“In a move designed to drive iCloud storage subscription upgrades, Apple is now promoting free month-long trials of 50GB, 200GB and 2TB plans to customers currently on the gratis 5GB tier,” AppleInsider reports.
“Apple is advertising free one month trials of its premium iCloud storage plans to Apple device owners not currently paying for a subscription and who have reached their 5GB limit,” AppleInsider reports. “When these users attempt to perform an iOS device backup, a pop-up message appears promoting the step-up 50GB plan. A similar notification without mention of the free trial has long been part of iOS. [The new message reads], ‘You do not have enough space in iCloud to back up your iPhone. A 50 GB plan gives you plenty of space to continue backing up your iPhone. Your first month is free and it’s just $0.99 each month after.'”
AppleInsider reports, “The free-to-try options apply to each of Apple’s upgrade tiers, ranging from the 50GB rung for $0.99 per month to the 2TB tier for $9.99 per month.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Note that for those who are already subscribers on lower tiers, the offer of a free month does not apply for increasing storage capacity.
The 99c 50GB plan should be free, as the amount is trivial. I’m on the 200GB plan, and that’s also quite cheap, $3.99. A Starbucks coffee.
EXACTLY, the expense associated with billing the .99 cents cost more.. It’s just typical Apple agreed. People sent $1400 for an iPhone X and they get crap. Pure greed.
How do you come up with these numbers? Because they are convenient for you? What does coffee have to do with server costs?
Nothing Apple sells should be free. Instead of subsidizing freebies by inflating prices of other things, I strongly prefer that all goods are priced according to their own merits. Why should someone else pay more for his Mac so others can be a parasites on Apple’s networks for free?
The service and subscription models, no matter what you arbitrarily choose for price levels, are inappropriate for many users. A wise company typically offers 3-5 clearly tiered options so that users can choose what works best for their needs.
I wish iCloud didn’t exist in the OS. It should be implemented at the application layer only, and user-removable. If you have a local network, then all the fragmented iCloud parts are just annoying fluff. As Apple is just rebranding Amazon and Google servers, then there is absolutely zero reason to buy the service.
Speaking of services, I am extremely concerned that the marketeers at Apple are scheming to force software into subscriptions too. If that happens, Apple will be dead to me. I strongly prefer that all software have the following options:
1. free trial period
2. paid version
3. for business users, the OPTION of a subscription
4. no in-app purchasing allowed. Add-ons should be paid via App Store only to squelch the endless shenanigans
5. wherever possible, there should be a low-cost limited consumer version (i.e., iPhoto) and a higher paid professional Mac local version (i.e., Aperture) with all the bells and whistles. Perhaps future large business apps can be server-based, but that is a slow expensive choice for small businesses and personal users. Anyway, there should be no reason for Apple’s software to be so fragmented. Transition between families of applications should be seamless and intuitive as people gain skills. Instead the Mac functionality is being sacrificed so Apple can put more and more efforts into iOS based services that are not overpriced, they just suck in terms of features, performance, interface, customization, compatibility, Mac friendliness, offline operation, privacy, and so on. Apple is just like all the other big IT firms — they want to be your Big Brother. If not today, Apple will move in that direction with the next CEO, or the one after that. It’s already obvious that the spaceship has been infiltrated with people who are proud do do exactly the opposite of what Jobs did on many fronts. iCloud is just one example of where Jobs wanted it to serve the user and was pissed when it didn’t live up to its promises — today after all these years, it’s still a mess and nobody in Cupertino is doing anything but finding ways to make users 100% dependent on it. Actual iCloud performance royally sucks compared to local or network storage by any measure.
Apple should be bundling 50 GB of iCloud storage with $9.99 Apple Music monthly subscriptions. It would make the subscriptions stickier, and also allow more people to take advantage of iCloud backups for their phones.
Good idea, Greg.
The Verge nailed it with their title:
“Apple is offering a free month of iCloud storage instead of just giving everybody a useable amount
“Apple is treating the symptom, not the cause”
Drug pusher.