Apple Accused of Trapping 40 Million UK Customers Into iCloud Service

[2761216]

The market can't decide because Apple doesn't allow it. That is the point.
You buy an iPhone, Apple uses all sort of tricks to make you use iCloud.
The market has decided about the iPhone, iPhone is good. Apple uses that decision to prevent even having to fight for who makes the best cloud service: when you have an iPhone, you just have to use their service, for no technical reason, just the fact that they're trying to lock it like they did with the App Store.
If Apple is that good at the game, they should let competitors play and prove it.

Edit: they've also done all they could with browsers, maps, cables, repair... it's a very clear pattern.

It’s a tech company not a lawn mower company.
They designed iCloud with integration in mind and obviously the company that built the iOS with a cloud service that’s so deeply integrated can’t be fully open for privacy and security reasons.

If a bad actor abuses the privileges you’re not gonna blame the bad actor but Apple for allowing that to happen in the first place. The checks and balances are there for a reason.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Maps and browser engines are otoh is an actual attempt to keep the users in their apps and there’s no legit reason to not open them up.

 

[JCCL]

What tricks?
They give you five gigs for free then charge .99 cents a month for 50 more. Pretty reasonable.
You are free to use any other service like Google or backup services from ISP’s that offer it.

And how is backing up your iPhone working with those services?

 

[WarmWinterHat]

And how is backing up your iPhone working with those services?

You don't need iCloud to backup your phone. I back mine up with my Mac.

(I have no idea if iPhones can be backed up to non-macOS machines. So there might still be some restriction imposed.)

You can backup to Windows with iTunes installed, too.

 

[2761216]

And how is backing up your iPhone working with those services?

That argument makes zero sense.

No one wants to backup (handover) their sensitive data to 3rd party services. Not even you.

 

[robvalentine]

The issue here is that you are tied to iCloud, or are deliberately crippled.

The 5gb free is pathetic. And deliberately so. With google you get 15 gb free which is enough for a phone back up minus photos. My iPhone back up is 10gb…

 

[MyRomeo]

I have no issue with the iCloud system and pay for the 2TB offering however I wish apple would offer the ability of hosting iCloud equivalent services on a local NAS sync or at least make it possible to sync to another service provider. I have plenty of WAN accessible storage of my own, it would be great to be able to use that instead of or along side iCloud.

 

[threesixty360]

The market can't decide because Apple doesn't allow it. That is the point.
You buy an iPhone, Apple uses all sort of tricks to make you use iCloud.
The market has decided about the iPhone, iPhone is good. Apple uses that decision to prevent even having to fight for who makes the best cloud service: when you have an iPhone, you just have to use their service, for no technical reason, just the fact that they're trying to lock it like they did with the App Store.
If Apple is that good at the game, they should let competitors play and prove it.

Edit: they've also done all they could with browsers, maps, cables, repair... it's a very clear pattern.

The other way to look at it is Apple provide the services their customers would expect and are not at the whim of third parties who can decide to drop and and not support Apple customers whenever it suits them.

Which is the reason people buy Apple ultimately, it’s a trust thing. If you had used a mac 20+ yrs ago you will have seen the issue of third party support first hand. Companies refusing to support Mac OS etc. it was very hard. So apple took the matter in their own hands. Which is why we have all these products like Final Cut, logic, iMessage etc.

Look at the AAA video game market right now. It’s like that because companies don’t want Apple doing well and make more money off of none Apple machines. Just imagine if the rest of the market was like the video game market? There’d be nothing for Apple users! But I see no one asking for govt to mandate AAA game devs make all games for mac / iOS. But it’s the same principal.
?

 

[cjsuk]

The British economy:

Criminal level rents draining society = great, let's get rich on this pyramid scheme even if it harms most people and makes young people fear for their future

iCloud, which is free, optional and has various plans = OMG this is a crime

And that's why Britain's tech sector died in the 80s.

Our tech sector died in the 80s because we sold out to the Europeans and the Americans. Who then sold it on to the Chinese to fill up their retirement funds. Some of those people went on to advisory positions in the EU and now spend all their time complaining about the companies they sold everything out to while trying not to be noticed.

As for Which? they are a paid service which does unbiased product reviews. But they are crap. Many conversations I hear start with “so Which? recommended me this turd…”.

