Apple cuts prices & upgrades iCloud storage plans, eliminates 500GB option

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  • Reply 21 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by schlack View Post



    what do people backup to iCloud? I synch my phone to my Mac. What would I gain by backing it up to iCloud?

    I backup to both iCloud and to my Mac. If something happens to my Mac, I will always have a backup on iCloud. 

  • Reply 22 of 61
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by sog35 View Post

     

     

    What if you Mac crashes?  What if you house has a fire?




    You see the lament very often when a hard drive crashes. “I lost all of my precious photos of my dear departed mother!” No back up. A house fire is even worse because the backup gets destroyed too if you had one. Off site physical storage is too inconvenient for most but essential if you want to protect your photos and home movies fully. Enter the ‘cloud’ but people don’t trust it because of news media hyping of hacking incidents. Backing up to the cloud is a problem in the U.S. because of pitiful upload speeds, data caps, etc. Major U.S. ISPs are in no hurry to build out their networks or increase bandwidth as there is no real competition between them. They have all staked out their territories and don’t encroach on each other much. We in the U.S. are third world when it comes to broadband. We have just enough to be able to order stuff from Amazon and the providers like it that way. 

  • Reply 23 of 61
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member

    It would be nice if I could "share" my 200GB or whatever with others in my family.  Since a full iPhone backup to iCloud also backs up the photo roll I think [or whatever it is backing up is significantly large], you can easily go over the 5GB and 20GB levels.  I've had to buy 200GB for me and for the wife and each of us is using like 40-60GB only...  The 50GB limit for 99 cents is interesting now but I'd like to be able to get 200GB or 1TB or whatever and have my phone, the wife's phone, the boy's phone, and the various iPads all use it.

  • Reply 24 of 61
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    robbyx wrote: »
    iCloud Drive sucks. No feedback on what has been uploaded and what hasn't. I've tested it side by side with Dropbox. Dropbox syncs instantly. iCloud Drive? It might sync. Or you might need to wait a while. It's like nothing has changed since iDisk.

    Lower prices are great, but working services are better. I pay for iCloud storage so I can use photo library. Too bad photo library totally nuked my photos and now is inaccessible for another 18 days while it does whatever it does. I spent a while on the phone with apple care, even escalated up to the engineers, before finally giving up.

    Pay for Dropbox. Pay for google drive. Pay for one drive. Skip iCloud.
    When did you test it? Recently? I used Copy, for a while but it was a pest and made my mac slow to a crawl whenever it synced which seemed to be always. iCloud so far has been painless and transparent. I like DropBox but unlike you I am not a fan of constant notifications telling me this or that files has been synced. But I have never had a problem with DB so if iCloud doesn't pan out I will pay for a TB at DB.
  • Reply 25 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by paxman View Post





    When did you test it? Recently? I used Copy, for a while but it was a pest and made my mac slow to a crawl whenever it synced which seemed to be always. iCloud so far has been painless and transparent. I like DropBox but unlike you I am not a fan of constant notifications telling me this or that files has been synced. But I have never had a problem with DB so if iCloud doesn't pan out I will pay for a TB at DB.



    Within the last month.  I was hoping I could just get away with iCloud Drive, but it was such a disaster syncing items that I gave up.  I had very low expectations, given my past experiences with iDisk.  Sadly, my opinion of Apple's cloud services has not changed.  Email has always worked very well for me, but that's it.  Everything else pretty much sucks.  As for Dropbox notifications, just unselect "show desktop notifications" in the preferences.  I like how Dropbox (and Google Drive) show an icon representing sync state.  Why iCloud Drive doesn't do this is beyond me.  I've never had a sync conflict with Dropbox.  While testing iCloud Drive for a few days between my two machines I had so many I stopped counting.

  • Reply 26 of 61
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    apple ][ wrote: »
    Im already paying 99 cents a month, because the default storage just doesn't cut it if somebody has a lot of devices, but it's nice that they bumped the 20 GB up to 50 GB for the same 99 cents!:smokey:
    not yet. It'S still 20GB.
  • Reply 27 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by lkrupp View Post

     



    You see the lament very often when a hard drive crashes. “I lost all of my precious photos of my dear departed mother!” No back up. A house fire is even worse because the backup gets destroyed too if you had one. Off site physical storage is too inconvenient for most but essential if you want to protect your photos and home movies fully. Enter the ‘cloud’ but people don’t trust it because of news media hyping of hacking incidents. Backing up to the cloud is a problem in the U.S. because of pitiful upload speeds, data caps, etc. Major U.S. ISPs are in no hurry to build out their networks or increase bandwidth as there is no real competition between them. They have all staked out their territories and don’t encroach on each other much. We in the U.S. are third world when it comes to broadband. We have just enough to be able to order stuff from Amazon and the providers like it that way. 




    I use Backblaze for cloud backup and have been pleased with it so far.  They have a nice Preference Pane for setup and it just runs quietly in the background.  Backups are encrypted before the data is transmitted.  Another great option for off-site backup is Arq.

  • Reply 28 of 61
    Don't forget the OneDrive for all Office 365 customers is going unlimited.

    https://blog.onedrive.com/office-365-onedrive-unlimited-storage/
  • Reply 29 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by schlack View Post



    what do people backup to iCloud? I synch my phone to my Mac. What would I gain by backing it up to iCloud?



    The vast majority of iPhone owners do not also own a Mac and likely do not own a PC of any sort. iCloud is their backup.

