Apple's 2TB iCloud plan will only cost $10 a month
engadget.com
engadget.com
For me, the choice isn't about price; it's about functionality.
I desperately wanted to like iCloud, but Apple missed the mark on this one.
First, the way they try to "integrate it" makes it difficult to manage your data. Don't want your iCloud stored on your root partition? Huge pain to move. Second, it's hard to tell exactly what it's doing, when it's syncing, what's in sync, partially syncing content, etc. In other words, clarity to what's occurring is lacking. The list goes on, but this was enough for me to drop it.
Google Drive got it right, which is what I'm using. (Of course so did Dropbox, who pioneered it)
Until Apple allows more flexibility as to what's synced, how it's synced, where its synced, I won't be going back at any price.
(Note: I do use iCloud for photo storage just because it's easy, but I'm not using anywhere close to the current limits).
Really, I think the crux is that I trust Apple to do the right thing for a bunch of non-solid reasons, and so I am willing to give them the control over the particulars of the mechanisms as long as the input-->output is what I want/expect from them.
I don't have a Mac, so many someone can explain whether the iCloud integration into MacOS and iOS is worth the price premium. For me, it wouldn't be enough, as I have way more than 2TB of data.
iCloud storage includes file storage, iOS backups, mail (if you're using an iCloud email address), and photos. It doesn't have the same features as Dropbox or Box, but I prefer it simply because it works fine for me. I'm on a 200GB plan and plan to upgrade once the family sharing plans are live.
Personally, $120/year for 2TB of online storage for a service I regularly use is actually great. But I'm still disappointed that iCloud only comes with 5GB of free storage and the pricing options of lower tiers hasn't really changed.
Indeed, CrashPlan has a policy of removing backups if the machine hasn't connected in 6 months [1]. Those services aren't intended for long term document storage with no local copy, just for disaster recovery.
[1] https://support.crashplan.com/Subscriptions/Backup_Retention...
The alternate is to setup multiple Apple IDs and link them via family sharing to get the same iTunes purchases, but that's a huge pain in the butt and (IMO) not worth the effort to save $1/month on the 50GB iCloud plan.
Some of us don't want to have our data available to others.
Was that not fixed in iOS 10? They completely reimplemented how backups work in that release.
Apparently rclone violated amazon's TOS by having an API key in the source code instead of authing with a central server? The cynic in me says "whelp, that's what we get for actually utilizing an 'unlimited' service".
You should be doing a local NAS type thing like you do with your optiplex at home and a cloud service to diversify your backup types.
I already have internal, networked, and cold backups. I just needed one offsite. Doesn't matter to me whether it's a 15 minute drive away, or across the country. If my entire city gets nuked I have bigger things to worry about.
Might be they're all messy like that... but iCloud didn't really seem like a reliable service and it wasn't close to reliability of Dropbox :/
Can't? Ok, Apple sucks. Now that that's out of the way, given the reality we have, it's worth paying Apple for the storage.
Though the Pixel is a nice phone.
I, however, do use my own HDDs for backing up my computers.
That doesn't mean anything about features / reliability / whatever, though. I'm no user of either of these services.
Dropbox seems to have the best integration despite their underhanded use of Accessibility capabilities.
Our company has tried to use Google Drive, but found too often the client would claim that the sync was up-to-date while in fact it had simply stopped synching. We now have a Frankenstein system of google docs for text, GD for a library of PDF literature (for historical reasons), and DB pdfs, powerpoint and excel, and code. Sucky.
We used Box at a previous company. Meh. It seems to be aimed at F500 companies.
Oh and I continue to get a stream of confidential documents from another previous employer who standardized on Google, despite my efforts to stop it. Lucky for them I'm a nice guy since I'm no longer covered by NDA ;-).
You install the client - and it gives you a virtual file-system built on top of your Google Drive.
Announcement here - https://blog.google/products/g-suite/introducing-new-enterpr...
SIgn up for the early access here - https://gsuite.google.com/campaigns/index__drive-fs-eap.html
Personally, I much prefer it to the old sync client, and have been using this for a while.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions
(Disclaimer: Work for Google).
Prime gives you free Amazon storage, so I had a preference to use it instead of paying for DB. I'll give it a try, thanks.
Yes, it says you only get unlimited with 5 users (at $10/month apiece) but it works with only one.
I have just under 17 TB in mine-- I point Crashplan to a Google Drive mounted via FOSS rclone[1], saving $120/year for my old Crashplan family plan. And of course it's great for storing whatever you want, movies, pictures, etc.
One major disadvantage for iOS users is that you can't store your iOS backups on Google Drive. So I also pay Apple $1/month for the 50GB plan, simply because their base 5GB plan is insufficient to backup 2 iOS devices.
If you have a 2TB RAID box somewhere, preferably offsite, preferably backed up to Crashplan, things start to look similar to cloud storage.
BTW running ZeroTier on your machines and on a small cloud box with cheap traffic makes for a great LAN-like setup, when you e.g. have easy time syncing with your home machine behind NAT from anywhere.
A RAID array of MicroSDs, or maybe other flash devices, could be more reasonable reliability-wise, but it would be anything but a sleek consumer device.
OTOH, Apple is selling the "experience", the polish and automagic features. Maybe iCloud integration leaves a lot to be desired, it still beats a dongle 99% of the time.
(Disclaimer: Android user since Android 1.x.)
"iCloud storage plans. With room for the whole family. Now you can share an iCloud storage plan with your entire family. Choose 200GB or 2TB and give everyone enough space to store photos, videos, documents, and more."
Strangely this comment is the only mention of it I have found outside of Apple's own site. I'm desperately looking forward to when this will be an option though.
Added Office 365 ++ much more
Monthly fee to maintain access to your own data: $0.
Monthly fee to keep hackers from stealing your information and spreading it all over the Internet: $0.
Monthly fee to keep some slimy corporation from handing your data over without your knowledge in response to a secret warrant: $0.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/08/china-uncovers-massive...
That's just employees improperly accessing information about customers and selling it. You'll note that the information is things that Apple naturally has access to like names / phone numbers / Apple IDs, rather than private data stored on customers' devices or in iCloud. No hacking necessary to get this, just breaking internal policy and some laws.
The suspects, who worked in direct marketing and outsourcing for Apple in China
I'm not sure these people should have access to private information by default.
You are arguing semantics, it was illegal access of private data on Apple's watch. Even if you do not consider it a hack (~fud), iCloud is in the news again, which was the original point. BTW, to me, taking it at face value, it reads like Apple had no idea what is going on and it was all the work of the police.
And iCloud is not in the news again. That article had literally nothing at all to do with iCloud; it didn't even mention it.
Just because some of the suspects are Apple employees it does not disqualifies it as a hack, but we can agree to disagree on the definition. Apple employees selling private info is much more of a reason not to trust the company with your data, mind.
It can't happen at any company and it is an obvious reason not to trust them. It is not a rouge employee, there were 22 people involved. Either they were hacked, or they were basically employing/contracting criminals.
And yes, 22 people, that work at a large company. It shouldn't strain credulity to believe that a company that has over 100 thousand employees can end up with a handful of dishonest ones. This doesn't mean they were hacked. And yes, they were employing criminals, by definition, because the thing those employees did was a criminal act. Presumably they weren't criminals when they were hired though.