This whole thing is a crap fest.

 

[grjj]

Which? are apparently staffed by morons. There are settings for each of the simpler services like notes, reminders, mail, to select a default account which doe not need to be iCloud.
Photos is tied to iCloud but has an export to Google Photos option and you're not in any way forced to use Apple's Photos.
I hope Apple fights this and have little doubt they'll win. I just hope they can file a suit against which? to recoup extra damages and deter these frivolous suits in the future.

 

[Tago]

The issue here is that you are tied to iCloud, or are deliberately crippled.

The 5gb free is pathetic. And deliberately so. With google you get 15 gb free which is enough for a phone back up minus photos. My iPhone back up is 10gb…

No. You aren`t tied up by anyone.

You are locking yourself up. and only by free choice. The pleasure of digital masochism so to speak. There`s no requirement whatsoever for Mac/iOS users to use iCloud/+, and you can tie the knot with any service who have chosen to facilitate access from Apple devices.

If you want iCloud to sync your devices without storing anything up in the sky, iCloud charges the full amount of nothing for that.

 

[chrono1081]

It's still incredibly sad that by ~2010, capitalists went with cloud direction instead of making well-integrated self-hosting solutions.

Imagine having all your stuff on a Mac mini at home, including phone backups, contacts, etc. Free forever, fully yours, just don't forget to replace hard drives once in a while.

I'm certain that every person could easily manage that setup, just like all the "normie" people used to pirate music for their iPods back in the day.

But of course, it's harder for police and for data brokers to access data that way, so here we are.

I can’t tell if this is a joke or not because you can literally do that and always have been able to do that if you wanted.

 

[chrono1081]

What other options to i have to get my messages, photos etc all synced across devices and backed up? Well, i need iCloud for that. And Apple are obviously aware that they put cameras on their phones that now create large file sizes making their free tier of storage useless. Cloud storage is important for these devices. A huge jump in cost to have them working as advertised is not fair game. Plus, if you have family members sharing your storage, good luck in getting them all to do cloud house keeping or consider moving to a different cloud provider for storing their photos.

I disagree with this take. Just like any other computing device since the dawn of computing you pay extra for any extra storage you need.

If you have tons of data and don’t want iCloud, buy a phone with a larger storage capacity. If you want iCloud and have tons of data, you buy a plan with a larger storage capacity. Larger amounts of storage had always cost a lot more.

 

[nikusak]

So, Which? is arguing that Apple should be forced to allow third party background apps full unlimited access to all files on our devices so that our files could be sent to third party servers, instead of iCloud.

This is incredibly dangerous and stupid idea. But as such perhaps in line with so many other ridiculous demands by UK and especially EU.

First of all, incremental backups and restores on a complex device like a smartphone are not trivial at all to implement.

Secondly, this is crazy from a security viewpoint.

The only way how non-iCloud backups could work reliably (but not necessarily safely) is that Apple licences the backend server side of iCloud to third party service providers.

This way the complex functionality in the device end would remain unchanged.

Users could then use if the backend is iCloud, or some other service - which is unlikely to be much if any cheaper.

 

[TOM1211]

I made a choice to buy a iPhone , I can make a choice if I buy iCloud or not . Yes iCloud is convenient but I choose to use it and trust it some of us are quite capable of making our own decisions.

 

[hagjohn]

Because governments spell blood in the water and an easy way to get some cheap cash. We sued a business and got you some money. Don't you like us now?

 

[SBlue1]

It's not anticompetitive, Apple is just greedy.

 

[bradman83]

I would actually love it if the major developers were forced to allow users to pick which cloud platform to back their data up to. Having data scattered across OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, and Adobe Creative Cloud is a nuisance and it would be fantastic to consolidate into just one service. Alas it's a money maker so it will never happen.

 

[JonathanX64]

I can’t tell if this is a joke or not because you can literally do that and always have been able to do that if you wanted.

You never tried

iPhone backups can only be kept in iCloud or locally on a Mac/PC.
iPhone photos lose additional metadata when you export them as files, and you can't self-host Apple Photos. In theory, you can store Apple Photos Library on a server, but it will be only accessible by one computer and that's it.
iTunes Home Sharing is artificially limited to LAN only.
Apps like Keynote or Journal only work with iCloud, etc.

