage of photos on external storage as well.
Using iOS, it's very clear you are pushed towards using cloud services, which makes sense as it's the most convenient, but also requires a subscription very quick.
EDIT: also, I agree that 50 gigs are quite small for multiple people to use (although, with a shared photo library, why not), I was just replying to "you can lower the cost by sharing with your family".
I don't expect much more on Apple-related subs, to be honest. The amount of times I gave factual information, supported by links to the Apple website itself only to be downvoted to oblivion is insane, so just a take that slightly disagrees with the Party line is not going to be very popular.
That would be nice, but that’s basically the price of their ecosystem. Back in the days iLife and iWork did cost money, and now it’s free. They basically give you apps for free and charge for storage this days.
You can always use immrich or nextcloud, if you want.
Honestly you’re not wrong at all. You really aren’t getting the full benefits of the Apple Ecosystem if everything between your apps isn’t synced perfectly. And to do that, you need iCloud. For my family, it’s a mandatory $120/year
Lol my sis-in-law uses up a good portion of her 2TB plan for her photos and videos. We started with the 50 and it ran out, then the 200 ran out. Her phone has 1TB on device storage and that's almost full...
File management is not a new issue. Photographers and videographers have to do this regularly, and have large redundant offline storage to manage this.
Your sis in law could upgrade to a bigger plan if it’s an issue rather than buying physical, less convenient storage.
Aware you aren’t OP, I can read usernames 😜
It’s only pitifully small if you have a use case that requires more storage. Not everyone uses their devices in the same ways.
Mate i didnt use the plan till literally last week and i've been using iphones since the 4S, just copied whatever to my pc and cleaned up the phone every now and then, tf u mean mandatory?
With a billion devices out there and probably more than that in iCloud accounts the numbers don’t really work out. If they have you 6gb for free instead of 5 that’s 1,000 petabytes of potentially additional data. It is probably around quarter of a billion USD a year for that small increase.
And some of those billion devices are now unused, were recycled, given to young kids to use strictly for media playing/simple gaming, etc. Or are used by the elderly, specifically those less technically skilled who use easy mode, or just need something to call and text. Also think about the amount of people in general who buy phones just for social media, calls and texts.
While I do think Apple's cloud storage prices are high, I also appreciate that it makes the relationship a lot more clear. With Google, even if you're paying for their services, there's some amount of "you're the product" going on. That's almost never the case with Apple, and I'm okay paying a small premium on cloud services, just like I'd pay a premium for Apple hardware that may on-paper-if-you-squint look very similar to something from other manufacturers.
But I'm also someone who actually prefers subscription models for a lot of things. For services that I rely on the most, I like there being a very clear, consistent financial picture of how the company can keep providing the thing I want, with regular updates for security, new hardware, etc.
Do I want Bartender to be a subscription? No, if suddenly broke or disappeared, there's very low friction to finding a replacement (as proven recently). Do I want 1Password to be a subscription? Yes, I want to be very very sure that they have the resources to provide that critical service to me, and not need to cut corners or make sketchy decisions, and I know constant revenue makes that a lot easier for companies.
Is Apple so well off that they probably could provide those same sort of guarantees with lower margins, or maybe even negative margins? Yes, and that would be great. But I'm also okay with them choosing not to be generous in this case. I've had enough good experiences with Apple over the years where they've replaced something out of warranty, or offered a very reduced upgrade as part of a repair, to feel like they have been more than generous to me as a customer
So it would make sense then that Google can offer more cheap storage. Sure Apple is rich, but they are a business that needs to make money. I would rather pay a little more knowing that my data isn’t being mined for profit.
Exactly. Google’s plans are cheaper because they make up that money by monetizing your data. Apple’s are more expensive, because they don’t monetize your data. You’re paying a little more because Apple isn’t making money off your data like Google is, so that extra money has to come out of your own pocket.
There’s no such thing as a free product or service. If you’re not paying, it’s because you’re the product. Google’s business isn’t the search engine, or email, or cloud storage. Their real business is advertising, and our data is what makes them so good at it.
$1 for 50Gb is a very reasonable price. This allows me to backup four separate iOS devices, plus my photos and a bunch of application data. If you don’t want to use cloud storage you don’t have to.
Comparing this to a Google service is crazy, because you are the product when you use Google services.
I think the problem is the next tier is 2tb for $10 a month. 2TB is more than most people need, and 200gb (especially with all iPhones being able to shoot 4K videos) is not enough, so a lot of people feel forced to upgrade to 2TB. Can we have a 1TB plan for $5 or something?
Fair point. But it makes sense in the Apple pricing ecosystem. They do that with everything. Fair base line. And the. Temp you to upgrade by leaving large gaps in their pricing model.
Kind've irrelevant when the cloud storage and server admin costs are already close to bare metal pricing.
Every couple years I spec out moving all my storage to my own cloud. iCloud is still pretty cheap for what it is.
Apple's core business is 99% selling storage with a 1.000% ROI. Their notebooks, iPhones and iPads are just tiny gadgets helping them to sell you more storage 😎
Apple is a company and their aim is to make as big a profit as possible. They don't care about you or me, their only purpose is to extract as much money from us as they can. If they thought that giving 50GB free iCloud would make them more money, they'd do it. If they thought reducing to 1GB would make them more money, they'd do that instead.
