Apple began sending out notices today to former MobileMe users that their free 25GB iCloud accounts will be reduced to 5GB on September 30th, causing widespread panic. (We have been inundated with calls and emails from clients.)
What does this mean to you?
For those of us who had MobileMe—it included 20GB of data storage for the $99/year fee. When it moved to iCloud, they ‘allowed’ us to keep the 20GB + free 5GB with iCloud—until Sept. 30th.
Now we all need to decide if we would like to purchase more space or not.
5GB is really not enough when you have an iPhone and an iPad backing up to iCloud—unless you want to manage the data being backed up yourself, and manually choose what is to be backed up and what isn’t.
This was never really an issue with MobileMe, as most peeps never used close to the 20GB—since you couldn’t back up your iPhone or iPad to MobileMe.
But iCloud is different!
It’s almost a ‘tease’. We got used to using, and now needing more than 5GB of data… and NOW Apple wants a few more $$$ from us to keep things the way they were. (Sneaky!) On the up side—it’s much less than the $99 we were used to paying. Now it’s $40 for 20GB.
Be sure that your pix are always backed up somewhere!
I noticed that it was the camera roll taking up a lot of iCloud backup space on my iPhone 4S. I recommend purchasing additional iCloud storage space if you don’t manually backup/sync your pix/video to iPhoto very often. (By syncing your iPhone to your Mac.)
More info and storage pricing:
Additional information for those seeking to keep their iCloud storage needs below 5 GB can be found in an Apple support document, while those interested in purchasing additional storage space can do so through their iOS device iCloud settings, System Preferences on a Mac, or iCloud Control Panel on a PC.
Annual pricing is currently set at $20 for 10 GB, $40 for 20 GB, and $100 for 50 GB. All of the purchased amounts are added to the base 5 GB storage capacity.
Click here for tips from Apple on managing your iCloud storage >>
Ask Sam if you have any further questions >>
