“Apple is sending out warning letters to iCloud customers that received a complimentary 20GB storage upgrade that the offer expires on September 30th,” Bryan Chaffin reports for The Mac Observer.
“On October 1st, those users will be bucked down to the 5GB of storage that normally comes with iCloud,” Chaffin reports. “The offer was originally extended to MobileMe paying subscribers who moved their accounts to iCloud between October 12th, 2011 and August 1st, 2012.”
Chaffin reports, “While iCloud nominally comes with 5GB of free storage, MobileMe customers were automatically upgraded to 25GB total storage… Apple currently charges US$40 per year for an additional 20GB or $50 per year for an additional 50GB of storage.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: To check your current iCloud Storage levels:
On Mac: System Preferences/iCloud (the total is shown at the bottom of the dialog box with a green status bar)
On iOS: Settings/iCloud/Storage & Backup
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
… read the mail they sent you.
“When it expires, your iCloud storage will be automatically adjusted to the free 5 GB plan. You are currently using 906.56 MB of storage.”
It would appear that my documents are safe, for now.
As an original .mac user I will not be paying any more money for additional iCloud storage. I do pay for and use Google Drive, Dropbox and FileShare, All have a value across multiply platforms including Mac and iOS. iCloud has not shown me any value for the money spent.
I have 3TB of storage. Cost: 0$
Owncloud.
The blurb from Owncloud says “Your data on your servers, under your control.”. Three Terabyte drives are hovering at about a hundred dollars. That isn’t “free”. Plus a “server” (a computer) to hang the drive off. Also not “free”.
More important: Off Site Storage! My home can fall, burning, into the crack the earthquake left, my data on cloud storage would still be on Apple’s drives. Assuming the quake was localized, that is. Yours? Maybe not so much. Decent “secure storage” really ought to be in another town, county, and STATE from your “home computer”.
All data needs 3 backups including one off site otherwise a fool and his data are soon parted…
I had the 3TB drive laying around. And yes, here in So. Cal I guess my home could end up in a hole from an earthquake, but I guess I wouldn’t be concerned if my data was still around if that happened. What is really ‘secure’ about trust your data on somebody else’s server?
For some reason, I never received the 20GB bonus.
I do believe that Apple ought to boost its free storage allocation and reduce the prices of the storage upgrades. It is in Apple’s best interest to top mote iCloud use.
…promote iCloud use.
I think they just want to provide cloud service for free just for iCloud backups game saves and a few other smallish things like that. They are pricing it in a way to say, “oh, you actually want MORE storage? Um, sure, we’ll let you give us money!”
No web hosting,
No file sharing.
Can’t really see that I need much iCloud storage anymore.
… disappointments, as well. The features of iCloud work fine and they offer some nice value – especially for $0 per year – but I stored a couple of modest iWeb-built web sites out there. Now there’s no iWeb and no web hosting . Oh, iWeb still works, still creates pretty little sites with a bare minimum of effort, but then where do I store the result?
Yes … I’d pay for the 20GB upgrade if it included web hosting and file sharing.
Me too. My websites also bit the dust. Lucky they wren’t for a business or anything.
Insidious on Apple’s part. When you save documents on OS X now, it defaults to saving in iCloud. Then they slam you with this email. Not a good move.
Will not be bothering with iCloud now I’ve been dropped back to 5Gb – shame after having .mac, .me accounts since 2003 – thanks Apple – one disgruntled long term Mac fan
Mine was up to 7.5Gb and only 2.5Gb was Mail, the rest was “iPad.” I haven’t explored it enough to see just what iPad data has been saved but will probably delete it as I save backups locally anyway. Seems to me up to 10GB or higher should be free. Was a MobileMe guy for years paying $99 but like everyone I have now grow weary of the insidious fees everyone is trying to foist on the consumer. They all add up.
As a file storage on the cloud, iCloud has been pretty much useless to me, other than keeping my iWork documents synchronised across all of my iOS devices and Mac, which is what I primarily use iCloud for. However, as an independent store of documents on the cloud, besides iWork documents, iCloud has been pretty much useless as it cannot serve as a true file server due to its inability to accept non iWork files.
Six years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple still refuses to make iOS devices more usable by opening up the file system to store files and whatnot. At least if users cannot store files on the device itself, then let iCloud be a facsimile of Dropbox but no, Apple does nothing to recognise that file manipulation is a user driven need.
Agreed. I have no computer and no way to offload the photos quickly clogging up my 16GB iPhone 5. Apple doesn’t even let us offload to a thumb drive.