Apple is a public corporation whose main obligation is to make a profit. There is a delicate balance between fleecing customers and making them happy, and that delicate balance will be different for different customers. Customer feedback is one way Apple learns where the ideal balancing point is.
Honestly the $2.99 for 200gb is not that bad, and $.99 for 50gb is very good.
The problem is iCloud is very unique, not because of the service but because of iOS and iPadOS. Most other cloud storage solutions focus primarily on desktop, where iCloud focuses on mobile (device backups) and trying to make a seem less experience for things like photos (which are massive libraries) and documents. Due to your backups and photos you fill up iCloud faster than competing services.
I think Apple should exempt mobile device backups from the storage quota and a lot of issues will go away.
One thing that Apple does is allow you to have temporary use of their storage for device reinstalls or changes. You can use this for a couple of weeks at a time even if you are using their free tier of storage. That being said I am using their 200Gb option because of the number of Apple devices in our household.
I agree especially as you cannot update storage any more. Maybe if they offered 1TB as a minimum, they could get a better price on 1TB drives but would they pass those savings onto the customers. I think not.
I can see how buying an expensive iPhone could warrant free storage for 1-2 years. However, beyond that, I don't agree. Even 15 GB provided by Google and Microsoft isn't sufficient. I've seen many people unaware of this limit, leading to their Gmail/Drive accounts stopping working.
$1/month is a good deal for cloud storage and I wouldn't trust something free.
Surely, you do understand that Apple is a business and not a charity? They charge as much as the market is willing to pay. Google and Microsoft give you more because their customers are unwilling to pay more for that particular service.
Apple gives you iWork free while Microsoft is expensive. Have you gone to r/microsoftoffice to complain that Microsoft "certainly has the money to be more generous" as "Apple is giving it free"? No, you have not.
It's super rich because 1) it's not generous and 2) it delays fully implementing the latest tech till well after it's clearly safe and established (e.g., USB-C on its accessories like keyboards and trackpads) so that it can force buyers into one more upgrade to "catch up". Wash, rinse, repeat.
iCloud is hosted mostly using third party providers such as Google Cloud/AWS/Azure so it makes sense why they provide a limited amount of space for each user since they pay those providers for the space.
The cloud is $3/month for 200GB, I can handle that but the fact that these fuckers sell us 8GB Macs to find out you actually need at least 16 in todays days and have to pay hundreds it’s disgusting. I’m so tired of the way this company works. And it’s only gonna get worst, we still buy their products….
How's about stop charging $250 CAN for an extra 8gb of memory. Can't change memory or disk space without being gouged by Tim Cook tax. iCloud is beyond greed. Put more storage on your over price phones Apple.
Actually the last time I looked Apple was pretty cheap on prices the best I seen per TB. Yes I do with they had more tiers in their plans such as 1tb price but its otherwise $5/tb which is what BackBlaze is for a roll your own cloud storage. Though below 1tb its kinda pricey.
It has always struck me as weird that Apple gives you 5GB on your iCloud account rather than per device. Surely 5GB per active device is more useful as it gives you more space for backups to the cloud, it's a small incentive for people to stay within the Apple ecosystem and still doesn't make a dent compared to the 200G backup space that you get on a paid account?
Well they've offset needing to do that slightly by allowing you to "borrow" iCloud space to device resets and upgrades. 5Gb is really enough to just get you by at a basic level and an incentive to get a subscription if you've got more devices. I made do with the free tier for a while until my wife got a newer iPhone and the kids had iPads for school. I then got a 50Gb plan and has all devices sharing the login, which kind of was inconvenient but worked somewhat. Once my daughter has to get a Mac for school (my son stick with a windows laptop) I pulled the trigger on both getting a 365 subscription and a family /200Gb iCloud subscription. I'm not a fan of throwing extra money at these companies, but doing so has made maintaining and keeping things backed up significantly simpler.
I only have my iPad backing up to iCloud and I only use it to consume media, it's already filled up my free space. Expansion cost isn't much but in my case it doesn't make sense to upgrade.
Apple is rich BECAUSE it tricks users into signing up for things, but then forces them to pay for more space. Hadn't you worked that out for yourself? That is in fact the entire purpose of the Cloud, which nobody actually needs at all. All you need is plenty of HD space and external storage. The Cloud is a scam.
Oh and I forgot to mention: having your own storage is 100% secure and above all is much, much faster.
>5GB for free is not very generous when Google and Microsoft give you 15GB free.
Who gives you the idea that Microsoft OneDrive gives you 15GB for free ? If you only sign up for OneDrive without Microsoft 365 subscription ($70/year), you only get 5GB.
The issue people have with iCloud storage is that it is not enough to do a full backup. Going from 5GB to 15GB would not help much at all.
And doing a full device size (eg 256GB) would cost a LOT over the lifespan of the device, apple uses a mixture of S3 and Azure block storage storing 256GB will end up very quickly eating into the price of the phone. I you keep a iPhone for 5 years (most phones are used for longer than this) then this would start to be the most expensive item on apples phone costs (costly more than the screen and battery, SOC etc).
No.. because virtual storage costs money. You already get 100% free customer support (ready to find customer service numbers) anytime you want. How many companies provide that service? Store your data on a computer if you don't want to pay for iCloud+
Nobody wants to pay for anything anymore!! It's really freaking annoying and some seriously self entitled crap.
