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Apple iCloud storage prices now ONLY double Dropbox, Google et al

iCloud price cut shows the Cupertino idiot tax is still alive and well

While the world+dog was focused on Apple's new iPhones and shiny new smart(ish)watch, the firm quietly cut the price it charges for the iCloud storage system.

The revised price plan on the iCloud website shows that Cupertino is still offering the first 5GB for free, but the next 20GB will now cost US$0.99 a month, 200GB will set users back $3.99 a month, $9.99 per month gets you 500GB, and $19.99 a month gets you a terabyte of cloud-based storage.

Previously Apple was charging consumers $20 per 10GB per annum, $40 a year for 20GB, and $100 for 50GB, so it's a real price cut, albeit less of one than other cloud storage outfits have introduced of late.

Dropbox, for example, last month revised its price list for 1TB of cloudy storage to $9.99 a month – less than half Apple's prices.

Both Microsoft and Google have also dropped their cloud storage prices this year. Since March the Chocolate Factory's Drive system has been charging that same $9.99 a month for a terabyte of storage and the following month Microsoft cut its prices to just $6.99 a month for the same amount of space on its OneDrive system with Office 365.

That Apple still charges more than the competition for cloud storage is no surprise – the Cupertino idiot-tax operation is as strong as it has ever been. That said, paying through the nose for a shiny smartphone can possibly be justified if you get off on the aesthetics of the thing, but cloud storage is just a server somewhere.

And it's not as though Apple can claim to have added value to storage – just ask Jennifer Lawrence and a host of other female actors who had their private pictures splashed across the web after their iCloud accounts were compromised - something Apple has promised to make less likely in future. ®

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