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I assume Apple runs out of datacenters? So they have to milk each customer more to maintain their And all stakeholders unsustainable profit margin?
Their profit margin is dictated by you. The consumer. People like you routinely buy their products and are happy to accept the premium cost. If you didn't do this, they wouldn't charge so much. But you do buy their products, so the only responsible group are the consumers themselves.
 
Genuinely curious to know how this integrates into iOS for pics, backups, app data etc.?

Microsoft OneDrive is available on iOS/iPadOS, and you can set it so any photos and videos you take will automatically be uploaded to OneDrive.


 
Oh no, I'll now be paying £11.88/year instead of £9.48?

Seriously though we all knew this was coming but it's a joke that Apple still only offers 5GB free. 10GB would go a long way. Google can offer 15GB for free so I don't see why Apple can't.
 
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Where are you getting Office 365 for $20 a year?

Right here. Part of Microsoft 365 Basic, a new tier that debuted this year. $20 a year and you got access to Office on the web as well as 100 gb of OneDrive storage.

 
Microsoft OneDrive is available on iOS/iPadOS, and you can set it so any photos and videos you take will automatically be uploaded to OneDrive.


Thanks. I guessed that part but more wondering about app data and backups.
 
Right here. Part of Microsoft 365 Basic, a new tier that debuted this year. $20 a year and you got access to Office on the web as well as 100 gb of OneDrive storage.

Now, that is pretty neat!
 
Cant wait when they will downgrade physical storage options and move users to iCloud Storage services hiking the prices up as high as the Apple Cloths and yes they will hike up the prices for downsizing the physical storage at the same time.
 
I wonder if it's cheaper to just make a home network drive versus paying for iCloud.

For you - possibly, for an average Apple customer - very unlikely. The amount of time & energy spent figuring it all out, getting the hardware going, having to test and monitor it - brr, what a nightmare! I mean it is an extra 0.50 whatever per month and is actually quite useful.
 
Remove PhotoStream then up the prices a day later, yep... nicely done
To the point!
IMG_1188.jpeg
 
I actually don't sub to iCloud+ for storage (I'm currently only using about 450MB out of my free 5GB. Total storage I have is 50GB). The only use I get out of it is Hide my Email and Private Relay. I am paying for a VPN so I could live without Private Relay. If I could find a way to generate temporary emails then I'd ditch iCloud+. I could make a throwaway email to deal with junk/one off accounts instead of using my main email.

BUT.... even after this price "hike" it's only £12/year which is basically nothing (an extra £2.50/year lol) so I'll let my subscription continue.
 
Oh no, I'll now be paying £11.88/year instead of £9.48?

Seriously though we all knew this was coming but it's a joke that Apple still only offers 5GB free. 10GB would go a long way. Google can offer 15GB for free so I don't see why Apple can't.

Check out post #45 here. As for Google, they actively try to monetise on any of your contents and it is not even a secret.
 
I’m probably in the minority, but a tier between 50 and 200 GB would be welcome. Between 3 iOS devices, I’m only just over 50, but well below 200.

(Only one phone really generates most of the backup data.)

I may cancel iCloud+ altogether now that I plan to use iMazing.
 
Check out post #45 here. As for Google, they actively try to monetise on any of your contents and it is not even a secret.
Fair enough but Apple should still be able to manage an extra 5GB lol. They are worth $3 Trillion so don't give me any excuses.
 
So, the cheapest AWS cost I found was $0.0125 per GB.

Based on that, you cost Apple (minus profit margin on the AWS price of about 10%), $0.675 per year for 5 GB of data. It doesn't sound a lot, but then you are excluding the entire product on top, as this is only raw storage.

But then in 2018, Apple managed 850 million users. So let's put that $0.0675 into context.

The total "free" raw storage cost to Apple is: $573,750,000 per year. (Half a billion dollars).

I also want to remind you the customer numbers were from 2018, and it has grown since then.

So, your "nickel and dime" comment really isn't about nickels and dimes. It's about hundreds of millions of dollars.

And those saying Apple is being stingy...work out the real maths behind the product. I am not one to ever defend Apple first, but it's clear many people have simply no clue. Apple is not a charity. It's a business.
Not really how the math works.

  1. You're assuming every single customer uses up his or her free 5GB. This is most likely not the case.
  2. Not sure how you got $573M. It should be $57.3M ($0.0675×850M).
  3. Apple has 2B active devices in early 2023. Considering most people have multiple Apple devices and a lot of us even have multiple Apple IDs, e.g., for work/school and for personal use, the actual number of users must be considerably lower than 2B and a lot of Apple IDs probably have very little iCloud usage.
Given #1, the cost of iCloud storage's free tier must necessarily be lower than $57.3M, which is a pittance for the world's richest company. You need to learn basic arithmetic before you start lecturing people about "real maths".

Apple is milking its users on RAMs and cloud storage. Given how integrated iCloud is to Apple's ecosystem, 5GB is really a travesty and the amount Apple is charging for the paid tiers is downright shameful.
 
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5GB is a joke in 2023. It should be 5GB per device. Preferably 10.
That's one way to look at it.

Another perspective is that 5GB is Apple's way of getting you started with using iCloud so you're more incentivized to upgrade to a bigger plan later on.

It's essentially a "free trail" of sorts that's so limited that it's barely usable but still enough to let you see all the advantages to using it. Or rather, just enough to get you store various small amounts of data from apps only to have you run out of storage space very soon and then agree to paying a few $ per month just to have it stop pestering you about lack of storage.
 
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The only thing it did, was to make apple one more appealing.
The increase in storage service is nearly 30%, but apple one increased by about 15% (in the UK)

Apple One : 19.95 -> 22.95
2TB Storage : 6.99 -> 8.99

Maybe it is time to switch to apple one or move to other cloud providers (only if it was so easy)
 
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Another reason why I haven't nor will I ever pay for iCloud. What a joke of a service. 100gb of OneDrive storage is bundled with the $20 a year Microsoft Office 365 subscription.
You left off a zero. Each of the 5 users on a $100 annual M365 license gets 1000GB (1TB), plus the use of the full Office suite on up to 5 or 6 computers PER USER. No one can argue that comparatively, M365 isn't a great deal!

EDIT: I see you were talking about M365 Basic. In any case, if you have 5 people to share M365 Family, everyone gets 1TB as part of their $20 each subscription.
 
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