Meanwhile, I miss my HomePages, iCards, and my iDisk. Now, especially my iDisk.
My cloudy mail says:
> You are currently using 718.61 MB of storage
while my iCloud preferences panel indicates 10GB in use. Something is seriously off here….
Also the $50 mentioned for the 50GB upgrade doesn’t fit, in NL I have to pay €80/y.
Likewise, I have about 1GB of data on my iPhone, but iCloud backup amounts to over 5GB. Is my use of an older non-iCloud (non-dotMac, non-MobileMe) AppleID for app purchases the (screwy) reason the backup of those items is now counting against my iCloud storage quota?
Who takes online storage away after already giving to customers? They expect users to log in, cull out their own iCloud lockers, potentially deleting something important by accident? That makes zero sense, in an age where hard drive storage space gets cheaper every day. Apple should be periodically increasing their customer’s online storage space and/or lowering prices (like Amazon and Google do) not taking space away from them.
its just too frickin expensive
I have 9gb on my account. I guess (I’ve big looked) mostly device back-ups. Thinking I’ll not upgrade. I don’t need 25gb, so I’ll put backups back on the Mac
My iPads and phones each back up to iCloud. I am using about 17 gb of 25 they gave me. I don’t want to lose that option. $40 for a year is better than 100$ used to pay for mobile me. Through in $25 for iTunes Match I’m at 65 vs 100 yearly and I get iTunes radio on top. I don’t see what everyone is so pisses at. Mostly wealthy republicons on this site. What up? 65$ is less than a manicure for most of you. It doesn’t work like Dropbox but that is why there is a Dropbox. Use both. I have gotten my Dropbox up to 5 gb free. That is plenty for saving work docs of any format otherwise it is like 100$ for 100gb. I do t need that much.
Dude, don’t forget the wealthy Dumbocrats that come here. If you can’t swing the cash get your boyfriend to pay for it.
It would have been a much more clever move, if Apple would have reduced the prices.
Paying someone else to store your data will never be more cost effective nor more versatile than hosting it yourself. Every server “cloud” is a sham, including Apple’s.
NSA PRISM
The whole idea behind PRISM is a dangerous one. That being said, if you think that just because you don’t have a cloud-based account, you’re deluding yourself.
The only way, I imagine, to be safe from such surveillance programs is to be off the grid entirely. No credit cards, no cell phone, no computer, no email, no driver’s license, and so on.
In other words, short of living on the street somewhere, or in the middle of some forest, it’s virtually impossible to be off the grid.
Knowing that, why worry?
If for whatever reason some intelligence branch of the government has it’s eyes on you, there’s little you can do to stop that fact (this is assuming that they would have a reason to do that in the first place, that is).
My letter said that my iPhone alone was using 5.89GB for backup. What! So, I deleted my iPhone backup in the cloud, and will try backing it up again. It may have been that large do to numerous photos on the phone.
At any rate, I refuse to pay Apple more money — Their ecosystem is costly enough!
This kind of bugs me.
Apple has some of the most loyal customers in the business, and 20 GB of storage space isn’t all that much (especially since you could have had 25 GB free via SkyDrive initially; Google Drive is 15 GB and initially Dropbox was something like four, though they make it relative easy to finagle some extra space – via invites and things of that sort) so why doesn’t Apple give everyone – as in free iCloud accounts – 20 GB and upgrade those with paid accounts even higher.
I am a little biased– I have a paid iCloud account – but I don’t see why they’re being so tight.
I couldn’t agree more. With all of the free “stuff” you get in the Google/android ecosystem, it makes Apple look petty!
This is a brain-dead move by Apple. I use another service since not all my documents are iCloud aware, plus I need to get access to them from anywhere.
I wish they would allow accounts to be merged. I can’t access or update apps because I forgot the password and tech support is useless and want money to do so.
On October 1st, those users will be bucked down to the 5GB of storage
Yeah, and I don’t care! Despite having had 25 GB of space on iCloud, I have never figured out how to use more than 1/10th of that space. WHY? Because iCloud is still too primitive and anti-functional. It’s a nice syncing service. I can store some apps’ docs up there if I like. And… that’s about it. If I was a photo fanatic I suppose I could fill it up. But these days I’m not, so I won’t.
So Apple: Make iCloud FULLY FUNCTIONAL please! Like DropBox! And add on client-side encryption as well. THEN I’ll gladly buy back the 20 GB. Not kidding!
Until then: Yawn. Thanks for the 5 GB of free space. Box gave me 50 GB of free space I can actually use.