[gnicholas]

The cost of inputs has gone down. What has happened to the cost of storage and RAM (both commodities, I assume) over the last several years? They're still shipping "Pro" iPhones — that cost as much as a computer — with 128GB. That's one way to keep costs down, and to goose the demand for Apple's iCloud backup service.

[dan-robertson]

If people back up most of what’s on their phones, won’t people with more storage also want more space for backups? What things in your mind (other than apps/games) would take up a lot of space on a phone and not be backed up? Or do you suppose they wouldn’t be backed up to iCloud?

[gnicholas]

People have lots of photos/videos, and when your phone runs out of space, it kindly prompts you to buy iCloud storage. I have several family members who have done this, without understanding what it really meant.

[dan-robertson]

If they understood what the backup was, would they want to pay for it? My guess here is that most people do want the backups and so the on-device storage doesn’t matter that much for photos. Maybe people want to use google photos and avoid iCloud backups and that requires more storage on device? I don’t know about that

[Gigachad]

That's a good thing. I suspect these people wouldn't want to lose their photos if their phone breaks.

[gnicholas]

The point of this thread is that storage costs have gone down, and Apple has maintained its nominal prices by being chintzy with the onboard storage. Whether it's good for Apple to be paternalistic by pushing iCloud on people is a separate issue. Someone who already backs up to a computer doesn't need it, but is confused by the messages that appear when their phone fills up.

Also note that photos/videos taken on new phones are much, much larger than on older phones, effectively meaning that you can store way fewer photos/videos than before.

[nmfisher]

FWIW I tried to restore my iPhone backup from my Mac last week, and it totally failed. If I hadn't had iCloud, I'd be SOL.

(This is not a defence of Apple btw - it's unforgivable that they lock down the phone so you can only use their backup feature, and it doesn't actually work).

[xuki]

Wait wtf, that’s how I back up my data. It’s impossible to test these backups, I might need to pay for iCloud for peace of mind then.

[meowtimemania]

is the backup encrypted? I wonder if it's possible to extract the photos from a bad backup

[mrkstu]

Ask and ye shall receive:

https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/12/new-icloud-big-pricey-storage...

[dan-robertson]

I did not receive an answer

[gleenn]

iCloud is very inexpensive relatively speaking. And even the smallest plans have a very large amount of storage.

[gleenn]

For whoever is downvoting me, not sure why. You can get a storage plan for $1/month for 200GB and 2TB for $10. Not sure how you could possibly compare that to the price of the phone, that would take decades to break even.

[fauigerzigerk]

I didn't downvote you but...

>iCloud is very inexpensive relatively speaking. And even the smallest plans have a very large amount of storage.

No, 50GB is not "very large". It's far smaller than iPhone storage, which means people filling up their phones (usually with photos) can't use this plan.

>You can get a storage plan for $1/month for 200GB and 2TB for $10.

No, the 200GB plan is $3/per month not $1.

Also, iCloud is lacking a lot of features that other could services have, such as file versioning or any kind of ransomware protection, block-level sync, cross platform sharing features, and many others.

iCloud also happens to be the only cloud service that ever managed to lose some of my data.

The only thing iCloud has going for it is privileged integration with Apple devices.

[jbc1]

With Apple's margins I doubt they're using a cost plus pricing model.

[gnicholas]

I wasn't assuming that either. I was just pointing out that I'm not impressed that their prices haven't gone up in an inflationary period, since some of the inputs for these devices have gone down in price (presumably by a lot).

[lotsofpulp]

That is not the story their profit margins tell (no big material increase in quite a few years).

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/net-pro...

[rajnathani]

Also, over the years they might have also been able to make their supply-chain operations a couple or so percent more cost-efficient each year.