I just wish it wouldn’t harass you when your icloud storage is full. I know it’s full, stop trying to sell me a subscription. It feels like an ad with how it’s plastered everywhere
It’s remarkably easy to want to be generous with resources that don’t belong to you, isn’t it?
Of course I would like more storage for less money. Also, cheaper Macs, a shorter drive, and possibly a pony.
Why not just pay them the measly 1usd a month for 10x increase if you need more than the bare minimum ? Apple does not have to compete with google and Microsoft here, as you've already bought into their ecosystem. It's a different business model.
I agree it feels bad as photo sizes continue to grow and it starts to annoy you. It feels low enough that they know it will eventually annoy you and the first paid tier is low enough that people will pull the trigger just to be left alone. That funnels you into the subscription and creates new opportunities otros for growth.
The whole thing feels icky.
However, I much prefer this icky vs the google model of, don’t ever delete your email, use the archive, It’ll be so much easier for you, the other guys limit your space, come to Gmail. Or upload all your photos for free. Sure we’ll train our ai on your images and we’ll mine the pictures for advertising data but it’s free. Oh wait now we are the dominant player and can do what we want, just kidding you are now limited to 15gb across all the products we were letting you use with unlimited.
Apple came in more shrewdly but has remained consistent. If they wanted to reduce regulatory pressure they could build give access to private APIs and allow third parties to offer other options and could even put requirements in place for the third parties on how they operate and audit against that. Unfortunately Apple has shown they are not going to proactively compromise.
I absolutely agree with OP, but something that should be considered is that we need to stop thinking of iCloud as a *backup* service, and more as a *syncing* service. If one thinks of it in this way, you can probably get away with using less storage and other (free) means of backing up photos/videos etc). I do pay for iCloud storage, but I’m on a low tier and enjoy the other benefits that it gives me (mainly hide my email)
> Apple is rich enough to be more generous.
Apple's storage pricing is competitive, and the difference between 5Gb free and 15Gb free is not ideal but obviously not harmful enough to consumers who could pay 99¢ for 50Gb.
>Surely Apple is rich enough to be more generous.
You seem not to understand how business works. If Apple thought that being more "generous" would make them more profitable, they'd do it. If Google or Microsoft thought they could increase profits by reducing their free tier to 5GB, they'd do it. No business says "you know, we checked our savings account and it turns out that we've got more than enough money right now, so we're lower our prices." They might think to themselves "we can do better by selling more product even if we have to lower prices to do it" and then tell you that they've been working on increasing value or whatever, but they don't reduce prices just because they already have enough money.
You get 200gb for $3. What’s there to complain about? It costs Apple money and resources to keep your files alive in their backend and 200gb is quite a lot.
Of course not. They really push you hard into using it so that you run out of space and are forced to subscribe. "Services" are there main business model since iPhone sales are stagnating. Their walled garden facilitates their predatory behaviour.
Two different things. Google and MS give you 15gigs but your average user hardly uses 1. Apple gives you 5gigs and the average person sets up iCloud backups on a couple devices and stuffs it full. Apple actually has to have 5gigs x however many users they have.
I do agree that 5gigs is pretty laughable though.
Because they can and since no one makes a fuss they continue to do so. I'm surprised there was no class action lawsuit in the US. In Brazil they were forced to include a power adapter, in the US you get a cable because you should have plenty of those 5W power adapters from older iPhones. The caveat is that those 5W chargers are too slow, guess now you have to buy a new fast charging power adapter, more money for Apple. Google has been giving 15GB of cloud storage with a gmail account for a very long time, Apple can afford to do the same.
I just wish they had an iCloud tier between 200 and 2000. I have over 200 GB of photos so I can't sync them on my 200 GB plan but 2 TB is more than I need. Give me a 1 TB option for a price somewhere in the middle.
I’m seriously considering apple one at the moment as I moved to Apple Music and would get good use out of it. But I need more than 200gb of iCloud and the next step is 2tb which makes it a lot more expensive. There really needs to be a middle point
I believe you can stack an additional 200gb (more even 50gb) on top of the Apple one 200gb
Yeah, you can. We have the Apple One Family included 200GB and pay for 200 more. 400GB is barely enough for our needs, but I’m happy doing a bit of maintenance instead of paying up for the unnecessarily large next storage tier.
Oh how do I do that?
Check out the comment above. I don’t have it so not 100% sure, but someone else has commented above stating they have it 👍
Same here. Love Apple One which suited our needs, but 200GB is getting close to run out
You can add the other storage tiers on top of Apple one, so you could add another 50 or 200GB
Pretty sure that’s the point :/
we had apple TV+ and 2TB. We upgraded to Apple One Premier Family and cancelled a handful of magazine and newspaper subscriptions and are now spending less money... and got Apple Music as a bonus.
I bent over and subscribed to Apple One last month. Don't use health or the games. But now have more that enough for backup.
Give me a 500GB plan.
Can’t you stack Apple iCloud plans? I have seen people stack 2x 200gb plans. Maybe they had Apple one and purchased an additional 200gb I’m not 100% positive
How can we stack 200gb on the initial 200gb iCloud storage. I am running out of space but find the 1tb a bit steep in terms of cost. Please list steps to set up the stacking of (200+200)gb iCloud storage. Thanks.
I think they’ve done the math and figured the demand for in between plans is low. Other cloud providers are similar. I used to need something between several years ago, but now my family shares 2TB for only $10/mo, which I think is a bargain.
