Is Apple Forcing Me to Pay Them for Much More Cloud Storage Than I Need?

It’s pretty well-known that the 5 GB of cloud storage Apple includes for free (when you buy a €1,000 phone) is quite pathetic. However, I’ve actually found the 200 GB plan for 39 NOK (€3.33) a month to be decent value. But as I’m close to reaching the limits of that plan – I think it’s highlighting some anti-competitive issues.

My use

I’m currently using 86.7% of my storage.

• Photos.app is the largest culprit, using 128.7 GB.
• Backups use 27.3 GB – but I intend to set this up to back up locally to my Mac Mini.
• iCloud Drive only uses 4.5 GB, as I’m babying it quite a bit.
• Messages uses 3.8 GB – but this could probably be removed as I don’t use iMessage as my default chat app.
• My wife is currently on her own 50 GB plan – but we do have an iCloud family. (So I wouldn’t mind combining these.)

My default cloud storage provider is Dropbox

In my opinion, the largest tech companies have far too much power already. So I like to use services from other companies if I can.¹ I also like how, in general, using third-party alternatives can give you flexibility. So, since we’re using Dropbox in my band, and I think it does the job, using this is my default cloud storage provider makes sense to me.

However, some pros of using third-party alternatives can be thwarted by first-parties, like Apple:

Problem #1: Backups

I’m “lucky”, in that I’ve given Apple even more money, by buying an always-on Mac mini – so I can actually resolve this problem. But Apple has conveniently (you know, for your own security) made it so you can only use their products and services to make complete device backups.

Because things are as they are, I really think the vast majority of people owning an iPhone should pay at least some money to Apple every month, for cloud storage – no matter how much cloud storage they might have elsewhere. And I think this reality is a concern.

Problem #2: Photos

I’m using iCloud Shared Library with my wife – and I think it’s a pretty good experience. (Even though it’s baffling that you can’t create shared albums there yet.) And that’s lucky – because no one is allowed to create a full-fledged competitor on iOS.

And this makes it extra annoying (and problematic) that I’m not allowed to use some of my 2 TB of Dropbox storage to store my photos.² Because it could be an argument that it’s fine that Apple uses its investments in Photos.app to funnel people into buying iCloud storage (in addition to Apple’s hardware products), and that Dropbox should make their own Photos.app competitor. But Apple is literally barring them from doing just that.

This is the issue with the ever-increasing bundling of markets: To be able to properly compete in cloud storage (which could be a healthy market in itself, as long as APIs and software hooks are good enough), you need to have your own little monopoly³ to leverage.

Problem #3: Lack of options

Even though I’m able to trim away everything else, in time, my photo library will become larger than 200 GB. And all of these problems make it all the more frustrating that the next tier in Apple’s offering is to 10x my storage, from 200 GB to 2,000 GB (2 TB), for 3.3x the price. And it’s not like I can go for a competitor, that might offer a 500 GB plan, instead…

Please let me know if you have other ideas for me! But I know that it would be very unpopular at home if I wanted to move our family photo library to something like Nextcloud…

It’s problematic when one company sits on so many parts of the table:

• Why should the Apple, the software maker, build a way to use Dropbox as the cloud backend, when Apple, the cloud storage provider, wouldn’t like this?
  • And how does this affect their incentive to support better image compression (like JPEG XL), etc.?
• iMessage gets special treatment on Apple’s platform, and has a firm hold on the American market.⁴ But what are their incentives, when it comes to making it be more kind to both your local and cloud storage, when the same company also earns money when you need to pay for more storage of both those varieties?

I’m not saying Apple, and other companies in similar situation, always exploits these things to its fullest. I don’t think there are people at Apple, twiddling their fingers, and saying “Muhaha, let’s make things terrible for Dropbox customers. And let’s make every photo take up twice the amount of space. 😈” And I know I’m harping on Apple here – but to be clear: The reason I do that, is that I use vanishingly few products from the other giants, as I like them way less than Apple. I’m not saying they’re the worst offenders.

It’s just that my recent cloud storage woes have shone another light on the problematic competitive landscape surrounding the tech giants. And I really think it’s important to keep an eye on incentive structures – especially when it comes to things that affect all of us (like the mobile market). Because these structures have effects on priorities and small choices, which compound when the companies making them are multi-trillion-dollar ones.