iCloud is Apple's cloud storage solution. You can use iCloud to back up your entire iPhone or iPad, although I prefer to back up my devices to my home computer. You can also use iCloud to store your documents created in Pages, Numbers and Keynote, and you can use iCloud to store movies and photos. Also, many third party apps include the option to store files using iCloud, which is a helpful way to share the file between versions of the app on your iPhone and your iPad.
Three months ago, Apple announced that it would make iCloud cheaper in connection with iOS 8. iOS 8 will be released on September 17, 2014, and it looks like the new iCloud prices are now in effect. Just a few days ago, when I tapped Settings -> iCloud -> Storage & Backup -> Buy More Storage on my iPhone, I saw these options:
But last night when I went there again, I saw this:
Everyone still gets 5 GB for free, and that has (just barely) been enough for me, but if you backup your iPhone or iPad to iCloud, it is easy to go over 5 GB. The old price was $40 a year for 20 GB, but you can now get 20 GB for only $0.99 a month, which is $11.88 a year. The old prices topped out at 50 GB for $100 a year, but you can now get 10x that much space, 500 GB, for around the same price: $9.99 a month, which is $119.88 a year. And if you really need a lot of space, you can get a full 1 TB for $19.99 a month, which is $239.88 a year.
Dropbox recently reduced its prices too, and the Dropbox Pro account now gives you 1 TB for $100 a year. While many third party apps can use Dropbox, Dropbox is not tightly integrated into the iOS experience like iCloud is. For example, you cannot automatically backup your iPhone to Dropbox, nor can you use Dropbox with Keynote, Pages and Numbers (at least, not directly).
Early next year, Apple will introduce a new program for the Mac called Photos which will let you share your full photo library with all of your iOS devices using iCloud. For those of us with large photo libraries — I see that my current iPhoto library on my Mac is at 300 GB — the reduced iCloud prices will be much appreciated when the new Photos for Mac is released in 2015.
