I really wish you'd listen rather than continuing to make the same complaints.
That was only one scenario. The one that I preferred and which both mstone and I have explained to you is this:
Every time you buy a new iDevice, you get 5 GB added to your iCloud account if/when you register the device. Once you've registered the device, that 5 GB stays with the account no matter what you do to the iDevice. You could sell it, burn it, wipe it, or flush it down the toilet and the 5 GB remains on the iCloud account where the device was originally registered. So there's no need for any of your silly 'what if' scenarios. When you buy a device, you get the 5 GB - permanently.
None of the problems you envision would occur under that scenario. For there to be a problem, someone would have to either be able to hack Apple's servers to re-register a device that was previously registered or else create a fake device serial number that would get past Apple. If they can do either of those things, my scenario doesn't make it any worse.
I can't restate in yet another way what I've already made as crystal clear as I can make them. You're either willfully being obtuse or you're your too ignorant to see what is painfully lacking from your definition of "register."
Yeah except if they are driving an electric car, they are probably already in a high tax bracket so they are most likely not looking for hand out for themselves but advocating better social services for the less fortunate. But it does bring up an interesting side effect to owning electric cars. Those people do not pay any taxes for road maintenance which comes out of the gasoline tax. So as a larger proportion of autos are electric expect the gas taxes to increase as well as DMV registration and electricity costs.
As the Dallas News writer says: "I mean, are we really even having a debate about real-time tracking of electric cars? Because if we are, I'll drive a gas guzzler until the day I die." Which I hope is not the intent of this new proposed legislation; we need more electric cars replacing gas-guzzlers, not less! But it's worth reading his take on it. If anyone thinks we're not headed for Big Brother ville, it's time to pull your heads out of the sand. It doesn't get much more invasive than monitoring your car 24/7/365. You can bet the insurance companies are licking their chops over the possibility to monitor your location and speed 24/7 as well.
I can't restate in yet another way what I've already made as crystal clear as I can make them. You're either willfully being obtuse or you're your too ignorant to see what is painfully lacking from your definition of "register."
This entire conversation reminds me of my prior career as a program manager implementing improved redundancy and scalability in our product:
Auto-Deletion of Storage (versus unlimited storage previously)
Failover and Failback
Federated Identity
High Availability (99.999%)
Geographic Redundancy
Load Balancing
Moving Data on Storage Units
Moving Storage Units
Reuse of Storage Units
Unless someone has actually implemented similar features at such a scale they seriously can't believe the complexity of a project such as this. The business with which I was previously affiliated needed more than eighteen months of planning to develop the type of features being discussed at such a massive scale. Eighteen months but the best we could realistically do was implement those features in two phases in three years.
The business is one of two premium solution providers in that industry of dozens so we can fairly say that we had some excellent engineers.
On a completely different note, I truly wonder what is the purpose of all the data centers.
If anyone thinks we're not headed for Big Brother ville, it's time to pull your heads out of the sand. It doesn't get much more invasive than monitoring your car 24/7/365. You can bet the insurance companies are licking their chops over the possibility to monitor your location and speed 24/7 as well.
I can't see how that type of privacy invasion would be allowed any time in the near future so I'm not expecting tracking of that type to be mandated by California, however I'm in the same camp as your mentioned reporter. No way would I buy an electric vehicle if it came with a GPS monitoring device. I'm already annoyed by my insurance company requiring my milage reports because I have low milage insurance which has a minimum default of 7500 mile /yr when I actually only drive around 2500 miles/yr. I have consistently remained at this level for years but they insist that I validate the level of usage over and over about every couple months.
I have two cars and a motorcycle but use public transit most of the time except on the weekends, but even then I only drive a couple miles on Saturday to the Market Place where there is a Home Depot and the bank to use the ATM. All vehicles together I only drive 2500 which they just don't believe and think I'm lying.
