Apple's New iCloud Storage Plans Go Live, Monthly Prices at $0.99 for 20GB, $19.99 for 1TB

[Harmonious Zen]

I don't even know what I would store in the cloud. I use Time Machine to backup to a Time Capsule, and I sync my iphone and iPad to my Mac. iPhoto library is on the Time Capsule. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I guess I don't really have any need to keep all my stuff in the cloud, except for music, but that's part of iTunes Match.

iOS 8 allows you to save your photos in the cloud and just leave thumbnails on your phone, so it frees up a ton of space. That's primarily why I'm switching. I use OneDrive now, but the iCloud Drive will be more seamless.

Also, with iCloud Drive, a lot of your apps will be storing data there automatically.

 

[Keirasplace]

Just curious, in which place a coffee costs $4?

Plenty of places... Starbucks... Maybe you're used to McD coffee, still $1 to almost $2 there for the most basic coffee.

 

[alphaod]

Just got this email.

Hmm when I go to Change Storage Plan its been changed to a yearly plan on new pricing...I didn't do anything on my part. I used to have the 15GB plan, its changed to 20GB $10.99/year now and they refunded me the prorated difference.
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And I'm still stuck at 55GB for $100 a year...


I do have a bunch of alternatives like Dropbox Pro (1TB), OneDrive/SkyDrive (1TB), and Weiyun (10TB), so I'm not exact low on space.

 

[cocacolakid]

I'm not a Google fan but $19.99 a month for 1TB is double the Google Drive price, and I think several other services. Automatically backing up without having to even open an app has value but double the price seems a bit steep.

 

[macduke]

my luck itll delete all my pictures and reset the servers right before ios 8 gos live.

I was worried about that too. I installed the GM yesterday and decided to skip converting my account. I assume I can do it later?

For now I'm going to get the 200GB plan for $3.99/mo and keep my Dropbox 1TB plan which is $8.25/mo. I foresee my iCloud account being for syncing data between my iOS devices (such as photos taken on those devices), iOS backups, and documents with my Mac. Dropbox is for backing up my important files such as design work, professional photography, and video content and syncing files with my work iMac. Since I'm getting a 128GB iPhone 6, 200GB should work fine. Having both for $12.24/mo is a deal to me. If iCloud Drive seems like it is working really well, I might upgrade it and get rid of Dropbox. I do wish that 1TB was closer to $15/mo. I also think for Apple to stay competitive they should make 20GB free—or at the very least give each person 5GB per iOS device. That seems fair.

To reiterate:

Last month I was paying $8.25/mo for 100GB on Dropbox.
Last month I was paying $3.33/mo for 25GB on iCloud.

This month I'm paying $8.25/mo for 1024GB on Dropbox.
This month I'm paying $3.99/mo for 200GB on iCloud.

Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Perspective people!

 

[Rocketman]

This is very good news. Whether it be Apple, IBM, MS or a third party, now make legacy data stored and searchable starting with Eudora, Word, Excel and Mac Draw.

 

[AppleInTheMud]

Agreed, although not sure how you get it for $10/mo when it's $99/YR for 5 users ($20 each). For me, Office 365, $20 per year gives me full Office 2013 apps PLUS 1TB OneDrive. In effect, the full $99 gets 5 copies of Office 2013 and 5TB total OneDrive storage.

Apple wants $240/YR for just 1TB of storage. Yet another great Apple value.

Just looked at my subscription. It is 10$ a month. Office on 5 devices and 1TB free storage included

 

[FuzzMunky]

maybe a stupid question but i never used the Cloud for photos on my mac before. Will it store everything locally too? I am asking cuz i only have a 128GB SSD in my macbook pro retina and i would like to get access to my files without having them stored locally too. i have tried dropbox for that but everything is also stored locally which defeats the purpose if you ask me.

anyone know a service that only shows maybe "Preview Thumbnails" of any given file and when you actually click on it it takes it from the Cloud? I dont care about requiring internet access to get access.

Just use the web UI for dropbox and set the client software to not download automatically. Easy.

 

[Nica]

Real Cloud Storage?

Before I go and get rid of my OneDrive storage, I need to know whether I can share links to files with iCloud Drive. If not, there's really no point in paying for extra storage, the other cloud services would still have much more value.

 

[FuzzMunky]

list some of the differences

Automatic iPhone backups including all your photos videos etc.
Automatic uploading of Photos into your photostream
Automatic downloading of Photos to all other devices without you noticing or having to open anything.
Send an iMessage with a photo and the photo is uploaded automatically to iCloud and shared to the recipient(s) as an alias to the cloud, thus not taking up anyone elses local storage space.

