Apple’s new iCloud storage plans: Cheap for consumers, even cheaper for developers

“At this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple announced a restructuring of its iCloud storage and computing services as part of an apparent bid to stem the tide of user data flowing from iOS and OS X to competitors like Dropbox and Facebook,” Sam Oliver reports for AppleInsider.

“iCloud’s storage limits were marginally defensible when the service was limited to synchronizing data from iOS and Mac apps. With iCloud Drive, however, Apple is pitting iCloud against a horde of firmly-entrenched competitors and has rethought its pricing strategy,” Oliver reports. “With the launch of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, the base storage allocation will remain at 5 gigabytes. Upgrading to 20 gigabytes will cost just $0.99 per month, though, with 200 gigabytes coming in at only $3.99 per month. Additional tiers of up to 1 terabyte will be available, but their pricing hasn’t been announced.”

“Those costs put iCloud Drive in an excellent position on storage space alone, but it shines yet brighter over its competition when considering iCloud’s seamless integration with Apple’s devices,” Oliver reports. “The budding iCloud.com suite — which includes web-based versions of Numbers, Pages, and Keynote — adds even more value.”

“Developers can also take advantage of iCloud Drive to store and synchronize documents and data for their apps, but they have a new service all their own: CloudKit,” Oliver reports. “CloudKit is a new, ‘effectively free’ service that lets developers store users’ data in the cloud with asset storage (for things like photos) as well as database space.”

Read more in the full article here.

16 Comments

  1. What happens if you miss a payment, or two? Being obtuse, and tired, but what would happen to the stored data, unless like DropBox you get to keep “matching copies” on your own storage location.

  2. Whatever.

    Any consumer with a tiny amount of technical ability can buy a NAS for a few hundred dollars. No caps, no lost data when you miss your monthly fees. Best of all, no Big Brother to datamine your data.

    Subscription-based computing is evil, whether it’s rammed down your throat by Apple or any other company.

  3. Still disappointed that iCloud is not scaling based on devices owned. MBP, iMac, iPad, and iPhone… same 5gig. How about 5gig each? How about an additional 2gig for each additional device, after the first. Lots of ways they could accommodate this.

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