...or we might start thinking you're a California, hippie, minority, liberal looking for a handout with a Hilary 2016 bumper sticker on your electric car.
What's more interesting to me is the fact Apple is building two more data centres. That's a huge upgrade to their current system and goes far beyond just having redundancy.
Perhaps to support a streaming service? Or the rumored Apple TV ( which would require a lot of capacity)?
I should probably consider that too. Mine all have iCloud back up turned off. I looked at my storage just now and I have 24.81 of 25GB. Just my mail is being used and there isn't much of that. I almost never back up my iDevices although I do always back up my computer data to the data center or detachable storage. I just don't keep anything on iDevices that I can't re-download. I'll take a look at it when I get back to wifi. I don't want to use up my cell data right now.
On a parallel issue ... my wife got a message that her 5 Gigs was used up and she needed to buy more. I should add she backs up a MBP, iPad and iPhone to iCloud. I am not sure what on earth put her over the limit but whatever ... she didn't tell me for a few days. In fact not until all her Mail vanished and she only had the last three days in her in box. I upgraded her storage and cleared out a few iWorks docs. Still no mail ... I called Apple and they said there was nothing they could do. Thankfully I remembered we have wireless TimeMachine although to be honest I wasn't sure mail would be there since it is on the cloud with SMTP I assumed. But to my relief, sure enough I was able to retrieve all her mail from TM without issue. Had we not had TM there would have been a lot of problems since as a Realtor who is very busy her mail was full of on going contracts flying back and forth as PDFs.
I was shocked that she lost everything that fast to be honest, it seemed very un Apple to me.
On a parallel issue ... my wife got a message that her 5 Gigs was used up and she needed to buy more. I should add she backs up a MBP, iPad and iPhone to iCloud. I am not sure what on earth put her over the limit but whatever ... she didn't tell me for a few days. In fact not until all her Mail vanished and she only had the last three days in her in box. I upgraded her storage and cleared out a few iWorks docs. Still no mail ... I called Apple and they said there was nothing they could do. Thankfully I remembered we have wireless TimeMachine although to be honest I wasn't sure mail would be there since it is on the cloud with SMTP I assumed. But to my relief, sure enough I was able to retrieve all her mail from TM without issue. Had we not had TM there would have been a lot of problems since as a Realtor who is very busy her mail was full of on going contracts flying back and forth as PDFs.
I was shocked that she lost everything that fast to be honest, it seemed very un Apple to me.
Gees, that would spook me out. Which happened, actually, but with my Calendar. I keep 3 (Private, Work & some Association I do some work for) and my Private Calendar vanished from my iPhone. Since it's on iCloud, I couldn't retrieve it from my iPad or Mac. So I restored a backup (I do it locally and not through iCloud) and after a restore, when you open Calendar (or Mail, Contacts) it immediately syncs with iCloud and therefore my Private Calendar vanished again. Totally no way around it, but was fortunate to have a HDD with a recent image from my bootdrive and was able to restore a cache file which I found out was not being backed up by Time Machine.
Simple, with every iOS device you include a code on a card, similar to an iTunes Gift Card, that adds 5GB of storage to your account for free. Once the code is used it can't be used again. Of course, if you ever sell your iOS device the new buyer wouldn't get the extra storage, but that is just part of buying something used.
Gees, that would spook me out. Which happened, actually, but with my Calendar. I keep 3 (Private, Work & some Association I do some work for) and my Private Calendar vanished from my iPhone. Since it's on iCloud, I couldn't retrieve it from my iPad or Mac. So I restored a backup (I do it locally and not through iCloud) and after a restore, when you open Calendar (or Mail, Contacts) it immediately syncs with iCloud and therefore my Private Calendar vanished again. Totally no way around it, but was fortunate to have a HDD with a recent image from my bootdrive and was able to restore a cache file which I found out was not being backed up by Time Machine.
