The good news is everyone has choices and agency. Don't like Apple's approach to running a tech business with 1 Billion active customers, and feel they're greedy? No worries. There are a lot of other tech companies out there. Simply pick one that offers better value and find happiness.
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Are We Free From Price Increases to Apple Services This Year?
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The good news is everyone has choices and agency. Don't like Apple's approach to running a tech business with 1 Billion active customers, and feel they're greedy? No worries. There are a lot of other tech companies out there. Simply pick one that offers better value and find happiness.
I am not going to get a price increase this year or next, guaranteed. Not using any Apple services means no monthly cost, and that cost cannot go up.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I'm surprised that modern Apple hasn't long-since adopted the gas station thing of "and 9/10ths"... thus...
As to the thread question: will prices go up? Of course they will... as long as most people opt to "just pay." Consumers can control pricing & inflation if they collectively "vote" with their wallets. Else, the reward for higher pricing simply motivates even higher pricing.
When consumers collectively decide their hard-earned money is worth more than some higher price and/or are forced there by simply running out of money, the concept of deflation exists and applies too. We haven't seen it in most of our lifetimes in lasting ways but it is just as tangible because... ultimately... seller wants the money more than buyer needs most of the stuff we buy. When both lock horns and buyers refuse to budge, pricing can magically come down to find a lower level where buyers again feels the price is right. Buyers just seem to have forgotten they collectively have that great power.
- Apple News+: $12.999 per month
- Apple Music: $10.999 per month
- Apple TV+: $9.999 per month
- Apple Fitness+: $9.999 per month
- Apple Arcade: $6.999 per month
As to the thread question: will prices go up? Of course they will... as long as most people opt to "just pay." Consumers can control pricing & inflation if they collectively "vote" with their wallets. Else, the reward for higher pricing simply motivates even higher pricing.
When consumers collectively decide their hard-earned money is worth more than some higher price and/or are forced there by simply running out of money, the concept of deflation exists and applies too. We haven't seen it in most of our lifetimes in lasting ways but it is just as tangible because... ultimately... seller wants the money more than buyer needs most of the stuff we buy. When both lock horns and buyers refuse to budge, pricing can magically come down to find a lower level where buyers again feels the price is right. Buyers just seem to have forgotten they collectively have that great power.
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Is that the thing called "GreedFlation" I've heard about?
Personally I'm only an iCloud 2TB subscriber ... and only because they "optimized" the choices to force me up to 2TB
I really would be just fine on a 500GB plan (or even a 1TB) ... if one existed
I really would be just fine on a 500GB plan (or even a 1TB) ... if one existed
I am still upset about my iCloud+ going from 79p per month to 99p. /s
For £12 per year it's basically nothing so I'm happy. It'd need to go up significantly to maybe £3 per month before I'd cancel it.
If they raise Apple Music now that I've finally ditched Spotify then I'll be mad.
For £12 per year it's basically nothing so I'm happy. It'd need to go up significantly to maybe £3 per month before I'd cancel it.
If they raise Apple Music now that I've finally ditched Spotify then I'll be mad.
It's probably "when" and not an "if", unfortunately
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Personally I'm only an iCloud 2TB subscriber ... and only because they "optimized" the choices to force me up to 2TB
I really would be just fine on a 500GB plan (or even a 1TB) ... if one existed
Roll your own: buy a NAS and own your own cloud. You can then have any amount of storage and rent it to yourself for $0/month. And a NAS can do so many other useful things than only being a personal cloud.
I'm paying monthly at the moment. Now I know I'm definitely not going back to Spotify I will probably pay for the full year when this month is up. I'll keep doing that if it offers better value.
The reason I don't is that I use Apple Photos
I have a TrueNAS build for Plex, file backups, Resilio Sync for some things, etc ... the Apple Photo syncing is the thing still
I'd like to just have them charge more linearly and offer something between 200gb and 2TB, which is too large of a gap
I'd love the ability to have iOS photos sync with other services (including your own provided ones). I think one could reasonably argue we should be able to.
Maybe it's possible?
I haven't looked into it in the last year+
I have a 24TB Synology in the basement but haven't created my own cloud. We use it for plex and for offloading stuff. Home internet upload is only 10mbit (400 down), is that too slow to be of use?
