> And the cheapest tier is $0.99/mo. for 50 GB so it's not exactly breaking the bank.

This is a huge trick. Like any other service where the most friction is setting up billing... then they can increase the price easily. Do upgrades to other tiers require confirmation?

You have to explicitly upgrade.

There's no trick as far as I can tell.

And they haven't increased the price of the $0.99 tier ever, and it's been around for 8 years I think. I don't think they've ever increased the price of any storage plan in the US ever -- prices in other countries have changed but that seems to do more with currency fluctuations.

Apple is known for their transparent pricing and easy cancellation. I don't think there are any tricks here.

If anything their trick is in how they describe the storage tiers on their website[1]:

> $0.99/mo for 50GB: Storage for thousands of photos, videos, and files.

> $2.99/mo for 200GB: Great for family sharing or larger media libraries.

> $9.99/mo for 2TB: Plenty of space for all the family’s photos, videos, and files.

Other than the $0.99 tier, these storage numbers are comically low for the uses cases Apple describes in plain English. But that's par for the course with Apple... An arm, a leg, and your firstborn for storage and RAM upgrades. As in hardware, so in SaaS cloud storage, I guess.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/icloud/

I did professional photography on the side for the better part of a decade before needing to go above 2TB. You don't have to hoard.

I agree on photos, but when I hear "larger media library" I assume we're talking video content, both family videos taken on phones and commercial media (TV and Movies). Maybe I'm misreading but either 200GB or 2TB are both very small for a whole family's collection of video media.

Are you thinking of their television shows or movies or something? That's not really a use case here.

Does any significant slice of the population store TV shows and movies on their phones or laptops?

Honestly, most families do not maintain a digital collection of media. And I say that as someone who does. Most families just have a netflix or prime or apple tv subscription, maybe cable. If there's a collection, it's probably DVD or Blu-Ray still.

> There's no trick as far as I can tell.

I think that is the trick.

99 cents is so innocuous, that people set up billing to allow it. People who set up their apple id without a credit card will probably attach a card to their account to get the 99 cent storage "deal".

At that point, upgrading to the next tier is inevitable as phones have been steadily increasing in storage capacity.

I think it would be nicer if your icloud storage capacity matched your primary device.

There's no winning then, is there?

If a company doesn't offer a super cheap tier, then people complain it's too expensive and they're paying for space they don't need.

If Apple does offer a super cheap tier, there are complaints it's some kind of trick.

The $0.99 tier has been great for my needs. If you have a 64 GB phone you never need more. If you have a larger phone you quite frequently don't need more -- a lot of my phone storage goes to song, podcast, and video downloads. That stuff doesn't need to be backed up, and isn't by default.

I think that nearly everyone who has an iPhone (at least who didn't get their phone deeply discounted second-hand) has a payment method set up with Apple. I don't remember the numbers from when I had to know ~5 years ago, but it was in excess of 95% in the US.

"with this one trick, you can get everyone to register a credit card!"

:)