Although last Tuesday was very clearly Apple’s big day in the spotlight for the season, the Cupertino-based tech giant is treating its hardcore fans and devoted followers to a bunch of exciting announcements today as well.
These include the highly anticipated public rollouts of the latest iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS versions but also something else that was originally announced at last week’s iPhone 15 family launch event, going largely unnoticed due to the sheer number of objectively more glamorous products and features introduced for the fall.
We’re talking about two new iCloud+ options, which are now available in the US at $29.99 and $59.99 a month. That may sound like a lot of money to spend on cloud storage for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or even Windows computer (because it is a lot of money), but you do get a lot of storage (as well as other cool stuff) at these sky-high monthly rates.
Specifically, you’re looking at a hefty 6TB allotment for the “cheaper” of the two newly released plans and an even larger 12TB bucket at the disposal of anyone willing to cough up 60 bucks every… single… month. Of course, the humbler 2TB, 200GB, and 50GB options are not going anywhere, and they’re unfortunately not getting any more affordable either, still fetching $9.99, $2.99, and $0.99 respectively a month stateside.
All iCloud+ plans come with “premium” features like Private Relay for Safari users, Hide My Email, HomeKit Secure Video, and custom email domains, thus providing very stiff competition in terms of both versatility and affordability for rival platforms like Google One.
In case you’re wondering, Google’s cloud storage service doesn’t have these same tiers, offering 5 and 10TB allotments in exchange for $25 and $50, respectively, and 20 and 30TB options at $100 and $150, respectively.