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Apple Launches New 6TB and 12TB iCloud+ Plans

whoknows2597 said:
Occasionally I take 4K videos, which use up about 4Gigs of space. Whenever I travel, I take a ton of photos, especially flowers. It adds up
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Get yourself a portable drive: 5TB in a small case for $100. Dump that 4GB to that 5TB to have 4GB free again. $0 subscription cost after $100 one-time cost.

If the video is precious, buy 2 for $200 and backup twice before purging to free up the space on the iDevice.
 
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I must be one of the handful of people that still isn’t comfortable with cloud based storage. I completely understand the rationale and pros for using it but am simply more comfortable managing my own local backups. The irony of thinking my method is somehow more secure than Apple’s is also not lost on me. Hopefully I can get over this irrational fear of handing over all my “stuff”. They almost certainly already have it all anyway!
 
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aajeevlin said:
Wait a second is this a joke?
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After I upgraded to 6TB, whenever I hit share iCloud+, it just prompted me to “upgrade”. Reached out to Chat, provided screenshots that it just tells me to upgrade without being able to share, and that’s the quick response I got.
 
Enhancement Request:
Allow owner/parent in family sharing plan to configure storage limits for family members. This would take the burden off of me to constantly manage how much storage each member is using.

If a person reaches their limit, they start getting messages that recent items will NOT be synced to iCloud until they remove old items.
 
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klky said:
I must be one of the handful of people that still isn’t comfortable with cloud based storage. I completely understand the rationale and pros for using it but am simply more comfortable managing my own local backups. The irony of thinking my method is somehow more secure than Apple’s is also not lost on me. Hopefully I can get over this irrational fear of handing over all my “stuff”. They almost certainly already have it all anyway!
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You are likely doing just fine. The whole world of tech got by just fine for decades with owning their own backup strategies before some entrepreneurs decided to try to monetize storage in cloud services sold by subscription.

I blame the guys who turned the most abundant thing on the planet- water- into a billion dollar industry... a product that given a small amount of time in many places in the world... falls from the sky for free. I think water sales inspired tech people to think:
  • "How could we monetize things generally included in stuff we sell one time so we can get paid over and over... like a rental model?"
  • "Let's wedge ourselves in between people and their data. Hard drive storage is getting so cheap. There's hardly any margin in it."
  • "Hmmm, we can't call it storage or they may think about buying their own HDDs."
  • "Let's call it the cloud."
  • "Dave, you are a geniu$."
  • "Don't you think asking them to trust total strangers to caretake their data will be an issue?"
  • "Nah, just sling words like security and privacy around a lot and integrate it into our apps."
  • "Have it turned on by default so they are using it without even realizing they are."
  • "Complete Geniu$. Drinks are on me."
Just be sure you have at least 1 up to date backup on site and at least 1 pretty up to date backup offsite and regularly swap the two. Time Machine on Macs makes this very easy.
 
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I just wish they would make it easy to limit what photos get uploaded. Back in the day when syncing stuff to your ipod/iphone you could individually choose which albums you wanted to sync. Now it's all or nothing. I don't need 15 years of photos synced to the cloud, really I'd be happy syncing about 2-3 folders with the cloud and keep all the rest offline on my macs. But we all know they don't give you that functionality in the Photos app just so they can milk you for iCloud storage.

Give us an easy way to archive old photos so they don't sync to the cloud but still appear in our Photos app on the Mac, OR let us choose which folders/albums we want to sync. That would solve so many problems.
 
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So I hope this helps other in my position. I have an iCloud account that manages my family iCloud accounts. My media and purchases are tied to a separate email. I was able to login to the media and purchases account on my iPad, go to my Apple One subscription, and manage the iCloud+ storage option separately. I was able to add the 6TB plan there. I also could've added 2TB to go to a total of 4TB. It took a refresh but then I confirmed my family's devices reflected a total of 8TB. Super not intuitive but ... there we are.
 
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It's amazing that free iCloud storage is still at 5GB per account since introducing it more than a decades ago. We have 4K Video and HI-RES images being stored but you still get 5GB iCloud storage to backup in 2023. Just WOW.
 
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nutmac said:
All obvious complaints aside, I am glad that there's an option to have more than 2TB of storage without having to subscribe to Apple One. My 2TB plan has about 400GB free, which probably will be used up by end of 2024.

$30/month for 6TB is cheaper than $43/month for Apple One Premier + 2TB extra storage.
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How did you make that work exactly? My family organizer is paying for Apple One Premier + 2TB iCloud, but our devices all show 2TB. Were you able to pay for both and get 4TB?
 
roar08 said:
So I hope this helps other in my position. I have an iCloud account that manages my family iCloud accounts. My media and purchases are tied to a separate email. I was able to login to the media and purchases account on my iPad, go to my Apple One subscription, and manage the iCloud+ storage option separately. I was able to add the 6TB plan there. I also could've added 2TB to go to a total of 4TB. It took a refresh but then I confirmed my family's devices reflected a total of 8TB. Super not intuitive but ... there we are.
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As I have been trying to do that ever since apple one exists and never figured it out. Could you confirm if the 2nd apple ID, which is your purchase/media is also part of your family sharing? (one of the 6) or not at all?
 
goodcow said:
320GB for messages? What? I have all messages going back a decade, and it's about 70GB.
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Messages with a lot of little video clips will hog up enormous space. The magic with Messages management is NOT leaving them open forever. Treat them like a phone call:
  • When the chat is finished, delete them.
  • When you want a new chat, start a new one.
Messages demand on iCloud will plunge if people stop leaving them open forever... accumulating more and more space, mostly of old videos already watched back when first sent. Close 'em and start new conversations vs. having a forever line of conversation like leaving a phone call off hook forever.
 
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zbugrkx said:
As I have been trying to do that ever since apple one exists and never figured it out. Could you confirm if the 2nd apple ID, which is your purchase/media is also part of your family sharing? (one of the 6) or not at all?
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My media and purchases account is not a family member.
 
Ever feel like you're being gouged for storage here. People do not need to go from 200gb to 2tb... there needs to be an in-between. Also.. $30.00 is a little spendy for 6gb of storage.. I always use the idea that 2tb of storage is about the price of a hard drive so $120/yr and the hard drive isn't going to die like all of the others do. But I can buy a 6tb hard drive for $150 is it going to be good prob not will it fail yes.. but for $360/yr I can get a really pretty hard drive..
 
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can you add icloud stored photos to a shared album in google photos?
or do you have to have both subscriptions?
 
MaSx said:
It's amazing that free iCloud storage is still at 5GB per account since introducing it more than a decades ago. We have 4K Video and HI-RES images being stored but you still get 5GB iCloud storage to backup in 2023. Just WOW.
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Now look at it from the beancounters perspective who are probably still punishing the idiot who- in an obvious moment of irresponsible insanity- dared to give away FIVE whole gigabytes all those years ago. 💰💰💰

I wonder how many meetings take place talking about how to monetize the 5GB being "wasted." ;)
 
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They should have 20 GB free storage and 200 GB paid tier 1.
I thought the pricing for 6 and 12 TB was insane, but it seems like it compares to Google's.
 
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Still absurd that the free version of iCloud is only 5GB. Pretty much everyone I know pays $1/month for 50GB, even if they’re only using a fraction of it. I think 15GB would be a good amount, as that would match Google’s free tier. Alternatively, Apple could keep the base storage at 5GB, but not have your iOS/iPadOS device backups count against your storage.
 
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