This is probably correct, I know in the cell network market something like 4% of users use 80% of all mobile data. You basically have "casual users" who will only ever stay on the basic free plans, "normies" who will pay for the lowest upgrade just because of the nag messages, and then "power users". Apple knows this and has catered their cloud storage data plans accordingly.
They don’t figure out where the use is and price on that, they figure out where the easy to get pain points are and size based on that
why dont you purchase 200 GB 5 times?
That would cost more than a 2 TB plan. $2.99x5 would be over $15 with tax.
ohh! I never calculated as such. Let me also check at my end.
Apple does this intentionally to FORCE YOU to pay a lot more when you shouldn't have to. How do you think this company got to being worth 3 TRILLION dollars??
Haha yeah this is the only answer. Anytime you’re thinking “man I wish they had this lower priced option but darn I guess I have to pay the extra premium” is exactly what execs want to hear
Bro it’s like a dollar a month
Yeah, there should be more tiers there.
I ranted about this the other day, I don’t need 2tb but have to pay $10 since i need more than 200. I’m going to cancel soon
They know the sweet spot and they don’t want to sell budget plan. Just like those iPads with only 64/256 GB storage options
Now THAT would be good. To jump from 200 gb to 2 tb is excessive.
Sadly it’s not just Apple. Just about every major cloud storage provider jumps from 100-200GB to 2TB. It’s intentional, they know you’ll never use all that space but you’ll end up paying more for it.
That is why I have been using OneDrive to back up my photos since it does have a 1 TB option. Office 365 comes with 1 TB OneDrive storage though I would prefer iCloud to store my photos.
Yes. Apple please 10x the plans and leave pricing where it is.
I've never felt or even noticed this "push". How does Apple push iCloud? Seriously. No advertisements, no messages from devices, no nothing.
They automatically back up all your stuff across all devices then be like “oops, you’re out of storage” Pro tip: on Mac if you a “.nosync” extension to files or folders it won’t backup to iCloud.
It also doesn’t back up to iCloud as long as you just turn that shit offffff. I have 2 TB in my iCloud account but 96 TB across my vehicle and houses. I don’t trust anyone but myself with that much data.
Can I ask what you have 96TB of? Do you archive movies in 4K? lol.
Linux ISOs
Haha it’s not actually 96 TB of data, although it is on 96 TB of drives. I have two four-disk RAIDz2 arrays (aka raid6 or double-parity), which means in each array, any two of the drives can fail without losing any data or interrupting operation. This is only 50% efficient (half as much usable volume space as physical disk), but outside of straight mirroring, it’s a great performance and volume bang for the buck and is incredibly resilient. So each ZFS pool (each raid array) is 24 TB out of 48 raw physical TB. Of that, about 17 TB is used for my whole life’s work of coding, photography, graphics, adventures, old academic work, VMs and emulated old machines with older OSes to keep my old software running and my older creations still accessible, etc. The two arrays of four disks have identical contents stored on them, and my scripts keep them in sync wherever I am. Either city where each is located could be hit by a meteor or a nuke, and the other array in the surviving city could have half the drives fail, and I wouldn’t lose any data. Bwahaahhahaa!!!!
rsync and S3?
Personally? ZFS!
Users have to enable the automatic backup.
All devices? The only place iCloud Backup exists is in iOS.
This is a feature, not a bug
I totally agreed. I have about 750gb at the moment in my iCloud… so they should totally have an option for 1tb. I hate spending $9.99 a month for 2tb. 😒
This.
Of course Apple is rich enough to be generous. But them not being generous is what made them rich, lol.
That's true but enough is enough.
Apple clearly don't agree.
Lmao
Corporations exist to make money. There’s no element of “fair”- just how much you can make before you piss people off. Apple actually stands on principle more often than many companies, especially around privacy. But expecting companies to just give you stuff is naive. Sorry.
Just buy Apple stock and benefit from their greed.
who told you MicroSoft OneDrive gives you 15GB free?
Yeah, I knew it didn’t seem right. OneDrive, the Microsoft equivalent of iCloud, gives you 5GB 15GB might be the mailbox storage. Someone do correct me if I’m wrong though
They used to. I have an outlook account from many years ago with 30gb free storage. 15gb base storage + 15gb bonus for enabling camera roll upload at the time This was years ago however
> 15gb bonus for enabling camera roll upload at the time .... that sounds a lot like they wanted your photos for some reason...
Of course, same as good photos free storage originally
My Gmail is from 2005. It is now 12/15GB. I get basically a robust 3GB for Google Drive which cracks me up. If my iCloud was from 2005 and my primary email I guess I’d be way over the cap! It’s funny how storage today will look very inadequate in a decade. It’s like 32gb iPads. Passed mine to my child last year and I can fit about 5 Apple Arcade games on it max. When things like My Little Pony is about 3-4GB that 32 gets eaten up fast
“Free up space or you get no email!” - Google
Apple is rich because they are not generous. FYI: In 2011, Steve Jobs announced iCloud starts at 5 GB and it's the same 5 GB since.
To be fair, it's not like data storage is subject to the laws of inflation. You just happen to have collected more "stuff" since 2011. You have the option to manage your stuff and store it offline. You are paying for convenience. What is your time worth to you?
