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You could also get 4 TB iCloud for the first time, by subscribing to both Apple One Premier and the 2 TB iCloud plan on top.Īs you can see, Apple switches up the paid tiers fairly frequently. However, last year, Apple offered a new twist on paid iCloud by launching the Apple One bundle which couples iCloud storage with a variety of Apple’s content services. It would also allow users to share the 200 GB and 2 TB plans with up to six family members via Family Sharing.Ģ017 was the last time Apple changed the pricing of iCloud itself. Less than a year later, Apple would remove the 1 TB plan altogether and bring the 2 TB storage down to $9.99 per month. In 2017, Apple added a 2 TB plan for $19.99 per month, above the existing 50 GB / 200 GB / 1 TB options. Interestingly, this was the first time that Apple had competitively price-matched to what Google Drive and Dropbox were charging for their paid storage services. In 2015, these tiers changed again: you could get 50 GB for $0.99 per month, 200 GB for $2.99 per month and the price of the 1 TB plan was halved to $9.99 per month. In 2014, Apple moved to monthly iCloud pricing, offering 20 GB for $0.99 per month and up to 1 TB for $19.99 per month.
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When iCloud launched, customers could purchase paid iCloud tiers starting at 10 GB and maxing out at 50 GB, costing up to $100 per year.
Increase to icloud storage plans free#
Well, Apple has recognized the demand for more and more storage by adjusting the cost and increasing the capacity of paid iCloud tiers on several occasions, but the 5 GB free baseline has remained the same all the way through. What actually transpired is that Apple would do nothing at all. Over the last ten years, people have speculated about how might change the base iCloud storage over time, such as adding extra gigabytes with new Apple device purchases, or simply increasing the base storage in line with base iPhone SKU storage increases. Nowadays, of course, 5 GB free is barely enough to hold a user’s pictures and video taken on a single trip. Other ad-supported services like Google included much bigger storage buckets at no cost, some even offering ‘unlimited’ storage deals (that would later turn out to be unsustainable).
Increase to icloud storage plans for free#
In contrast to MobileMe, Apple’s announcement that it would start giving away 5 GB for free was a big deal at the time, for Apple users at least. ICloud has come a long way since its iOS 5 launch but one thing that has hilariously stayed the same: the free tier of iCloud has remained at 5 GB …īefore iCloud, Apple’s cloud offering was MobileMe which was only available as a paid service, at $99 per year for 20 GB storage (up to 40 GB additional storage could be purchased on top).
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Apple wanted to shake off the embarrassment that was MobileMe and set itself up for the future, where customers would host all of their data in the cloud. In June 2011, Steve Jobs would make one of his final public appearances to unveil iCloud at that year’s WWDC, Apple’s new strategy for back up and sync of its entire device ecosystem.
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