Stephen Hackett:
Now that the iPhone 7 starts at 32 GB of storage, the constant juggling needed to avoid a full device has been left behind by more users than ever before.
So let’s talk about iCloud storage.
5 GB often isn’t enough to back up an iPhone and an iPad, let alone store years worth of family photos.
With the latest announcement from Google about unlimited storage for photos, the spotlight has shifted towards Apple, and it’s very stingy 5 GB free iCloud storage. Much like the 16 GB issue that has only recently been resolved 1, this needs to be looked at sooner rather than later.
An average user can hit the 5 GB limit very quickly if they actively take photos. This becomes a bigger problem if they have multiple devices. For photos alone even 10 GB may not be enough for a lot of users. Photos are irreplaceable. So many people must have lost memories because of this storage issue.
I like what Google have done here. They recognise the importance of photos, and historically have been generous with cloud storage sizes. If Apple is serious about catching up with Google on cloud services, storage size is an obvious candidate for change. Let’s hope so.
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Well, kind of. 32 GB is hardly a crazy increase, but it has bought Apple a year or two of having an acceptable base storage size. ↩