Apple seems like it's lazily milking its userbase, but I think the truth is that it spends so much time and attention on pointless crap that all the stuff we care about on HN looks half-assed in comparison.
It looks going pretty ok to me.
I have almost 50Gb of free Dropbox storage btw, through referrals + events like the space race. But that's not really a fair fight anyway, since (aside from Dropbox) no one offers free space in exchange for actions..
For cost comparison (UK pricing);
iCloud: 50GB: £0.79 200GB: £2.49 1TB: £6.99 2TB: £13.99
Google Drive: 100GB: £1.59 1TB: £7.99
So, Google wins on free tier, but Apple takes it on options and cost thereafter, and 15GB arguably is still insufficient for "OS storage" in any real tangible terms.
[0] no I don't have data. I do know plenty of Dropbox users though, and next to none of them have any extras.