Apple offering existing iCloud storage customers grandfathered capacities, cheaper rates
As part of its new iCloud storage pricing initiative, Apple is allowing existing subscribers to keep "legacy" plans while paying a cheaper annual fee than they would if signed on to the monthly rates introduced on Wednesday.
While Apple's new iCloud storage tiers are only being offered as a monthly subscription service, the company is extending to existing customers an option to keep the same amount of cloud space for a less-expensive annual fee.
Apple sent out emails notifying paying iCloud storage customers that their existing annual accounts have been upgraded as a result of the new pricing tiers. According to the notice, refunds are also being issued based on the newly introduced price reduction and months remaining in a given subscription.
For example, with a 25GB plan (no longer offered), the annual price drops from $40 per year to only $11.99 per year. The savings is compares to Apple's new 20GB tier, which comes in at 99 cents per month, or $11.88 per year.
Apple notes that current customers will not be able to return to a grandfathered plan once they switch to one of the new monthly subscription offerings.
Earlier on Wednesday, Apple's new iCloud storage plans went live, with options ranging from a free 5GB tier to 1TB worth of space for $19.99 per month.
While Apple's new iCloud storage tiers are only being offered as a monthly subscription service, the company is extending to existing customers an option to keep the same amount of cloud space for a less-expensive annual fee.
Apple sent out emails notifying paying iCloud storage customers that their existing annual accounts have been upgraded as a result of the new pricing tiers. According to the notice, refunds are also being issued based on the newly introduced price reduction and months remaining in a given subscription.
For example, with a 25GB plan (no longer offered), the annual price drops from $40 per year to only $11.99 per year. The savings is compares to Apple's new 20GB tier, which comes in at 99 cents per month, or $11.88 per year.
Apple notes that current customers will not be able to return to a grandfathered plan once they switch to one of the new monthly subscription offerings.
Earlier on Wednesday, Apple's new iCloud storage plans went live, with options ranging from a free 5GB tier to 1TB worth of space for $19.99 per month.
Comments
(Meh. Deleted. It is a poorly worded article, and the lawyerly wording in the picture didn't help. Basically, Apple is indeed doing what I was saying....
)
I've got a refund coming, increased storage and a lower cost. Nice, sunny day here today too.
I had a 15gb plan, upgraded to the 20gb plan today, and that's what I have according to settings/general/usage/manage storage on my phone.
However, when I try to back it up to icloud, I'm told that the backup failed, because my backup is 17gb, and I only have a 15gb plan.
WTF Apple?
Is this US only? (Europe-Belgium here)
Downgrade (Europe-Belgium)...
WHAT? He's not real????
This is what I meant. It shows 20GB instead of 25GB for me. Is it bug?
These new plans are great, and match up well with the utility of iCloud Drive and iCloud Photo Library.
I went with 200 GB for $3.99/mon for now. Until I'm able to migrate my whole iPhoto Library to iCloud, I think I can get away with this. I was paying $9.99 for 100 GB/ mon from Dropbox. They JUST ( as in last week) magically transitioned that to 1 TB instead of 100 GB. It certainly made me question whether I wanted to full switch to iCloud....but I decided to. Cancelled Dropbox, reverted back to Free 5 GB plan. I will only use Dropbox for its 1) Public Folder and 2) Automatic ScreenShot uploading/sharing.
If Apple wises up and gives us the ability to share iCloud Drive files via a URL ( with the ability for direct download links, not just a web page to preview/download) then I will pretty lose all need to use Dropbox.
One thing I've done since last night: Created 2 new folders in iCloud Drive: iCloud Downloads and iCloud Documents. Making these the default paths for everything on my Mac that would normally go to Home Folder > Downloads or Home Folder > Documents. Gonna see how well this works out.
Even with a healthy profit margin Apple could slash these prices in half, after the don't pay retail and enjoy economies of scale in thei data centers.
With the demise of Aperture and the push to shove all pictures into the cloud, at close to 30MB per RAW image, I'd already be pushing the 500GB limit, and I'm certainly not going to pay almost $260 year for 1TB of slow-poke online storage I can't grow beyond, when I could make my own server with fast SSD storage for the same amount and have at least on the LAN and on the server computer super fast access.
$99.99 for 1TB/year would be somewhat reasonable while still wildly profitable.
$4.99 for a year of 25GB would also be OK if used with Yosemite as Dropbox/YouSendIt replacement.
But given you can have 25GB of storage for free with GoogleDrive and Flickr offers 1TB photo storage for free, so Aperture with a Flickr plug-in had to go, or what, to make room for a $260/year (with sales tax) iCloud option???
My question is, Why isn't there an annual payment option?
All the other plans are monthly payment, it's $A4.99 for 200, $A12.99 for 500 and $A24.99 for the TB.
The "Australia tax" strikes again.
Now I've got to work out the convenience of an annual payment vs the monthly subscription.
Being an average Joe with no esoteric requirements requiring petabytes of online storage to whine about, I think the 200 GB is the most attractive.
Nothing mention about refund or offer bigger data plan one time offer?
Does make any sense? Something is missing here?
Something is missing here? Doesn't make sense as it should refund the different or offer bigger iCloud storage plan at one time offer?
Last time, they offer extra one year free iCloud + upgrade iCloud storage plan.
My question is, Why isn't there an annual payment option?
Well I finally got the email and it turns out my plan will be renewed at the $11.99/year rate for 25GB, so that works out great for me.