“Apple and the four major U.S. carriers are offering two free months of iCloud’s 200-gigabyte tier to some people looking to upgrade their iPhone this fall,” Roger Fingas reports for AppleInsider.
“The promo, noticed on Reddit, is only available to new (paid) iCloud customers, and is nominally meant to ensure they ‘have enough space to safely back up all the important things on your iPhone, like photos, videos, files, and apps” so the data can be restored once a new phone arrives,'” Fingas reports.
“Apple has actually been offering 30-day trials of its paid tiers since May, so in reality the new promotion is simply an extra month on top of that,” Fingas reports. “People who sign up will also be charged $2.99 per month after the deal expires, unless they cancel.”
More info and links in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: File under “Hey, it’s better than nothing!”
Storage is cheap, and Apple’s default iCloud storage offering is pathetic. Owning an iPhone should get you 50 GB of iCloud storage at a minimum, and Apple Music subscribers should certainly get that.
It’s a trap
I have argued for many years that when you buy an iPhone or iPad, Apple should give you two years of iCloud storage with sufficient capacity to back up those devices.
Storage is pretty cheap for Apple to offer and offering free storage encourages people to use their devices in the way that they were designed to be used.
I’ve been on this tier for two years since a 35GB iPhone backup wouldn’t work on the 50GB plan, but worked on the 200GB, go figure. $35.88 for a year of 200GB ($11.88 for 50GB) iCloud storage is not much at all though, but most whiners are vocal cheapskates who want everything for free. Even a 50GB free tier would be useless for most customers who’ve been amassing Photos libraries, apps etc. for years. I’d rather see some kind of loyalty discounts on services for long-term customers.
> most whiners are vocal cheapskates who want everything for free.
Only a fanboi apologist would call people who buy several Apple devices worth thousands of dollars and expect more than 5 gigs of iCloud storage shared between them “whiners” and “cheapskates”.
I think there is no better way to keep customer’s files hostage in the icloud.
Two months?
Blink you eyes, it’s over.