Ok, than what's your reason that MS is offering 30GB and Apple only offers 5GB? We are all just guessing. But the point is that Apple doesn't need to offer more. People are buying iOS devices, loving their iOS devices, and paying for more storage.
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more iCloud storage?
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Maybe just a nice gesture from MS? Nothing wrong with that. In fact, they were going to get rid of the free 30 gig, but then listened to the consumer complaints and changed plans.
And possibly a reason Apple has almost double the cash of Microsoft.
I'm sure the difference between #1 and #2 has nothing to do with miniscule free cloud offerings..
http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/
We (or most of us,lol) all know the iPhone is what is behind that.
Whether Apple provides 5 GB or 5 bytes or 5 TB of iCloud storage for free, it means squat to me. I disable online backups and save on money for
1. expensive iCloud data plans
2. expensive 3G/4G data packs or Wifi data allowance increase.
One has to be mental to pay for this storage.
My documents and data gets stored on my PC and backed up to another external drive. Much better.
Contacts get synced to gmail account because it is better and would come handy if one fine day I decide to switch to Android ecosystem.
iCloud is an utter waste of time and money. Underlined in bold.
1. expensive iCloud data plans
2. expensive 3G/4G data packs or Wifi data allowance increase.
One has to be mental to pay for this storage.
My documents and data gets stored on my PC and backed up to another external drive. Much better.
Contacts get synced to gmail account because it is better and would come handy if one fine day I decide to switch to Android ecosystem.
iCloud is an utter waste of time and money. Underlined in bold.
I guess another way of looking at it is that much of the data is shared between your devices, rather than duplicated. For example, say I have 7gb of photos on my camera roll. This is going to be the same 7gb of photo data which gets synced between your iPhone and iPad and Mac. It's not a separate 7gb of photos for your iPhone and your iPad.
What I feel Apple should do is offer unlimited icloud storage for photos and backups.
I can see why Apple would be hesitant to do this. The bulk of my icloud storage is used on photos and nightly backups, and that's precisely why I pay $1 a month for the extra storage, because 5gb just doesn't cut it. My photos alone is 6.1 gb and it is not unheard of for people to subscribe to the higher storage tiers, especially if they are doing photo editing with pictures of way higher resolution and storage size.
If Apple did this, they are losing $12 a year per paying customer (at least), which I imagine is no small change, even if only a small number of customers subscribe.
To further play devil's advocate, Google gives out free storage not out of the kindness of their heart, but because they need the critical volume to aid in their image recognition software, and because they probably expect to monetise it from the end user somehow. Their business model is also quite different from Apple (Google subsides their cloud services with ads, which is contingent on user data, while Apple subsides software through hardware profits, and the money is still theirs even if you use other services on your Apple products). There is also some compression of the photos (which people may not appreciate), and you ultimately can't beat the integration of icloud photo library at the OS level, especially when you are as entrenched in the Apple ecosystem as I am.
However, I would argue that given all the work that Apple has put into developing icloud photo library, it seems like a waste that only a fraction (which I confess that I have no idea how much) of their user base is using this feature, precisely because they are unwilling to pay $1 a month. Apple sells us the user experience. Let their users have the peace of mind of being able to back up their devices without having to agonise over every single iota of storage used.
If people argue that unlimited free storage is ripe for abuse, I am sure there are ways of mitigating the edge cases. Maybe limit the free photo storage to photos taken by your iOS devices (i.e.: only photos of 12mp and below count towards this).
iCloud backups is also a feature that Android smartphones currently do not (and cannot) offer (correct me if I am wrong on this). What better way to keep us as loyal Apple customers than to get us hooked on the ease of backing up and restoring my devices?
Perhaps some executive up there at Apple decided that icloud ought to be a self-sustaining and revenue-generating entity in its own right, but this seems quite short-sighted.
Nothing is free. With Apple, you pay in currency, with Google, you pay in privacy. It just depends on what is more valuable to a person. If you don't care about your privacy then google probably seems like a hell of a deal... For me iCloud seems like a better deal....
You need a "Don't Know" or some other "Maybe" type of option.
Will they? Does it matter? Except for some specific Apple only functions that don't always work well and it is not a robust cloud type solution .... just saying does it really matter?
I don't think Apple will add more free storage to iCloud. 5 GB storage for free is a favour. If Apple offers more storage, the pay model may be affected. I can use Google Photos to store photos.
Google does this as a lure. Here is the reason why I have a NAS. 8.1 tb of space on google's system would cost me the same as that NAS in about 14-18 months (drive prices fluctuate so hard to peg this down). IIRC to get this I had to get the 10 tb plan as next lowest one was not near here. 1400-1500 all together. Knew my current data needs, factoring in 3 years of data growth why I know I needed this space as a safe limit.
Here is how google makes its money. Others who unlike NAS (or its bigger sibling SAN) owners opt to pay for this level of service make them money. Chances are good the free stuff lured them in. As data grows...you go well pay more. Lure them in and see who sticks to pay later. it works because people in general are pack rats. Data needs will grow as they pack rat. Google (and others) will be there to say yes we can give you some more space. Whats your CC number sir/maam?
When company's offer free stuff and its good, its not free. Case of google its the gateway to their services section where you pay. Don't use them well you make out good. Get your free stuff, have a blast. I do. I run some free stuff in addition to my NAS. Mainly because I CBA to lock down my NAS air tight to be fully on the internet (which it can do quite readily).