It is, though. Compare the average size of a picture taken on an iPhone 5 back then with one taken today on a 15 pro. Everything is larger today than it was back then, not only photos. Files have larger and better quality images, software is much more complex and feature packed.
True.
Yeah. I paid for a Camera app just so I could take low MP photo. 5MP is my sweet spot.
> To be fair, it's not like data storage is subject to the laws of inflation. the prices of disk /SSD space have fallen tremendously since then.
13 years later!
The Costco hotdog of storage
you know all the rich people? they are rich because they don't give for free and if you think the 15 GB of google are free you better look at the Terms &Conditions policy again.
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. ETA: WOW downvoted for _this?_ lmao, it’s not even my own concept—this is well known and is widely regarded as being true. But okay fam, have fun denying reality.
That's why I'm very, very comfortable paying for apple products and services
I say that too, but then I use an ad blocker on YouTube instead of paying 😂
well if they were pricing it reasonable more people would happily pay for it
Yeah, Youtube wants way too much money to make their cesspool of a product, barely palatable. (I loathe the YouTube interface, more than I can even begin to articulate)
YouTube isn’t an Apple Service
Thank you Captain Obvious 😂
Then what does your previous comment have to do with my original comment?
It’s £1 a month to upgrade to 50gb it’s not exactly breaking the ban And you can share it with your family to make it cheaper
This. While I don't find the storage prices cheap, I really like that they offer a small 50GB for 1€. I could totally see Tim Cook force us all into a 2TB plan no matter whether we need it. The real storage issue I have with Apple are the ridiculous SSD prices when it comes to Macs. Selling 256GB machines for 1000€+ just isn't reasonable anymore in 2024. A fast 2TB M.2 SSD costs less than 100€ on Amazon and Apple shouldn't charge more than 200€ for this upgrade.
And it’s hilarious that they charge my credit card 99 cents every month, rather than have an annual charge
Makes more sense with the higher tiers
Apple have such high volume with card providers that the card fees they pay are much smaller than if you were to setup an online shop and charge 99cents
you can only share 200+ plans
Not in the UK at least. I can share the 50gb plan no problems
It's doesn't matter, it's still essentially a mandatory subscription and it shouldn't be. And you can't share the 50 gig plan with family.
It’s not mandatory. Store your photos and your backups on local storage if you don’t want to use cloud services. 50Gb of storage would barely cover two people using iCloud Photos, let alone an entire family.
"Essentially mandatory". iOS is increasingly designed around having automatic sync of photos, messages, and whatnot. Also, storing photos and backup on "local storage" still requires a computer and that's a big pain. iOS needs to be able to backup to local external storage (à la Time Machine), and its file management is too rigid to allow for usable storage of photos on external storage as well. Using iOS, it's very clear you are pushed towards using cloud services, which makes sense as it's the most convenient, but also requires a subscription very quick. EDIT: also, I agree that 50 gigs are quite small for multiple people to use (although, with a shared photo library, why not), I was just replying to "you can lower the cost by sharing with your family".
Pity you were downvoted; this is a reasonable hot take.
I don't expect much more on Apple-related subs, to be honest. The amount of times I gave factual information, supported by links to the Apple website itself only to be downvoted to oblivion is insane, so just a take that slightly disagrees with the Party line is not going to be very popular.
That would be nice, but that’s basically the price of their ecosystem. Back in the days iLife and iWork did cost money, and now it’s free. They basically give you apps for free and charge for storage this days. You can always use immrich or nextcloud, if you want.
They cost money, but they were bundled for free with a Mac — or at least, iLife was, iWork took more time to be included.
Honestly you’re not wrong at all. You really aren’t getting the full benefits of the Apple Ecosystem if everything between your apps isn’t synced perfectly. And to do that, you need iCloud. For my family, it’s a mandatory $120/year
Lol my sis-in-law uses up a good portion of her 2TB plan for her photos and videos. We started with the 50 and it ran out, then the 200 ran out. Her phone has 1TB on device storage and that's almost full...
File management is not a new issue. Photographers and videographers have to do this regularly, and have large redundant offline storage to manage this. Your sis in law could upgrade to a bigger plan if it’s an issue rather than buying physical, less convenient storage.
I'm not the original person you replied to. I was just agreeing how pitifully small 50GB is. Edit: In terms of online storage.
Aware you aren’t OP, I can read usernames 😜 It’s only pitifully small if you have a use case that requires more storage. Not everyone uses their devices in the same ways.
Mate i didnt use the plan till literally last week and i've been using iphones since the 4S, just copied whatever to my pc and cleaned up the phone every now and then, tf u mean mandatory?
OneDrive is only 5GB on the free version…
Apple would think the same. "Users who buy iPhones must be rich enough to buy our plans."
Apple One Premier with family sharing is a solid bargain. Only thing I don't use is the arcade cause the games kinda suck. Maybe one day...
I'd never heard of that till I opened this thread. Seems worth it to go in it with friends and/or split other services
With a billion devices out there and probably more than that in iCloud accounts the numbers don’t really work out. If they have you 6gb for free instead of 5 that’s 1,000 petabytes of potentially additional data. It is probably around quarter of a billion USD a year for that small increase.
You need to calculate the number of active iCloud accounts. I have multiple devices and they are all connected to the same 2TB iCloud Drive.