I had a vicious circle with MobileMe once. I seem to recall I had to delete and start over to break it and have the one true master file on line and all sync to that. I somehow had a multi-dependency set up where the calendars were syncing in an endless loop. In my case they kept adding over and over rather than deleting. I think one of the problems is when we have had .Mac then MobileMe then iCoud and try to do things the way we did and I suspect it all works great if you are a newbie rather than transferring on from an previous system set up. It can get pretty scary if your business is involved.
I can't restate in yet another way what I've already made as crystal clear as I can make them. You're either willfully being obtuse or you're your too ignorant to see what is painfully lacking from your definition of "register."
Sorry, but you're the one being obtuse.
1. Apple already has a system in place to register new devices. There are no problems with people circumventing that system - you register a device only once and you can't register it again.
2. Apple already has a system in place to give free storage to people who register with iCloud. That storage space can be used to back up your idevices.
3. If Apple wanted to, they could add 5 GB to the storage space every time your register a device and link it to iCloud. The mechanism is already in place and nothing new is required (except the code to change the amount of space you're allocated).
4. Once the space is allocated to an iCloud account, it stays on that iCloud account. Nothing changes if you sell the phone, smash it with a hammer or wipe it and jailbreak it. The extra storage space continues to be allocated to the original iCloud account.
You haven't explained why that is so difficult or why it wouldn't work. Instead, you keep throwing out scenarios that have nothing to do with what I've just described. So please tell us exactly why that wouldn't work.
This entire conversation reminds me of my prior career as a program manager implementing improved redundancy and scalability in our product:
Auto-Deletion of Storage (versus unlimited storage previously)
Failover and Failback
Federated Identity
High Availability (99.999%)
Geographic Redundancy
Load Balancing
Moving Data on Storage Units
Moving Storage Units
Reuse of Storage Units
Unless someone has actually implemented similar features at such a scale they seriously can't believe the complexity of a project such as this. The business with which I was previously affiliated needed more than eighteen months of planning to develop the type of features being discussed at such a massive scale. Eighteen months but the best we could realistically do was implement those features in two phases in three years.
The business is one of two premium solution providers in that industry of dozens so we can fairly say that we had some excellent engineers..
That's all true. However, it's irrelevant. Apple already has all of that in place. Yes, they might have to add new servers or more storage for existing servers, but the infrastructure is already there. What I am proposing doesn't require any significant changes.
But you know Photostream doesn't count again the 5 gig, don't you?
Now that you mention it I recall that being said.
What I'd love is for the rebirth of iDisk as a modern, secure Dropbox competitor. It's amazing how many of my Apple devices are connected and connected to others but I still use Dropbox for data.
But you know Photostream doesn't count again the 5 gig, don't you?
Now that you mention it I recall that being said.
What I'd love is for the rebirth of iDisk as a modern, secure Dropbox competitor. It's amazing how many of my Apple devices are connected and connected to others but I still use Dropbox for data.
After 3 (?) reports on their servers being hacked (or whatever) I don't think it's the best place for my personal data (password list and such) to store on their service, so I deleted my docs and the app. I downloaded a different one but still haven't configured and, thusly, used it. Perhaps I just seem to be doing ok with the current apps that sync with iCloud. Or my needs have changed.
But yes, rebirth of iDisk would be great - perhaps that new datacenter is for that. Or for Videostream; I seriously do not understand why it is so difficult to get video's shot with my iPhone back onto my Mac/Internet. I could use Aperture, and presume iPhoto can do as well, but I want it all in iTunes, because of the easy syncing. It was conceived as the hub, why won't it work that way? But I digress...
1. Apple already has a system in place to register new devices. There are no problems with people circumventing that system - you register a device only once and you can't register it again.
2. Apple already has a system in place to give free storage to people who register with iCloud. That storage space can be used to back up your idevices.
3. If Apple wanted to, they could add 5 GB to the storage space every time your register a device and link it to iCloud. The mechanism is already in place and nothing new is required (except the code to change the amount of space you're allocated).
