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Comment by Snow_Falls | Hacker News Reader

But apple charges for storage space? Surely people needing more storage is a huge plus for Apple. Maybe they had worries about scaling storage capacity? A company like Aple could certainly figure it out though so that seems unlikely

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My point is that I'm sure the only way iCloud is profitable or even break-even for Apple is if they rely on over-provisioning storage to users of the more paid plans. I started paying for the 200GB iCloud+ plan, and once my photos exceeded 200GB I ponied up for the 2TB plan. Unless I take up a photography hobby it'll be a long time until I get close to that 2TB, and I'd wager this is what Apple expects. Raising that baseline usage with Time Machine backups would mean it would need to be more expensive for end users, either by making iCloud+ more expensive or rolling out a new subscription product.

> it'll be a long time until I get close to that 2TB I thought the same thing until I realised that, with Family Sharing and a house with teenage kids sending each other embedded videos in iMessage, the time wouldn't be that long...

Suddenly I find myself 1TB in, and desperate to find a fix!

There's an interface on the phone to sort message attachments, by size, and delete -- exactly to reclaim that space.

On the other hand, that would require convincing your kids to do that...

Boot them out of family sharing and get them to pay for it themselves

Ninja economics for the win.

But sure then -- just charge more, or a new subscription product as you suggest just for Time Machine. They can even tie pricing to the size of your Mac's disk if they want. They can definitely make the economics work if they choose to.

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