You have heard about the new iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9. But we need to talk about the sleeper hit from the Wonderlust event — iCloud+ now offers two new tiers for 6TB and 12TB.
Who needs it you may ask? Most people do. I am already using the previous highest tier — 2TB, which comes for Rs 749 and I have exhausted 70 per cent space. Why don’t I delete files to make space? I can’t because family vacation pictures and videos, moments from office meetings, important documents… everything is backed up to the iCloud.
When Apple’s senior vice-president of marketing, Greg Joswiak, announced the addition of the two new tiers, a loud cheer rang through Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, Cupertino. YouTuber MKBHD tweeted: “I am not lying when I say the new iCloud storage plans just got the loudest real applause in the theatre today.”
The iPhone and iPad can only hold that much information, even if you buy the 1TB variant, so iCloud backup is a must. When you upgrade to iCloud+, you get more storage along with enhanced privacy features that protect you and your data. Besides, with spatial video coming, it will be necessary to have an iCloud+ account to save heavy files.
Having an iCloud+ account entails users to certain exclusive features, like Private Relay, a VPN-like service that hides your browsing activity from third parties, along with a Hide My Email service that generates random email addresses you can use when signing up for offers, newsletters, and other services. It even allows you personalise your iCloud email domain as well as store end-to-end encrypted security footage.
With the addition of the two new tiers, the package (per month) now stands at — 50 GB for Rs 75, 200 GB for Rs 219, 2 TB for Rs 749, 6 TB for 2,999 and 12 TB for Rs 5,900. The only criticism: What about a 4TB tier?
Apple’s iCloud segment is very important to the company’s services business. ‘Services’ include App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Card (not there in India), the company’s entertainment services, and iCloud.
Agreed that Apple continues to sell more iPhone every year in most markets it is present in but all eyes are on services. Having more iCloud storage helps those who don’t want to buy an iPhone with a lot of internal storage.