4. Once the space is allocated to an iCloud account, it stays on that iCloud account. Nothing changes if you sell the phone, smash it with a hammer or wipe it and jailbreak it. The extra storage space continues to be allocated to the original iCloud account.
You haven't explained why that is so difficult or why it wouldn't work. Instead, you keep throwing out scenarios that have nothing to do with what I've just described. So please tell us exactly why that wouldn't work.
As annoyed as I am by your lack of comprehension I'll throw you another bone in the form of three more scenarios:
1) A user buys a new iPad. They plug it into their Mac and it restores from a backup. They have 3 iCloud accounts. How does iCloud automatically know which one gets the extra 5GB? According to you this is easy and it's when you register the device. So which is it? At the very least there would have to be an option in iOS that would let you choose which one of multiple accounts you get to apply the one time 5GB? How is that as simple as increasing capacity on the back end?
2a) A user applies it to one iCloud account but soon after realizes they applied it to the wrong one. With your design there is absolutely no recourse for switching the allotment but they really don't want that data applied to the iCloud account they use for junk mail or an address they no long want to use (for whatever reason). There only recourse is to return their new device to the Apple within the 2 week period — remember there is no restocking fee — so they do this again.
2b) A user needs more space for iCloud and doesn't want to wait for a year or two to buy more Apple gear so he gets this idea after reading a post by SolipsismX on AppleInsider on the downfalls of jragosta's enacted system that you can buy a new device "register" it, return it for a full refund, and keep the data, so he buys as many of the cheapest iPod Touches he can afford to get the extra space then returns all these opened and "registered" devices that 1) can no longer sold as new, 2) won't get anyone who buys them as refurbished the extra 5GB, and 3) are now costing Apple money on giving away storage, shipping products for the purpose of giving away storage, waisting their employee's time, and affecting their refurb sales where it's now a hit or miss in this extra 5GB of storage from iCloud when you "register" the device.
Of course, this is where you can say this won't happen often, or that it's not a big deal, or that Apple can reset those refurbished devices, or that if you return a device you lose anything you gained from that "register" but that's all additional effort, additional steps, additional consideration that need to be planned for, detailed, thought out, and worked out before your simple plan can be made a reality.
So how is all that as easy as giving everyone more space which mostly needs to get with the datacenter staff to make sure they have the ability to support any extra capacity needs that might arise (which at this point is pretty doubtful considering how limited iCloud is without a Dropbox-like system for sharing files)?
I think one of the problems is when we have had .Mac then MobileMe then iCoud and try to do things the way we did and I suspect it all works great if you are a newbie rather than transferring on from an previous system set up. It can get pretty scary if your business is involved.
I actually have that very same feeling/suspicion, and sometimes feel like exporting all my info from Mail, Calendar and Calendar and wipe out my iCloud account (or create a new one, if feasible) and import everything 'freshly'.
After 3 (?) reports on their servers being hacked (or whatever) I don't think it's the best place for my personal data (password list and such) to store on their service, so I deleted my docs and the app. I downloaded a different one but still haven't configured and, thusly, used it. Perhaps I just seem to be doing ok with the current apps that sync with iCloud. Or my needs have changed.
But yes, rebirth of iDisk would be great - perhaps that new datacenter is for that. Or for Videostream; I seriously do not understand why it is so difficult to get video's shot with my iPhone back onto my Mac/Internet. I could use Aperture, and presume iPhoto can do as well, but I want it all in iTunes, because of the easy syncing. It was conceived as the hub, why won't it work that way? But I digress...
1) Hacks on Dropbox? I store my 1Password file on there as per the app. That file is encrypted but I also use a very, very, very long password for Dropbox just to be safe.
