“Apple offers just 5GB of free storage to iCloud users. Need more space? You got to pay for it. If you don’t want to do this then you should take a look at these tips to keep your iCloud usage under control,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“To try to get the best out of the paltry 5GB of iCloud storage Apple gives you, you should regularly review what you have archived already,” Evans writes. “Mail usually uses lots of iCloud space. To free storage space Apple suggests deleting what’s inside the Junk and Trash folders, but you can regain more space by deleting attachments from your received and sent mail.”
“When it comes to managing iCloud storage it makes sense to import your personal photos and images from your iOS devices to your computer,” Evans writes. “You can then choose which images to make available via your Photostream. Be sure to delete photos from your device once you have imported the images to your computer.”
Much more in the full article here.
Step 1: Don’t use a Cloud.
Step 2: Sync your iOS devices reliably to your Mac the way you always used to.
iCloud was to be a tremendously important initiative, one that helped carve a future for the company. If we can’t use it then Apple is doing something wrong.
iCloud works perfectly for me and I don’t mind paying for the space I need. Especially if it means I don’t have to follow any of the suggestions in this article.
100% agreed. It works flawlessly for my needs, which are heavy.
No thanks. If at all possible, I avoid plugging my iOS devices into my Mac these days. It’s inconvenient, and it’s caused problems twice with my iPhone, when syncs hung, leaving me with corrupted data.
Thanks to iCloud, I no longer have any reason to plug my iOS devices in anymore. Music bought on one device just appears on all the others. Buying an app on my Mac automatically installs it everywhere. Podcasts sync automatically, including play progress, without my having to plug in. I can use photo stream to get pictures to the Mac.
Backups were the last remaining reason to plug in my iPhone. When I finally got an iPad, I decided to try iCloud backup. It worked so simply that I went ahead and enabled it on my iPhone. I backup both devices and use less than a gig of my space. It just does it for me when I’m plugged in at home, without my having to think about it.
No, I’m never going back to “plug it in”. That is so 2000’s.
——RM
iOS devices are full featured Internet connected computers. Plugging it into another computer just for backups or charging is an antiquated concept, and a completely unnecessary extra step. When the iOS device is your primary computer, getting a Mac just to support it is an extremely expensive and unnecessary accessory.
In the post-PC age, Macs are like trucks, and iOS devices are like cars – you wouldn’t suggest everyone with car also buy a truck to support their car, would you?
1. Stick your head in the sand.
2. Yell “LALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU” until technology passes you by.
It’s iCloud, genius.
Beware that cheeky little app Pixelmator, which constantly backs up to iCloud, with no apparent cure.
What Apple needs is to allow data-inflation. There’s two connected trends involved with this:
1. Everyone’s data storage needs grows over time – even if you are extremely careful about how you utilize disk space, you will still slowly end up using more over time, just because you do more and are reluctant to delete your precious data.
2. The price of storing data on hard drives gets cheaper all the time. You can buy a 500GB hard drive for so much cheaper than you could three years ago – and signs show that this trend will continue, at a predictable rate, making 500GB of storage cheaper still three years from now.
Therefore, Apple should just integrate these two realities into iCloud, by increasing storage limits slowly over time at regular intervals, while keeping the overall price constant. It could be a 5GB limit in 2014, 6GB limit in 2015, 8GB in 2016 – Apple should just do the math and figure out the correct rate to increase storage limits that keeps the overall price the same.
As the price of data-storage keeps getting cheaper, Apple has a choice: pass that savings to its customers to make iCloud easier to use, or pocket that extra money for themselves and expect every iCloud user to become a data storage efficiency experts.
While I would certainly like Apple to give us a little more space — say 10GB — I barely use the 5GB they provide now, and I’m backing up both an iPhone and an iPad to it. LordRobin has summarized my feelings on iCloud perfectly — I’d be lost without it these days, as I am now so used to entering, say, a task on one device and having it be on the other devices nearly instantly. It’s fantastic.