4 ms·

I wonder what percentage of users will have to buy more iCloud storage for this. Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly, esp

by bluthru 12y ago

I wonder what percentage of users will have to buy more iCloud storage for this. Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly, especially if someone has multiple Apple devices.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly" That's one way to look at it. But they need to make money somehow and I'd prefer this to advertising or selling my data or trying to convince me to make my life publicly accessible online.
- guelo 12y ago
  Or including it as part of the iPhone's obscene 50%+ profit margins. That's what Google does with unlimited free auto-backup to Google Plus, and they don't even make money on most of the Android phones sold! Apple doesn't need this money, just like they don't need the ugly user experience when an iPhone's account gets disconnected from its credit card. But Apple's culture of nickel and diming for everything has to do with training users to pull out their credit cards. The more often a user hits Pay the easier it is to do it the next time it comes up. As long as the user keeps pulling out the credit card the experience is smooth and makes the user feel like they are part of an elite higher class. In other words, it's deliberate consumer brainwashing.
  - tdkl 12y ago
    > unlimited free auto-backup For pictures below 2048x2048. Also I'd rather pay for storage then expose my data to web app automated algorithms and lack of local editing software with two way sync.
    - guelo 12y ago
      Android does include local editing with 2 way sync.
  - modfodder 12y ago
    I'm not sure how you can consider Apple nickel and diming for everything when they give OS upgrades away for free. Aside from wanting free iCloud storage, please provide a list of other services/products Apple charges for that you believe should be free?
- atestu 12y ago
  I agree. I'm a lot more comfortable being charged (and the new pricing for iCloud storage is pretty reasonable). For comparison Dropbox only gives you 2GB free.
- bonaldi 12y ago
  Apple is literally the last company in the world that needs to make money "somehow".
- beaumartinez 12y ago
  > They need to make money somehow. Yes, because their profit margins are that low (!). Considering Apple charges you £500 for a phone and £1000 for a laptop, I'd expect a bit more in terms of default cloud storage. 5 gig (and the 16 gig the cheapest iPhone 5S model offers) are incredibly stingy.
- damon_c 12y ago
  I don't understand why Apple charges for things like this. You'd think it adds up to very little cost for them but adds such value that they would sell more than enough additional Macs and Phones. I mean... wouldn't their ideal lock-in scenario be if everyone was free to store gigs upon gigs of photos for free so they pretty much HAD stay in the Apple system or suffer the inconvenience of downloading it all and putting it somewhere else?
JimDabell 12y ago
> Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly 5GB of storage for every Apple user comes to hundreds if not thousands of petabytes of storage that Apple are providing for free. Calling that "miserly" seems awfully entitled to me – you're essentially complaining that Apple aren't giving you enough stuff for free.
- rtpg 12y ago
  considering this is for iDevice and Mac users, it's far from free. Besides, Dropbox has way more coverage and is offering 16 gigs. Apple has $150 billion in cash, so it's not an infrastructure issue. The core is probably that they don't "need" to offer more, so don't. But that doesn't mean we can't ding them for their behaviour
  - _delirium 12y ago
    > Besides, Dropbox has way more coverage and is offering 16 gigs. Dropbox's advertised free tier is only 2 gigs: https://www.dropbox.com/plans https://www.dropbox.com/plans. There are some referral games you can play to get more, but I doubt many people end up with 16 gigs (I'm at 4).
_delirium 12y ago
I can see it as miserly, but I wonder if it's some kind of attempt to select for the kind of customers they want, i.e. customers who are themselves not too miserly. The 20gb tier is absurdly cheap, $0.99/mo. So much so that they wouldn't be giving up much real revenue if they just bumped the free tier to 20 gigs, but then on the other hand it doesn't cost a user much to go up to that tier, either. Maybe the threshold of "people who will/won't pay $1/mo for iCloud" therefore serves a useful function for Apple?

by bluthru 12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly" That's one way to look at it. But they need to make money somehow and I'd prefer this to advertising or selling my data or trying to convince me to make my life publicly accessible online.

guelo 12y ago
Or including it as part of the iPhone's obscene 50%+ profit margins. That's what Google does with unlimited free auto-backup to Google Plus, and they don't even make money on most of the Android phones sold! Apple doesn't need this money, just like they don't need the ugly user experience when an iPhone's account gets disconnected from its credit card. But Apple's culture of nickel and diming for everything has to do with training users to pull out their credit cards. The more often a user hits Pay the easier it is to do it the next time it comes up. As long as the user keeps pulling out the credit card the experience is smooth and makes the user feel like they are part of an elite higher class. In other words, it's deliberate consumer brainwashing.
- tdkl 12y ago
  > unlimited free auto-backup For pictures below 2048x2048. Also I'd rather pay for storage then expose my data to web app automated algorithms and lack of local editing software with two way sync.
  - guelo 12y ago
    Android does include local editing with 2 way sync.
- modfodder 12y ago
  I'm not sure how you can consider Apple nickel and diming for everything when they give OS upgrades away for free. Aside from wanting free iCloud storage, please provide a list of other services/products Apple charges for that you believe should be free?
atestu 12y ago
I agree. I'm a lot more comfortable being charged (and the new pricing for iCloud storage is pretty reasonable). For comparison Dropbox only gives you 2GB free.
bonaldi 12y ago
Apple is literally the last company in the world that needs to make money "somehow".
beaumartinez 12y ago
> They need to make money somehow. Yes, because their profit margins are that low (!). Considering Apple charges you £500 for a phone and £1000 for a laptop, I'd expect a bit more in terms of default cloud storage. 5 gig (and the 16 gig the cheapest iPhone 5S model offers) are incredibly stingy.
damon_c 12y ago
I don't understand why Apple charges for things like this. You'd think it adds up to very little cost for them but adds such value that they would sell more than enough additional Macs and Phones. I mean... wouldn't their ideal lock-in scenario be if everyone was free to store gigs upon gigs of photos for free so they pretty much HAD stay in the Apple system or suffer the inconvenience of downloading it all and putting it somewhere else?

JimDabell 12y ago

> Charging users for more than 5gigs of storage in 2015 seems pretty miserly 5GB of storage for every Apple user comes to hundreds if not thousands of petabytes of storage that Apple are providing for free. Calling that "miserly" seems awfully entitled to me – you're essentially complaining that Apple aren't giving you enough stuff for free.

rtpg 12y ago
considering this is for iDevice and Mac users, it's far from free. Besides, Dropbox has way more coverage and is offering 16 gigs. Apple has $150 billion in cash, so it's not an infrastructure issue. The core is probably that they don't "need" to offer more, so don't. But that doesn't mean we can't ding them for their behaviour
- _delirium 12y ago
  > Besides, Dropbox has way more coverage and is offering 16 gigs. Dropbox's advertised free tier is only 2 gigs: https://www.dropbox.com/plans https://www.dropbox.com/plans. There are some referral games you can play to get more, but I doubt many people end up with 16 gigs (I'm at 4).

_delirium 12y ago

I can see it as miserly, but I wonder if it's some kind of attempt to select for the kind of customers they want, i.e. customers who are themselves not too miserly. The 20gb tier is absurdly cheap, $0.99/mo. So much so that they wouldn't be giving up much real revenue if they just bumped the free tier to 20 gigs, but then on the other hand it doesn't cost a user much to go up to that tier, either. Maybe the threshold of "people who will/won't pay $1/mo for iCloud" therefore serves a useful function for Apple?