2) It's hard to say what they are planning for since these things are so far out. It could just be planned growth but I doubt it. I just wish they were better at it at this point. Google was brilliant with Gmail. invitations at first and as they could handle more users they increased the number of invitations you received until they finally opened it up to all. They also grew your storage from the initial 1GB (which was so amazing at the time). I'm using 2.7GB of 10.1GB on Gmail as I've never once deleted anything.
3. If Apple wanted to, they could add 5 GB to the storage space every time your register a device and link it to iCloud. The mechanism is already in place and nothing new is required (except the code to change the amount of space you're allocated).
But what happens if you use a friends' iPhone, after he or she has backed it up and you restore your own back onto it, register it and return the phone? Sorry, don't want to interfere with your discussion with sol here, but merely 'thinking out loud'
Comments
I can't restate in yet another way what I've already made as crystal clear as I can make them. You're either willfully being obtuse or you're your too ignorant to see what is painfully lacking from your definition of "register."
Originally Posted by mstone
Yeah except if they are driving an electric car, they are probably already in a high tax bracket so they are most likely not looking for hand out for themselves but advocating better social services for the less fortunate. But it does bring up an interesting side effect to owning electric cars. Those people do not pay any taxes for road maintenance which comes out of the gasoline tax. So as a larger proportion of autos are electric expect the gas taxes to increase as well as DMV registration and electricity costs.
Well where there's a will to tax, there's a way, and in at least some states it's not likely to work out even as "nicely" as you suggest above. The talk is of moving to a "mileage tax", where electric cars pay tax based on how many miles you drive. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/01/03/237258/oregon-lawmakers-propose-mileage-tax-on-fuel-efficient-vehicles
In Texas, Washington and Oregon (among other states), they would like to implement this by installing a monitorable GPS in your car! http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/texas-among-states-considering.html
As the Dallas News writer says: "I mean, are we really even having a debate about real-time tracking of electric cars? Because if we are, I'll drive a gas guzzler until the day I die." Which I hope is not the intent of this new proposed legislation; we need more electric cars replacing gas-guzzlers, not less! But it's worth reading his take on it. If anyone thinks we're not headed for Big Brother ville, it's time to pull your heads out of the sand. It doesn't get much more invasive than monitoring your car 24/7/365. You can bet the insurance companies are licking their chops over the possibility to monitor your location and speed 24/7 as well.
The GPS trackers are already being tested in Oregon (http://www.opb.org/news/article/n3-washington-oregon-consider-mileage-based-road-tax/) , so this is not as far-fetched as some might think.
This entire conversation reminds me of my prior career as a program manager implementing improved redundancy and scalability in our product:
Auto-Deletion of Storage (versus unlimited storage previously)
Failover and Failback
Federated Identity
High Availability (99.999%)
Geographic Redundancy
Load Balancing
Moving Data on Storage Units
Moving Storage Units
Reuse of Storage Units
Unless someone has actually implemented similar features at such a scale they seriously can't believe the complexity of a project such as this. The business with which I was previously affiliated needed more than eighteen months of planning to develop the type of features being discussed at such a massive scale. Eighteen months but the best we could realistically do was implement those features in two phases in three years.
The business is one of two premium solution providers in that industry of dozens so we can fairly say that we had some excellent engineers.
On a completely different note, I truly wonder what is the purpose of all the data centers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blah64
If anyone thinks we're not headed for Big Brother ville, it's time to pull your heads out of the sand. It doesn't get much more invasive than monitoring your car 24/7/365. You can bet the insurance companies are licking their chops over the possibility to monitor your location and speed 24/7 as well.
I can't see how that type of privacy invasion would be allowed any time in the near future so I'm not expecting tracking of that type to be mandated by California, however I'm in the same camp as your mentioned reporter. No way would I buy an electric vehicle if it came with a GPS monitoring device. I'm already annoyed by my insurance company requiring my milage reports because I have low milage insurance which has a minimum default of 7500 mile /yr when I actually only drive around 2500 miles/yr. I have consistently remained at this level for years but they insist that I validate the level of usage over and over about every couple months.
