Delete some stuff if you can't afford to store it or don't put it in iCloud.
I too had 4TB of stuff once. Now I am here
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iCloud+ Storage Prices Increased in 10 Countries This Year
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Delete some stuff if you can't afford to store it or don't put it in iCloud.
I too had 4TB of stuff once. Now I am here
Only reason why I have iCloud+ (50 GB) is because Mail uses 4.5 GB of iCloud storage, and my Scores folder (containing, you guessed it, musical scores), which needs access on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad, is also nearly 5 GB in size.
With my email at least, I'm afraid to delete stuff. I just move old emails to folders (music, travel, video projects, etc.).
My reasoning being:
- There have been several instances where, for example, in 2020, someone writes me about a project and I do it. Then in 2024, they write back saying, "Do you still have the file I sent you in 2020? If so, please send my way" and I can say, "yes!" because it's right there in the folder. Yes, I know, this is improper management on the other person's part, but it's happened to me numerous times.
- Receipts, airline confirmation codes, etc. - always afraid to delete those, even after the purchase, trip, or whatnot. Never know when I get wrongfully charged, product never arrives, etc.
No that's all relatively sensible. I have around 5Gb of that stuff floating around going back 30 years or so. My biggest archive is all my academic work which is about 7-8Gb of scanned hand written notes, LaTeX documents, programs, datasets etc. Rest is photos and videos (Lightroom and Photos.app)
With respect to orders and stuff I flag anything in my inbox that hasn't arrived. When it does it gets unflagged and moved to the Orders folder. If it's got an invoice or receipt that's downloaded and poked into iCloud drive and left there until I either sell it or it's out of warranty. The mailbox is cleaned out once every 3-6 months.
What is not sensible is the people who have 500 or so 35MP RAW DSLR photos of the sky with 15 pixels containing an aeroplane in the middle. Or 500 accidental home screen screenshots and pictures of up their nose or the floor. Or 5000 videos of the neighbours walking around in their garden. Have seen all of those before.
Storage is physical.
Data centres, power infrastructure to the data centres, electricity cost, cooling solutions, servers, hard drives and SSDs, physical cables (for most of the traffic or distance) to transfer the data back and forth between the data centres and the devices, physical people managing the infrastructure, etc.
One area of increased costs for data centres has been with the power infrastructure, cooling and energy prices (a lot of places in the world).
5Gb is enough for some people if they don't use it for photos and videos. It was never meant to be a service which gave you free backup of all your data. It's a good service if you pay for it.
8Gb RAM is enough for a lot of people using Macs if they don't use Apple Intelligence or other RAM hungry applications. The only reason Apple stopped selling 8Gb RAM versions, was because of Apple Intelligence.
You'll never be a happy Apple customer if you want to save money or use as little money as possible or get the most hardware or feature.
If you want to be a happy Apple customer, just pay.
Some of us supports (restrained) capitalism:
1) Anyone who offer a service should unilaterally decide how the service works and the price they charge.
2) Potential customers should be completely free to use and buy the service or not (unless it's connected to something else you bought and you were informed or should have known you needed the service).
So yes, I will defend any company to charge any price they want and design the service anyway (with a few exceptions to health and safety) they want irregardless of my own personal opinion.
And I don't complain about service which I don't buy or use.
If I do buy a service, I never complain about the price if that price was clearly shown to me before I bought it.
So it's valuable and Apple knows how to charge for it. A company should be able to charge more for a valuable solution.
Also, cloud storage services, are not only digital. They're almost fully physical.
But that's not what people are doing. They complain about Apple's prices or lack of features.
For every Apple product, there is a cheaper alternative. And those cheaper alternatives also have cheaper services connected with them. Usually, the alternatives have even more features, allow more user control and customisation, etc.
And still, people complain and stay with Apple. For years!
How do you know?
There are at least four factors which have driven up some of the costs:
1) Cost of construction due to general inflation and supply chain constraints
2) Higher wages, in some cases a lot due to labor shortages
3) Increased energy cost in most places
4) Existing data centres are hitting constraints on power infrastructure and cooling solutions
Also, reducing cost and increasing price is an essential part of running a business. Lower cost for a business shouldn't mean lower prices for customers. Products and services should be sold for what the customer is willing to pay, especially for non-essential stuff.
It's the same for as person. If a person reduces their cost of living, they shouldn't have to get a cut in their wage or be taxed more severely because know they have more money left over.
I recently broke down and got my own 2TB subscription. We all had been on my wife’s 2TB plan for years but with the kids getting more devices and more and more photos piling up we ran out. I wish you could combine storage amounts, I could have done the 200GB plan for a while, but that doesn’t work. You are either on your own or on a family member‘s plan. It would also be nice if they had in-between tiers like 3TB for $15 or gave a discount on the higher tiers (they are all $10 per 2 TB).
None of that is wrong. But like I said in a followup post, it's not that it's technically not enough. It's that it's clearly not keeping pace with all the other numbers getting bigger.