 

[nabwong]

Yay! In for 200gb at $4 a month. Now I can backup my 64gb ipad and soon to have 64gb 6plus on the cloud.

 

[Medic311]

and what about the people who already paid for an annual subscription with the told pricing tier? lol

Think You Got Screwed

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Yay! In for 200gb at $4 a month. Now I can backup my 64gb ipad and soon to have 64gb 6plus on the cloud.

you realize that a lot of what ends up going on your iphone doesn't even get backed up to the cloud anyways, right?

 

[nabwong]

and what about the people who already paid for an annual subscription with the told pricing tier? lol



Think You Got Screwed

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you realize that a lot of what ends up going on your iphone doesn't even get backed up to the cloud anyways, right?

Photos and videos? I have tons of them that I made. Do these get backed up?

 

[Medic311]

Just got this email.

wtf i just upgraded to the 20GB plan last month and i haven't received anything

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Photos and videos? I have tons of them that I made. Do these get backed up?

64GB of photos and videos? lol
who do you think you are...a nude celeb?

 

[thefredelement]

For the size and integration, these prices are excellent!

Upgraded, 200GB for now, I'll see how it is with more use once everything is live and in sync with the 'right' iCloud...

 

[nabwong]

Apple's New iCloud Storage Plans Go Live, Monthly Prices at $0.99 for 20GB, $...

wtf i just upgraded to the 20GB plan last month and i haven't received anything

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64GB of photos and videos? lol

who do you think you are...a nude celeb?

I'm a musician and a parent.

 

[Ambush083]

The problem is that Dropbox slashed their prices before iCloud Drive went into public use. Not even like a month ago Dropbox was charging $200 for 200gb. So I saw the Apple announcement of the 200gb being WAAAAAY cheaper and was like wow they are gonna put Dropbox out of business. Especially since it will work on Windows as well.

Now I saw $99 for a year of 1TB on Dropbox and I'm just like...crap. Oh well. I don't know if I'll go with Apple on this one. Ya know? I could go with half the storage space for the same price, but why?

That's it I'm moving back to MobileMe! Who's with me?! :roll eyes:

All jokes aside is there gonna be an app for this on the iPhone. It looked like they had an app one time when they announced it for iOS.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Yeah, forgot celebrity naked pics.... now celebs can load their sex tapes for hacking on the cheap

 

[scheming]

This is the only reason i combed through the comments for this post. This is a great question. I will gladly pay for 200 GB or 1 TB plan if the storage is shared between family share users.

FYI, the next thing i imagine would be having an "iCloud" version of your iDevice's "desktop" and being able to log into that from any other iDevice if the owner of that device has enabled "guest mode". maybe we're too far away from that, dunno.

To answer my own question: no, it's not shared. Upgraded two devices with two separate iCloud accounts and enabled Family Sharing. Upgraded storage to 200 GB plan on iPhoneA and it is correctly displaying 195/200GB used, but iPhoneB shows 2/5GB used... womp womp. Please Apple, allow storage space to be shared, or at least be explicit about it not being shared. Family Sharing seems very promising and this is my first expectation about it in which i was let down.

 

[Eduardo1971]

Just curious, in which place a coffee costs $4?

You obviously do not live in Southern California.

 

[dazed]

Wish they would have matched Dropbox prices, would have been a no brainer.

 

[jml12286]

To answer my own question: no, it's not shared. Upgraded two devices with two separate iCloud accounts and enabled Family Sharing. Upgraded storage to 200 GB plan on iPhoneA and it is correctly displaying 195/200GB used, but iPhoneB shows 2/5GB used... womp womp. Please Apple, allow storage space to be shared, or at least be explicit about it not being shared. Family Sharing seems very promising and this is my first expectation about it in which i was let down.

This is what I was wondering as well. Hopefully there is a solution.

 

[CL4W]

Wow $4 for 200GB is crazy cheap!

 

[iSlicer]

Australia

Just curious, in which place a coffee costs $4?

Where do you pay $4 or more for a coffee? Why Australia of course. Where everything is overpriced and low quality.

 

[Karma*Police]

Just curious, in which place a coffee costs $4?

I paid 20 francs for a cafe au lait in Paris which was equivalent to $5 about 20 years ago. It was worth every penny. If only I could find such amazing coffee here in the States.