mattrogers_2

gatorguy said:

This is a two-headed coin. While paying less for media content is nice for consumers (and Apple will profit more if iTunes is the go-to for movies) it may discourage content creators investment in quality films and music. It's already tough for music performers and writers to make a living from streaming songs, and studios may suffer from ever-cheaper movie streaming as well with big-budget productions making less and less financial sense, especially as theater visits are declining.

The problem they will have is with Apple having a least a two-prong approach to forcing their way, reduce old-line studios and production houses profits by demanding lower prices while trumpeting the benefit to consumers (!),  and at the same time using some of the Apple $B's to start their own shows and movies to compete with and replace them. IMO bending now would seem to play into Apple's plans to be the major force in video too just as they were in music. 

GeorgeBMac said:

Very interesting...   For myself, I am frankly a bit confused about the need for "large" storage:

Not long ago the need was clear:   If you used your phone for music you stored entire libraries on it.  And, it you took pictures, you either stored them on your phone or made an effort to archive them onto a PC or other storage (or both).

But, Apple Music and iCloud have changed that equation:   You can get all the music you want and more from Apple Music with storing even a single song on your device and store all of your picture on iCloud instead of the phone.

While the article is correct that the OS & apps are taking more storage making 16Gb simply too small to be viable, there remains a question over the need for storage greater than 32Gb or 64Gb:   Is it a trade-off of initial purchase cost vs ongoing costs to maintain subscriptions to Apple Music and (large) iCloud storage?

But, all that aside, just a comment from an old-fart:  for years now 512Gb was and still is the standard size for harddrives in my home computers -- and I have never filled one up.   Now that size is becoming available in an iPhone?  Wow!   Or, another analogy:  when I entered IT in 1983 we were using IBM 3350 disks that were later upgraded to double density 3380's that could hold a wopping 5 whole Gb's!   (and we ran entire Fortune 100 corporations on those drives!)  Some will remember the year 2000 crunch where most computer enterprise level software could not handle the year '00' and that was the reason:   storing a 4 digit year was simply not feasible on disk drives that could only hold (the case or early 3350's one-third of a gigabyte.   We scrutinized every single bit and byte of data that we stored.