That's the whole history of computing, bigger and bigger numbers, and 5GB of storage and 8GB of RAM just aren't what they used to be. The world changed around them.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
For the 100-150 years people have accumulated photographs, they have never had a situation where they need access to every photo they’ve ever shot. Traditionally, your Dads & Moms might- that’s MIGHT- have carried 4 to maybe 12 pics around in their wallets and lived their lives just fine.
With very rare exception, nearly no one needs access to all photos they own all of the time. Turn off storing all of them in iCloud and perhaps the biggest data hog pressing us into paying forever rent significantly collapses to as little as zero bytes.
Think (different). What did we do before iCloud? We stored our digital media on our Macs, made photo albums in iPhoto-now-Photos and synched “best of” collections to our iDevices to have the best of the bunch with us at all times. Instead of 4 to 12, this might be upwards of a few hundred photos from libraries of thousands. How much monthly rent does synching ‘best of” albums cost? $0.
Ask yourself this: how long has it been since you looked at every photo in iCloud? If you answer honestly, for almost all of them, the answer is probably never. So what if you stored them on your Mac instead and synched only dozens or hundreds of the best ones to your iDevice? How negative would it be to NOT have immediate access to thousands of photos you never look at anyway?
Once you realize the answer to that question, you can turn Photo storage in iCloud off, free up enormous space, cut the forever rent and not really feel much-if any- negative about the change. Local HDD storage is dirt cheap. Store your digital clutter there. It’s easy to make “best of” albums and sync them to iDevices.
Or leave things “as is” and keep needing a bigger & bigger digital warehouse for the ever-growing pile of photos at which you’ll probably never look. The cloud landlords are happy to charge you more and more for more virtual space AND simply raise your rent from time to time. None of us are obligated to store every photo we have in any cloud. A simple change to how we did it pre-iCloud and rent can significantly drop… forever.
I have probably 30K photos in Photos, about 800 “favorites” synched onto my iDevice and pay $0/month for iCloud. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything when it comes to photos. The “best of” cousin Steve or Aunt Jane synched is just as good to summon at any time as the slightly different 20-200 pictures of them in the bigger library if I need a look at them and am away from the Mac. If I find that I really need one other Jane or Steve photo with me, 800 easily becomes 801 synched and I still pay no rent for life.
Think different.
With very rare exception, nearly no one needs access to all photos they own all of the time. Turn off storing all of them in iCloud and perhaps the biggest data hog pressing us into paying forever rent significantly collapses to as little as zero bytes.
Think (different). What did we do before iCloud? We stored our digital media on our Macs, made photo albums in iPhoto-now-Photos and synched “best of” collections to our iDevices to have the best of the bunch with us at all times. Instead of 4 to 12, this might be upwards of a few hundred photos from libraries of thousands. How much monthly rent does synching ‘best of” albums cost? $0.
Ask yourself this: how long has it been since you looked at every photo in iCloud? If you answer honestly, for almost all of them, the answer is probably never. So what if you stored them on your Mac instead and synched only dozens or hundreds of the best ones to your iDevice? How negative would it be to NOT have immediate access to thousands of photos you never look at anyway?
Once you realize the answer to that question, you can turn Photo storage in iCloud off, free up enormous space, cut the forever rent and not really feel much-if any- negative about the change. Local HDD storage is dirt cheap. Store your digital clutter there. It’s easy to make “best of” albums and sync them to iDevices.
Or leave things “as is” and keep needing a bigger & bigger digital warehouse for the ever-growing pile of photos at which you’ll probably never look. The cloud landlords are happy to charge you more and more for more virtual space AND simply raise your rent from time to time. None of us are obligated to store every photo we have in any cloud. A simple change to how we did it pre-iCloud and rent can significantly drop… forever.
I have probably 30K photos in Photos, about 800 “favorites” synched onto my iDevice and pay $0/month for iCloud. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything when it comes to photos. The “best of” cousin Steve or Aunt Jane synched is just as good to summon at any time as the slightly different 20-200 pictures of them in the bigger library if I need a look at them and am away from the Mac. If I find that I really need one other Jane or Steve photo with me, 800 easily becomes 801 synched and I still pay no rent for life.
Think different.
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What’s happened in the past deserves a degree of preservation, and I hate to be in a situation where I would better have the data when I really need it in those crucial moments, however rare it might be. If I don’t need a piece of data I would know immediately or soon after.Delete some stuff if you can't afford to store it or don't put it in iCloud.
I too had 4TB of stuff once. Now I am here
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You can save even more money if you switch from Apple to Windows and Android.
"Saving money" and "Apple customer" are two ingredients in a recipe called Unhappy life.
They would have to change their operating system which comes at a cost.
I disagree that companies should be forced to make things cheaper or better for their customers.
Depending on how much over you are and if you use any of the other services, but you apparently can stack an Apple One subscription with a iCloud one, it might not be cost effective if you don't use anything but iCloud though.