I have two cars and a motorcycle but use public transit most of the time except on the weekends, but even then I only drive a couple miles on Saturday to the Market Place where there is a Home Depot and the bank to use the ATM. All vehicles together I only drive 2500 which they just don't believe and think I'm lying.
They'll need to make up their mind before Sep 30 anyway.
Damn I want iTunes Movie Trailer.ipa as well. Stupid demographic demarcation.
But you know Photostream doesn't count again the 5 gig, don't you?
Brilliant!
dito!
I think the whole point of the article was to show how iOS Panorama pics look like (¡)
... Search ... maybe?
On a parallel issue ... my wife got a message that her 5 Gigs was used up and she needed to buy more. I should add she backs up a MBP, iPad and iPhone to iCloud. I am not sure what on earth put her over the limit but whatever ... she didn't tell me for a few days. In fact not until all her Mail vanished and she only had the last three days in her in box. I upgraded her storage and cleared out a few iWorks docs. Still no mail ... I called Apple and they said there was nothing they could do. Thankfully I remembered we have wireless TimeMachine although to be honest I wasn't sure mail would be there since it is on the cloud with SMTP I assumed. But to my relief, sure enough I was able to retrieve all her mail from TM without issue. Had we not had TM there would have been a lot of problems since as a Realtor who is very busy her mail was full of on going contracts flying back and forth as PDFs.
I was shocked that she lost everything that fast to be honest, it seemed very un Apple to me.
Gees, that would spook me out. Which happened, actually, but with my Calendar. I keep 3 (Private, Work & some Association I do some work for) and my Private Calendar vanished from my iPhone. Since it's on iCloud, I couldn't retrieve it from my iPad or Mac. So I restored a backup (I do it locally and not through iCloud) and after a restore, when you open Calendar (or Mail, Contacts) it immediately syncs with iCloud and therefore my Private Calendar vanished again. Totally no way around it, but was fortunate to have a HDD with a recent image from my bootdrive and was able to restore a cache file which I found out was not being backed up by Time Machine.
Also, wise use of Apple Maps. Only usable for america (particularly California though), but at least it works there
Simple, with every iOS device you include a code on a card, similar to an iTunes Gift Card, that adds 5GB of storage to your account for free. Once the code is used it can't be used again. Of course, if you ever sell your iOS device the new buyer wouldn't get the extra storage, but that is just part of buying something used.
I had a vicious circle with MobileMe once. I seem to recall I had to delete and start over to break it and have the one true master file on line and all sync to that. I somehow had a multi-dependency set up where the calendars were syncing in an endless loop. In my case they kept adding over and over rather than deleting. I think one of the problems is when we have had .Mac then MobileMe then iCoud and try to do things the way we did and I suspect it all works great if you are a newbie rather than transferring on from an previous system set up. It can get pretty scary if your business is involved.
Sorry, but you're the one being obtuse.
1. Apple already has a system in place to register new devices. There are no problems with people circumventing that system - you register a device only once and you can't register it again.
2. Apple already has a system in place to give free storage to people who register with iCloud. That storage space can be used to back up your idevices.
3. If Apple wanted to, they could add 5 GB to the storage space every time your register a device and link it to iCloud. The mechanism is already in place and nothing new is required (except the code to change the amount of space you're allocated).
4. Once the space is allocated to an iCloud account, it stays on that iCloud account. Nothing changes if you sell the phone, smash it with a hammer or wipe it and jailbreak it. The extra storage space continues to be allocated to the original iCloud account.
You haven't explained why that is so difficult or why it wouldn't work. Instead, you keep throwing out scenarios that have nothing to do with what I've just described. So please tell us exactly why that wouldn't work.
That's all true. However, it's irrelevant. Apple already has all of that in place. Yes, they might have to add new servers or more storage for existing servers, but the infrastructure is already there. What I am proposing doesn't require any significant changes.