  • Reply 30 of 61
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Keeping the free tier at 5GB and base iPhone storage on latest and greatest models at 16GB in 2015 is greedy. I'm blaming Phil for this one. Phil, you're greedy. I spent €899 on an iPhone you shouldn't be trying to squeeze an extra 99c a month from your loyal customers. Free tier should be a minimum of 25GB and the only paid tier should be $4.99 per month for 1TB. I'd hazard a guess that 99% of all people on the paid tier would go nowhere near the 1TB, Apple would perhaps profit more than now from this scenario, and iPhone owners would feel much better. I know a few members of my extended family who feel slighted by this 99c per month. It's not good Apple.

    Sure it's just 99c, but that's the point, I don't think that small fee is worth leaving a bad taste in the mouth of these Apple customers. Apple are already making more profit than everyone else from their hardware. There's a time when you do the right thing for the long term and not just to make a quick buck in the interim. Apple will eventually raise this free tier, but it should have happened yesterday. Shame on you, Apple.

    P.S. I wrote Tim and Phil about it.
  • Reply 31 of 61
    shenshen Posts: 434member
    sog35 wrote: »
    but does it backup your contacts?  email?  settings?  and a million other things on your iPad/iPhone?  Dont think so.

    OneDrive is great if you have huge video files but for most users iCloud is much more hassle free.

    And that is the point. Like everything Apple, it likely costs a bit more for the tangibles, like how many gigs at what price, but the intangible things like integration, ease, the full ecosystem... Well, those are worth a few pennies more per gig per month than dumb storage. At least to me, and likely many who would be interested in Apple products in the first place.
  • Reply 32 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post



    Keeping the free tier at 5GB and base iPhone storage on latest and greatest models at 16GB in 2015 is greedy. I'm blaming Phil for this one. Phil, you're greedy. I spent €899 on an iPhone you shouldn't be trying to squeeze an extra 99c a month from your loyal customers. Free tier should be a minimum of 25GB and the only paid tier should be $4.99 per month for 1TB. I'd hazard a guess that 99% of all people on the paid tier would go nowhere near the 1TB, Apple would perhaps profit more than now from this scenario, and iPhone owners would feel much better. I know a few members of my extended family who feel slighted by this 99c per month. It's not good Apple.



    Sure it's just 99c, but that's the point, I don't think that small fee is worth leaving a bad taste in the mouth of these Apple customers. Apple are already making more profit than everyone else from their hardware. There's a time when you do the right thing for the long term and not just to make a quick buck in the interim. Apple will eventually raise this free tier, but it should have happened yesterday. Shame on you, Apple.



    Have to admit they do seem to be trying to profit off their supporting services quite a lot. Not that I begrudge a company to make money, but their supporting services are what make their hardware products so valuable and that's one reason I justify paying premium prices for their products. Mind you, they know most of us will then go and pay the additional $12/year to get what some would consider something that should be bundled with the product and its high price, but sure would be nice if they eased off just a bit.

  • Reply 33 of 61

    Grrrr. Last month I upgraded my daughter's iCloud to 200 gig for $50.

  • Reply 34 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheWhiteFalcon View Post



    It's more competitive; however for the same $10 a month you can get five installs of Office 365 and 1TB of OneDrive space.



    You get five installs on most software (certainly from the App Store) -- that's just something MS had to start offering in order to be competitive, not the other way around.

     

    Have you used OneDrive? People complain about iCloud, but I think OneDrive is worse. I can't find the same files and file structure in Office Online as in Office or OneDrive App on the desktop. OneDrive is no DropBox.

  • Reply 35 of 61
    So when does it go live?
  • Reply 36 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post



    So when does it go live?

    I hope soon, but now I'm thinking it goes live when iOS 9 is released. 

  • Reply 37 of 61
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member

    Apple needs to stop worrying about what's convenient to their Finance team and start worrying about what's convenient to their customers.  :-(

     

    I'm on a legacy 25GB plan for $11.99/year, and while the new 50GB for $0.99/month is a better deal, I hate being nickled and dimed for monthly subscription charges.  I don't want to be in a situation where I feel like I constantly have to monitor additional monthly credit card charges...   At the very minimum, allow for payments from iTunes account balances.

  • Reply 38 of 61
    As soon as Apple switched to the new iCloud pricing I went and purchased a $50 iTunes card that I got on sale and let iTunes debit my $3.99 a month from that instead of my credit card.
  • Reply 39 of 61
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by krabbelen View Post

     

     OneDrive is no DropBox.


     

    Exactly.  OneDrive used to be more like DropBox, then Microsoft changed it into the abomination it is now by neutering the way it syncs.  Probably was a requirement for all the NSA data gathering built into Windows 10.

     

    Bottom line, if iCloud isn't sufficient for you (and how could it be?), don't look to OneDrive as a possible solution.

  • Reply 40 of 61
    boredumbboredumb Posts: 1,418member

    My household backup size needs changed dramatically, not because I was backing up more devices, but a couple of months ago when Photos changed and the camera roll disappeared.  At the same time, it seemed that all our devices were being dinged for the same photos on each device (that's 3 iPads, 3 iPhone 6's, 1desktop, and 1 laptop...there are 2 ATV's in the mix as well, but I've no idea how they are involved...and another desktop and MBPro as well, but they aren't syncing - just thought I'd brag a little).

    About a week ago I bit the bullet & upgraded to 200GB, but, when this actually becomes available (next week with iOS9 I'm guessing?), it's back down to 50GB, which should be fine for at least a while.

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