{"id":42843,"date":"2024-04-12T14:52:16","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T18:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42843"},"modified":"2024-04-26T11:39:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T15:39:56","slug":"dont-let-me-go-and-icloud-storage-tiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/12\/dont-let-me-go-and-icloud-storage-tiers\/","title":{"rendered":"“Don’t Let Me Go” and iCloud Storage Tiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The gist of the commercial is that you shouldn’t worry about deleting photos to free up storage, because modern iPhones have plenty of space.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

But this commercial made me want to yell at my TV each time it came on: “The problem is iCloud<\/em> storage, not on-device storage!” The free tier of iCloud remains just 5 GB, and the $1\/month paid tier offers just 50 GB, which may not be enough to back up even a 64 GB iPhone SE.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

And no amount of cleverness in iOS can protect a user with un-backed-up photos and videos if they lose or break their iPhone.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It feels like this new commercial is just whistling past the single biggest shortcoming in the Apple ecosystem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I bet Apple has data showing that millions of iPhone users have precious photos that aren’t backed up because they don’t have enough iCloud storage. iOS will nag about this, and people get used to ignoring it. There’s an aversion to subscriptions, even if it’s only 99 cents per month to back up important data. I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems odd that the free tier hasn’t changed and that purchasing a new $999 phone doesn’t get you more. I guess it’s like how the fancy hotels are the ones that charge for Wi-Fi…<\/p>\n\n

Ryan Jones<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

User must choose between (roughly speaking) 5-10GB on device or 100-200GB on device. That’s so binary. There’s no benefit to more device storage until and unless it can fit ALL your photos.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Carlos Ribas<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Plus it doesn’t do a great job. I have to turn it off or else I frequently find myself waiting to download offloaded videos I just took, while the phone sits 75% empty. Doing a good job would mean filling the phone but automatically purging oldest-first as-needed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The free tier for Google One offers 15 GB of storage.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Google used to offer “unlimited storage for photos and videos” to owners of Pixel phones, but they dropped this offer<\/a> starting with the Pixel 6 in late 2021. That was such an appealing offer — especially considering that much of the appeal of Pixel phones comes from their renowned camera systems. I can only surmise that this proved more expensive to Google than they deemed worthwhile.<\/p>\n

You don’t need to pay for iCloud to back up a large amount of iPhone storage — you can still back up to a Mac or PC manually<\/a>. I don’t know any non-expert users who do this, though, and there are zillions of iPhone owners who don’t even own a Mac or PC. For the masses, iCloud backup is the only backup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n