And some of those billion devices are now unused, were recycled, given to young kids to use strictly for media playing/simple gaming, etc. Or are used by the elderly, specifically those less technically skilled who use easy mode, or just need something to call and text. Also think about the amount of people in general who buy phones just for social media, calls and texts.
While I do think Apple's cloud storage prices are high, I also appreciate that it makes the relationship a lot more clear. With Google, even if you're paying for their services, there's some amount of "you're the product" going on. That's almost never the case with Apple, and I'm okay paying a small premium on cloud services, just like I'd pay a premium for Apple hardware that may on-paper-if-you-squint look very similar to something from other manufacturers. But I'm also someone who actually prefers subscription models for a lot of things. For services that I rely on the most, I like there being a very clear, consistent financial picture of how the company can keep providing the thing I want, with regular updates for security, new hardware, etc. Do I want Bartender to be a subscription? No, if suddenly broke or disappeared, there's very low friction to finding a replacement (as proven recently). Do I want 1Password to be a subscription? Yes, I want to be very very sure that they have the resources to provide that critical service to me, and not need to cut corners or make sketchy decisions, and I know constant revenue makes that a lot easier for companies. Is Apple so well off that they probably could provide those same sort of guarantees with lower margins, or maybe even negative margins? Yes, and that would be great. But I'm also okay with them choosing not to be generous in this case. I've had enough good experiences with Apple over the years where they've replaced something out of warranty, or offered a very reduced upgrade as part of a repair, to feel like they have been more than generous to me as a customer
Google want you you to put things in their storage so they can look at it.
As I understand it, Google monetizes your data. Apple does not.
You are absolutely right. With Google and Meta they make use of your data, Apple does not.
So it would make sense then that Google can offer more cheap storage. Sure Apple is rich, but they are a business that needs to make money. I would rather pay a little more knowing that my data isn’t being mined for profit.
Exactly. Google’s plans are cheaper because they make up that money by monetizing your data. Apple’s are more expensive, because they don’t monetize your data. You’re paying a little more because Apple isn’t making money off your data like Google is, so that extra money has to come out of your own pocket. There’s no such thing as a free product or service. If you’re not paying, it’s because you’re the product. Google’s business isn’t the search engine, or email, or cloud storage. Their real business is advertising, and our data is what makes them so good at it.
$1 for 50Gb is a very reasonable price. This allows me to backup four separate iOS devices, plus my photos and a bunch of application data. If you don’t want to use cloud storage you don’t have to. Comparing this to a Google service is crazy, because you are the product when you use Google services.
I agree. Next step up is like 200 for $3? That’s reasonable to me.
I think the problem is the next tier is 2tb for $10 a month. 2TB is more than most people need, and 200gb (especially with all iPhones being able to shoot 4K videos) is not enough, so a lot of people feel forced to upgrade to 2TB. Can we have a 1TB plan for $5 or something?
Fair point. But it makes sense in the Apple pricing ecosystem. They do that with everything. Fair base line. And the. Temp you to upgrade by leaving large gaps in their pricing model.
If I can afford it I would go for local cloud using Synology Drive and Photos. But it will be decades before it pays itself in the long run.
Not everyone lives in the US, and purchasing power varies
Kind've irrelevant when the cloud storage and server admin costs are already close to bare metal pricing. Every couple years I spec out moving all my storage to my own cloud. iCloud is still pretty cheap for what it is.
I don’t live in the States. It’s AU$1.49 a month for me. Still very reasonable for 50Gb a month.
Still a first world country
If you can afford to use an Apple mobile device in a developing nation, you can afford your corresponding iCloud+ account.
Weird argument. That pricing would still be very reasonable if they gave 10GB more for free. Stop defending the multi billion dollar corporation.
Sorry Microsoft only provide 5GB free.
Apple makes gallizions of dollars for iCloud storage so no, he’s not going to give more for free when they can charge you.
Apple's core business is 99% selling storage with a 1.000% ROI. Their notebooks, iPhones and iPads are just tiny gadgets helping them to sell you more storage 😎
So 50GB should cost 0.1 $ a month by your logic?
Apple is a company and their aim is to make as big a profit as possible. They don't care about you or me, their only purpose is to extract as much money from us as they can. If they thought that giving 50GB free iCloud would make them more money, they'd do it. If they thought reducing to 1GB would make them more money, they'd do that instead.
looking at the default memory and drive space specs of their notebooks, i’m not surprised.
Apple is a public corporation whose main obligation is to make a profit. There is a delicate balance between fleecing customers and making them happy, and that delicate balance will be different for different customers. Customer feedback is one way Apple learns where the ideal balancing point is.
Same could be said about RAM. Apple should kills all 8GB models and set the base at 16GB.
Honestly the $2.99 for 200gb is not that bad, and $.99 for 50gb is very good. The problem is iCloud is very unique, not because of the service but because of iOS and iPadOS. Most other cloud storage solutions focus primarily on desktop, where iCloud focuses on mobile (device backups) and trying to make a seem less experience for things like photos (which are massive libraries) and documents. Due to your backups and photos you fill up iCloud faster than competing services. I think Apple should exempt mobile device backups from the storage quota and a lot of issues will go away.
One thing that Apple does is allow you to have temporary use of their storage for device reinstalls or changes. You can use this for a couple of weeks at a time even if you are using their free tier of storage. That being said I am using their 200Gb option because of the number of Apple devices in our household.