I think it is cute, you believe it is because it is too much work for apple to let other companies offer music/picture/etc online backup and restore.
They increase the size of their storage on devices, encourage users to use iCloud, but offer one of the lowest free storage tiers available via the Cloud, with no opportunity for a user to choose another service in place of iCloud. Then they crank the prices to cover the necessary upgrade all that sync'd info needs.
We pay the Apple Tax for the devices already - it should include matching online storage.
We pay the Apple Tax for the devices already - it should include matching online storage.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Rather than storing so much old email in iCloud, drag folders of it down to "On My Mac." You'll still have access to every bit of those emails but rarely-needed email won't be eating up huge space in iCloud. In example #1, you may not be able to send them that file immediately but only a few hours later when you get to your Mac.
You can also archive email very easily and then re-import archives if you need them again. And this can work out of and back into iCloud storage too. If Mac internal storage is tight, archive to a cheap external drive. Storage is cheap.
#2 is a short-term storage need. After the travel or return period, etc, it doesn't matter if you have immediate access to such stuff anymore. Nevertheless, it too can be moved from iCloud down to "On My Mac" to free up whatever iCloud space it holds without you losing access to any of it.
And it too can be archived on Mac vs. in iCloud so you can restore it back into email- iCloud or on my Mac- at any time if you had some reason to do so.
The Musical Scores thing is a much more valid use for cloud storage IF you are regularly evolving those scores. If the bulk of them are not being regularly edited but basically only for "read only" use, you can store them on your Mac and sync them to your iDevices. Then you have them with you on all devices without needing to use any iCloud space.
But if you ARE regularly tweaking them, consider adopting a competing cloud service that will give you more than 5GB for free and store & access them there. This will free up most of the free 5GB from Apple to use for core service sharing like contacts, calendar, keychain, etc.
The four great data hogs of iCloud are:
- Photo libraries: store the library on Mac, create "best of" albums on Mac and sync the albums to iDevices
- Email: Purge the inbox down to always having relatively few emails in it and move archives of email to "On my Mac" if you must preserve every email you've ever received & sent.
- Messages (texts): Close text conversations when done vs. leaving them forever open to then pick up the conversation next time. All those cat videos, etc that are one-hit giggles, etc hog up a lot of iCloud space if you never close text messages... but if you "hang up" on the conversation when done, you keep purging such stuff from iCloud. Close text interactions when done, then start new ones next time- just like phone calls.
- iDevice backups: backup by attaching it to Mac from time to time and own, possess and control your own backups. This is dead simple and you leave for-profit strangers out of this part of things.
"Think different"... or pay forever.
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This has to be a typo or you’re on some kind of legacy plan, right? Can you point me to where I can sign up for 1TB of OneDrive for $15/year?
Edit just to be clear: I did look and couldn’t find a plan that cheap.
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There’s a difference between “I would like for Apple to support X, but they don’t and that’s life” and “Apple is F’ed up for not doing something I want them to do”. The latter just reeks of sheer entitlement by a spoilt brat, IMO.
Traditionally, Apple has relied on the more rabid Macolytes on their Communities Forums to defend bad decisions and issues with hardware and software; these fans often getting quite abusive when a query or problem is brought forward, usually starting with "You're a f*cking idiot and don't deserve to own an Apple product. Apple is perfect", and then going downhill from there. Apple only getting involved with the same reported issue when it hits the mainstream Media.
Apple has gotten a little less reliant on these basement-dwellers - noting the regularity at which patches (sorry...'upgrades') happen with some of their software and the occasional mea culpa on hardware - but these fanboys / girls do remain an active part ('cottage industry') on some of the Communities.
'Entitlement' should not mean a justification for when someone points out that, say, CleanUp in Photos is less accurate than the old Retouch, or that the Magic Mouse still needs to be turned over on its back to charge. Sometimes, Apple just sucks and doesn't care. They know better.
Any abusive language especially in a mere tech forum is inexcusable (although personally I haven’t seen any nearly as extreme as that because it’s not allowed here), but when/how has Apple ever relied on forum talk in any way? I don’t think anything that goes on here has any real bearing in the business world, only in that our chatter may be a reflection of a small subset of consumer sentiment. But I’ve never seen non-circumstantial evidence of any causal effect.
There should be no issue with pointing out ways that Apple can do better. But it’s the oft-attached entitled mindset that tends to cause heavy bias which very often leads to unsupported or simply wrong claims and conclusions. It’s these that draw opposition. Although that opposition is often taken as “fanboys defending Apple”—and while there is probably some of that mixed in—challenge is ultimately necessary if we value a separation between objective fact, objective fiction, and subjective opinion.
Granted bias happens on both ends of the spectrum. On one end are those who vilify Apple and will never acknowledge any value they bring (whether under past or present leadership). On the other end are those who idealize Apple and believe they are infallible. But anyone who can’t acknowledge both the good and bad of Apple (sincerely) can’t be taken seriously in a discussion about Apple. Rationality and wisdom seeks to understand both sides.