If the price changes they need to let us pick the services in the bundle price.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I too have a fat photos library and like- and use- Synology to store (and backup).
However, I find that the photos I want with me are a tiny fraction of the whole, so I make a few albums on Mac and sync them to iDevice. Thus the big library exists any time I need to access it... and I can put up to all of it in the Synology cloud if I worried about needing access when mobile... but I find that the albums synched cover that base well... as in, I'm never in a situation where I need access to something that I can't access because I didn't anticipate it and include it in the sync.
And if I shoot a bunch of new shots while away from the Mac, I just upload them and then process them later, adding the best of any I want to have as "always access" into the albums I sync.
That may not work for you, but I only use the 5GB free iCloud space. I would never pay for more space. But of course, other people have other needs and/or appreciate the integrated convenience enough to pay that rent. If so, I pass no judgement- just offer a "think different" way to possibly scratch all of the same itches, minus the forever rent.
@HobeSoundDarryl
Definitely something I need to dig into again
Ideally, I'd like to be paying Apple for no subscriptions at all
Definitely something I need to dig into again
Ideally, I'd like to be paying Apple for no subscriptions at all
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No, the "speed" of cloud sync is not that big of a deal. Slower speeds will just take longer to sync. Higher speeds will sync faster. Your speeds should be fine to utilize upwards of several Synology cloud services... for photos & videos you shoot, equivalent of iCloud Drive, music storage, etc. They have quite a big collection of free services that work very well with Apple tech.
And may I highly recommend if you are not already using it, turn on their Time Machine service so you can back up all household Macs to that Synology too. It works great and likely puts some distance between where the main files are stored and where you store that box. If you ALREADY use TM with a DAS drive, this will just create a second household backup: TM will backup to one of them on the even hours and the other on the odd- no special effort on your part at all.
And if you are an AppleTV user, I encourage anyone who already has a Synology (and several other NAS options) to look into the incredible Channels DVR app for television services. Synology becomes an any-size, whole home DVR in which you fully control what you record and your AppleTVs become the equivalent of cable boxes on which you can watch free over the air HD, cable TV and several free TV streamers like Pluto, etc. Devices from Silicon Dust convert the signals so they can be distributed this way. I can barely believe how GREAT all that works together.
I have and have used Channels for YEARS and it is the most-used AppleTV app in my household... just ahead of Computers (app) for all of my owned/ripped/created media. It is a fantastic option for traditional television fans who already have the big storage of a compatible NAS like you... runs on all ApplesTV, iDevices and Macs... as well as various other brands of similar hardware.
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Hard to do with a 1.2TB monthly cap from Xfinity with no other viable service options in the area.
Wow, Apple Music is really expensive in the US. I pay around 4 bucks per month.
Price in Canada went up for AppleTV+ as I just got a notice - from $90 for the year to $130.
I'll be cancelling that - way too big of a price change in one jump.
I'll be cancelling that - way too big of a price change in one jump.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I have Xfinity with the same cap and no problem. You would have to be dealing with a LOT of file exchanges in only a month to overrun that 1.2TB cap. If you perhaps mean the very first big synch of all media, do that at home so that Xfinity isn't involved at all. Once you've got it all "there" at home (not using a byte of Xfinity), access what you need when you need it when away from home... which is unlikely to ever be 1.2TB in a month unless you are shooting/consuming tons of video or similar and needing every bit of it to be distributed via cloud.
If that's the case, Xfinity mobile or similar is going to throttle you to death anyway, making synching to Synology or iCloud at that volume an unpleasant experience.
However, even if something like that was the case and you were somehow immune to wireless throttling where you are, if I couldn't get to home base to upload that much data direct (again no Xfinity involved), I'd probably just carry along a big fat portable drive(s) and dump all those huge new files to it, then, when I get back to home base, add it to Synology without involving Xfinity bandwidth at all.
I can sort of understand raising prices. With a lot of these services it's hard to say what is the 'correct' price so companies creep up the price to see what the public accepts. So it's equally reasonable for customers to declare what price THEY find acceptable by canceling when they raise it too much. Some services are worth more than others and the customers will vote for their favorites with their wallet. Most have too many subscriptions anyway so time to cut out the losers.