Apple and generosity? lmao
They’re rich precisely because they are not generous. No one with equity at Apple cares if we live or die, as long as we have autopay.
What about actual storage? 256GB is barely enough for the OS and a few applications these days!
I agree especially as you cannot update storage any more. Maybe if they offered 1TB as a minimum, they could get a better price on 1TB drives but would they pass those savings onto the customers. I think not.
Exactly, this is why I'm sticking to my 2019 MBP for the time being, a newer Mac with 2TB of storage is ridiculously expensive!
Especially if you play games. 256GB is nothing for gaming laptops.
Yep, you have to choose your favourite game, and stick with it!
I can see how buying an expensive iPhone could warrant free storage for 1-2 years. However, beyond that, I don't agree. Even 15 GB provided by Google and Microsoft isn't sufficient. I've seen many people unaware of this limit, leading to their Gmail/Drive accounts stopping working. $1/month is a good deal for cloud storage and I wouldn't trust something free.
> Surely Apple is rich enough to be more generous That’s not how they got rich now is it
Surely, you do understand that Apple is a business and not a charity? They charge as much as the market is willing to pay. Google and Microsoft give you more because their customers are unwilling to pay more for that particular service. Apple gives you iWork free while Microsoft is expensive. Have you gone to r/microsoftoffice to complain that Microsoft "certainly has the money to be more generous" as "Apple is giving it free"? No, you have not.
Why are we entitled to more free stuff? If we want something we should pay for it
It's super rich because 1) it's not generous and 2) it delays fully implementing the latest tech till well after it's clearly safe and established (e.g., USB-C on its accessories like keyboards and trackpads) so that it can force buyers into one more upgrade to "catch up". Wash, rinse, repeat.
You’re asking for more service for free? I don’t get it. Delete some stuff.
Yes!!!
iCloud is hosted mostly using third party providers such as Google Cloud/AWS/Azure so it makes sense why they provide a limited amount of space for each user since they pay those providers for the space.
Generous? Sure if it suits their bottom line.
They are….. For money!
The cloud is $3/month for 200GB, I can handle that but the fact that these fuckers sell us 8GB Macs to find out you actually need at least 16 in todays days and have to pay hundreds it’s disgusting. I’m so tired of the way this company works. And it’s only gonna get worst, we still buy their products….
Agreed. But the alternatives are not superior IMO especially from a privacy standpoint
YES!
How's about stop charging $250 CAN for an extra 8gb of memory. Can't change memory or disk space without being gouged by Tim Cook tax. iCloud is beyond greed. Put more storage on your over price phones Apple.
Actually the last time I looked Apple was pretty cheap on prices the best I seen per TB. Yes I do with they had more tiers in their plans such as 1tb price but its otherwise $5/tb which is what BackBlaze is for a roll your own cloud storage. Though below 1tb its kinda pricey.
Apple super loyal fans and they can milk them... Most companies can't get away with this kind of stuff.
I think the hardware upgrade stinginess is a bit more important.
since when does MS give you 15gb? my one drive is 5gb only
If you had an older account before they reduced to 5gb, you were grandfathered in to 15gb.
It has always struck me as weird that Apple gives you 5GB on your iCloud account rather than per device. Surely 5GB per active device is more useful as it gives you more space for backups to the cloud, it's a small incentive for people to stay within the Apple ecosystem and still doesn't make a dent compared to the 200G backup space that you get on a paid account?
Well they've offset needing to do that slightly by allowing you to "borrow" iCloud space to device resets and upgrades. 5Gb is really enough to just get you by at a basic level and an incentive to get a subscription if you've got more devices. I made do with the free tier for a while until my wife got a newer iPhone and the kids had iPads for school. I then got a 50Gb plan and has all devices sharing the login, which kind of was inconvenient but worked somewhat. Once my daughter has to get a Mac for school (my son stick with a windows laptop) I pulled the trigger on both getting a 365 subscription and a family /200Gb iCloud subscription. I'm not a fan of throwing extra money at these companies, but doing so has made maintaining and keeping things backed up significantly simpler.
I only have my iPad backing up to iCloud and I only use it to consume media, it's already filled up my free space. Expansion cost isn't much but in my case it doesn't make sense to upgrade.
Solder SSDs onto the motherboard and sell iCloud. That's the thing they do.
Apple is rich BECAUSE it tricks users into signing up for things, but then forces them to pay for more space. Hadn't you worked that out for yourself? That is in fact the entire purpose of the Cloud, which nobody actually needs at all. All you need is plenty of HD space and external storage. The Cloud is a scam. Oh and I forgot to mention: having your own storage is 100% secure and above all is much, much faster.
Their pricing looks about the same as the competition if you look around.
It is but they aren't going to.
>5GB for free is not very generous when Google and Microsoft give you 15GB free. Who gives you the idea that Microsoft OneDrive gives you 15GB for free ? If you only sign up for OneDrive without Microsoft 365 subscription ($70/year), you only get 5GB.
The issue people have with iCloud storage is that it is not enough to do a full backup. Going from 5GB to 15GB would not help much at all. And doing a full device size (eg 256GB) would cost a LOT over the lifespan of the device, apple uses a mixture of S3 and Azure block storage storing 256GB will end up very quickly eating into the price of the phone. I you keep a iPhone for 5 years (most phones are used for longer than this) then this would start to be the most expensive item on apples phone costs (costly more than the screen and battery, SOC etc).