Sure, you can switch to third-party software and self-host it, but I kinda wish Apple kept doing Mac OS X Server and promoting it as the way to run your digital life or whatever.

Like hey, you can buy 2TB of iCloud storage for $9.99 per month, but you can also buy our fancy dual hard drive Mac mini for $999 and do all the same things while keeping complete control over your data!

 

[MRrainer]

That's just a ridiculous publicity stunt to shake down Apple.
All cloud services are a lock-in.

You can't have FaceTime on premise or use your own iCloud storage in the same sense as you can't have Teams and OneDrive on-premise or get OneDrive storage from "somebody else".

The 50G in the 1st non-free tier are also pretty OK, unless you want to save a lot of files there.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

How is installing Azure Cloud, DropBox and others via their App in the AppStore hard to do?

Launch AppStore and Search DropBox. Top of the fold followed by Google Drive then Microsoft OneDrive.

The options just keep going.

 

[fatTribble]

What other options to i have to get my messages, photos etc all synced across devices and backed up? Well, i need iCloud for that. And Apple are obviously aware that they put cameras on their phones that now create large file sizes making their free tier of storage useless. Cloud storage is important for these devices. A huge jump in cost to have them working as advertised is not fair game. Plus, if you have family members sharing your storage, good luck in getting them all to do cloud house keeping or consider moving to a different cloud provider for storing their photos.

I have a pretty large amount of photos and videos that I value very much. So I keep multiple cloud backups. In addition to iCloud, I use iDrive, Amazon Photos and OneDrive. All 3 support Live Photos and are reasonably priced.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

You never tried

iPhone backups can only be kept in iCloud or locally on a Mac/PC.
iPhone photos lose additional metadata when you export them as files, and you can't self-host Apple Photos. In theory, you can store Apple Photos Library on a server, but it will be only accessible by one computer and that's it.
iTunes Home Sharing is artificially limited to LAN only.
Apps like Keynote or Journal only work with iCloud, etc.

Sure, you can switch to third-party software and self-host it, but I kinda wish Apple kept doing Mac OS X Server and promoting it as the way to run your digital life or whatever.

Like hey, you can buy 2TB of iCloud storage for $9.99 per month, but you can also buy our fancy dual hard drive Mac mini for $999 and do all the same things while keeping complete control over your data!

You know if you hook into DropBox they too tie you into their ecosystem. Same with Microsoft, Google, etc.

When is the EU, Great Britain, etc going to go after Microsoft Office and demand full interoperability with LibreOffice, iWorks, etc?

When does it end? Is GM or VW or Tesla required to include CarPlay Support? Why not?

Are Apple ecosystem customers supposed to mow your lawns as well?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I do, personally, have my data on iCloud+ and even if iOS/macOS allowed a choice in the current crop of cloud vendors I'd stick with it due to Apple's privacy policy and history. I certainly wouldn't put it on Google Drive!

That said - there's room for other privacy-focused alternatives, if the OS were required to accommodate them. Hmmm...

 

[jlc1978]

Photos is tied to iCloud but has an export to Google Photos option and you're not in any way forced to use Apple's Photos.

In fact, if you are using iCloud to synch your photos you still should be doing a second backup since you don't have a sequential backup. If you synch, iCloud Photo Backup is turned off and teh synched files are used as backup. If you accidentally delete a photo, it goes away after 30 days. iCloud is a synch service primarily, unlike TimeMachine or other Mac backup software that keeps sequential backups so you can go back and recover a lost file.

I have a pretty large amount of photos and videos that I value very much. So I keep multiple cloud backups. In addition to iCloud, I use iDrive, Amazon Photos and OneDrive. All 3 support Live Photos and are reasonably priced.

Same here, along with CCC to save to an external drive. I have multiple backups of my stuff, just in case. I use arq to save encrypted backups for security. You can never have too many backups.

 

[I7guy]

[…]

Also, people who disagree, since I assume you like the freedom of capitalist competition, please tell me why you're fine with Apple having meetings to decide how they can avoid having to face competition with actual skills and good products instead of dirty tricks.

Vote with your $$$. There’s a difference between illegal and not being innovative.