Now that you mention it I recall that being said.
What I'd love is for the rebirth of iDisk as a modern, secure Dropbox competitor. It's amazing how many of my Apple devices are connected and connected to others but I still use Dropbox for data.
After 3 (?) reports on their servers being hacked (or whatever) I don't think it's the best place for my personal data (password list and such) to store on their service, so I deleted my docs and the app. I downloaded a different one but still haven't configured and, thusly, used it. Perhaps I just seem to be doing ok with the current apps that sync with iCloud. Or my needs have changed.
But yes, rebirth of iDisk would be great - perhaps that new datacenter is for that. Or for Videostream; I seriously do not understand why it is so difficult to get video's shot with my iPhone back onto my Mac/Internet. I could use Aperture, and presume iPhoto can do as well, but I want it all in iTunes, because of the easy syncing. It was conceived as the hub, why won't it work that way? But I digress...
As annoyed as I am by your lack of comprehension I'll throw you another bone in the form of three more scenarios:
1) A user buys a new iPad. They plug it into their Mac and it restores from a backup. They have 3 iCloud accounts. How does iCloud automatically know which one gets the extra 5GB? According to you this is easy and it's when you register the device. So which is it? At the very least there would have to be an option in iOS that would let you choose which one of multiple accounts you get to apply the one time 5GB? How is that as simple as increasing capacity on the back end?
2a) A user applies it to one iCloud account but soon after realizes they applied it to the wrong one. With your design there is absolutely no recourse for switching the allotment but they really don't want that data applied to the iCloud account they use for junk mail or an address they no long want to use (for whatever reason). There only recourse is to return their new device to the Apple within the 2 week period — remember there is no restocking fee — so they do this again.
2b) A user needs more space for iCloud and doesn't want to wait for a year or two to buy more Apple gear so he gets this idea after reading a post by SolipsismX on AppleInsider on the downfalls of jragosta's enacted system that you can buy a new device "register" it, return it for a full refund, and keep the data, so he buys as many of the cheapest iPod Touches he can afford to get the extra space then returns all these opened and "registered" devices that 1) can no longer sold as new, 2) won't get anyone who buys them as refurbished the extra 5GB, and 3) are now costing Apple money on giving away storage, shipping products for the purpose of giving away storage, waisting their employee's time, and affecting their refurb sales where it's now a hit or miss in this extra 5GB of storage from iCloud when you "register" the device.
Of course, this is where you can say this won't happen often, or that it's not a big deal, or that Apple can reset those refurbished devices, or that if you return a device you lose anything you gained from that "register" but that's all additional effort, additional steps, additional consideration that need to be planned for, detailed, thought out, and worked out before your simple plan can be made a reality.
So how is all that as easy as giving everyone more space which mostly needs to get with the datacenter staff to make sure they have the ability to support any extra capacity needs that might arise (which at this point is pretty doubtful considering how limited iCloud is without a Dropbox-like system for sharing files)?
I actually have that very same feeling/suspicion, and sometimes feel like exporting all my info from Mail, Calendar and Calendar and wipe out my iCloud account (or create a new one, if feasible) and import everything 'freshly'.
1) Hacks on Dropbox? I store my 1Password file on there as per the app. That file is encrypted but I also use a very, very, very long password for Dropbox just to be safe.
2) It's hard to say what they are planning for since these things are so far out. It could just be planned growth but I doubt it. I just wish they were better at it at this point. Google was brilliant with Gmail. invitations at first and as they could handle more users they increased the number of invitations you received until they finally opened it up to all. They also grew your storage from the initial 1GB (which was so amazing at the time). I'm using 2.7GB of 10.1GB on Gmail as I've never once deleted anything.
But what happens if you use a friends' iPhone, after he or she has backed it up and you restore your own back onto it, register it and return the phone? Sorry, don't want to interfere with your discussion with sol here, but merely 'thinking out loud'
edit: see that sol thinks similarly