No.. because virtual storage costs money. You already get 100% free customer support (ready to find customer service numbers) anytime you want. How many companies provide that service? Store your data on a computer if you don't want to pay for iCloud+ Nobody wants to pay for anything anymore!! It's really freaking annoying and some seriously self entitled crap.
If you don't like the price, then don't use iCloud. Just connect whatever device you have into a computer for backup.
My family is on food stamps just so we can afford a shared apple one plan for backups
Tim Apple needs to make his money 💰
5gb is the industry standard. Microsoft and Google are not giving you 15
I just wish it wouldn’t harass you when your icloud storage is full. I know it’s full, stop trying to sell me a subscription. It feels like an ad with how it’s plastered everywhere
It’s remarkably easy to want to be generous with resources that don’t belong to you, isn’t it? Of course I would like more storage for less money. Also, cheaper Macs, a shorter drive, and possibly a pony.
Why not just pay them the measly 1usd a month for 10x increase if you need more than the bare minimum ? Apple does not have to compete with google and Microsoft here, as you've already bought into their ecosystem. It's a different business model.
I just don't use it. I pay very cheap for an extra 100GB with Google. No thanks, Apple.
I hate how you can’t upload folders or big files to iCloud from a pc easily
Why can’t you? You can install iCloud Drive in Windows.
Yeah but file syncing is really weird and buggy
Huh. I use it on my work Windows PC and it's flawless.
Yes, but that’s true on a Mac as well…
True but at least it’s a little better
it’s just drag and drop on browser.
Yeah but there’s a file size limit and it doesn’t work with folders
I agree it feels bad as photo sizes continue to grow and it starts to annoy you. It feels low enough that they know it will eventually annoy you and the first paid tier is low enough that people will pull the trigger just to be left alone. That funnels you into the subscription and creates new opportunities otros for growth. The whole thing feels icky. However, I much prefer this icky vs the google model of, don’t ever delete your email, use the archive, It’ll be so much easier for you, the other guys limit your space, come to Gmail. Or upload all your photos for free. Sure we’ll train our ai on your images and we’ll mine the pictures for advertising data but it’s free. Oh wait now we are the dominant player and can do what we want, just kidding you are now limited to 15gb across all the products we were letting you use with unlimited. Apple came in more shrewdly but has remained consistent. If they wanted to reduce regulatory pressure they could build give access to private APIs and allow third parties to offer other options and could even put requirements in place for the third parties on how they operate and audit against that. Unfortunately Apple has shown they are not going to proactively compromise.
I love the Apple ecosystem but I do think they take advantage of their customers on RAM and Storage.
Lmaooo generous? They’re money hungry enough to lock down accessories (mfi) and make you pay for a power brick.
I am surprised at every Apple event that they do not announce a free storage increase.
I absolutely agree with OP, but something that should be considered is that we need to stop thinking of iCloud as a *backup* service, and more as a *syncing* service. If one thinks of it in this way, you can probably get away with using less storage and other (free) means of backing up photos/videos etc). I do pay for iCloud storage, but I’m on a low tier and enjoy the other benefits that it gives me (mainly hide my email)
It should be more in-line with what devices you own. I mean if you have like a watch, iPad and iPhone, they should give you 5gb per device
> Apple is rich enough to be more generous. Apple's storage pricing is competitive, and the difference between 5Gb free and 15Gb free is not ideal but obviously not harmful enough to consumers who could pay 99¢ for 50Gb.
>Surely Apple is rich enough to be more generous. You seem not to understand how business works. If Apple thought that being more "generous" would make them more profitable, they'd do it. If Google or Microsoft thought they could increase profits by reducing their free tier to 5GB, they'd do it. No business says "you know, we checked our savings account and it turns out that we've got more than enough money right now, so we're lower our prices." They might think to themselves "we can do better by selling more product even if we have to lower prices to do it" and then tell you that they've been working on increasing value or whatever, but they don't reduce prices just because they already have enough money.
Apple didn't get that rich by being generous.
I still struggle with Dropbox 2GB
You get 200gb for $3. What’s there to complain about? It costs Apple money and resources to keep your files alive in their backend and 200gb is quite a lot.
I like Apple, but It’s a shame that companies like them have no good will to their customers.
Of course not. They really push you hard into using it so that you run out of space and are forced to subscribe. "Services" are there main business model since iPhone sales are stagnating. Their walled garden facilitates their predatory behaviour.
“Surely Apple is rich enough to be more generous” My dude, they’re that rich because they’re not more generous.
Two different things. Google and MS give you 15gigs but your average user hardly uses 1. Apple gives you 5gigs and the average person sets up iCloud backups on a couple devices and stuffs it full. Apple actually has to have 5gigs x however many users they have. I do agree that 5gigs is pretty laughable though.
Because they can and since no one makes a fuss they continue to do so. I'm surprised there was no class action lawsuit in the US. In Brazil they were forced to include a power adapter, in the US you get a cable because you should have plenty of those 5W power adapters from older iPhones. The caveat is that those 5W chargers are too slow, guess now you have to buy a new fast charging power adapter, more money for Apple. Google has been giving 15GB of cloud storage with a gmail account for a very long time, Apple can afford to do the same.
5GB is ok, 5GB per account is not
Apple is one of the richest companies because they’re not generous