Apple adds 6TB and 12TB iCloud+ storage tiers priced at $30 and $60 a month

I have this recurring nightmare. It’s about Apple.

My main Apple nightmare, for years now, has been that my wife and I would hit the hard, unyielding iCloud+ 2TB storage ceiling. I constantly pull old video clips out of my Apple Photos to make room, but that ruins the ability to track projects by all their components, and even so, after some big filming sessions for my YouTube channel or one of her projects, we wind up coming perilously close to no more storage.

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Worse, we both also store our Mac Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud+, so that has also been threatened by the 2TB storage cap.

As far back as 2014, Apple offered tiered iCloud storage plans. Back then, the maximum was 1TB, for $19.99 per month here in the US. By late 2016, the company doubled its maximum storage plan to 2TB, for the same $19.99. And there —  although the price did drop to $9.99/month —  it remained for six long years

As a matter of perspective, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were announced in September 2016. The camera on the 7 Plus went up to 12 megapixels. Maximum storage on a 7 Plus was 256GB. Even the 16-inch MacBook Pro of the time topped out at 2TB of storage.

Now, let’s jump forward to last year’s iPhone 14 models. Maximum onboard storage was 1TB. But the maximum storage on a MacBook Pro was 8TB.

Over the course of six years, both iPhone and Mac max storage quadrupled, but iCloud+ remained mired at the same old 2TB level.

Last year, I did show a very hacky way to upgrade iCloud+ max storage from 2TB to 4TB. It required buying additional services and paying a total of $40/month, but it was an option if you wound up hitting that storage wall.

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However, as of today, Apple is adding more storage to iCloud+. They’re adding a 6TB plan, which MacRumors says will be priced at $29.99 per month. They’re also adding a 12TB plan, which increases the cost up to $59.99 per month.

Neither of these plans is cheap. But at least there’s no longer a hard brick wall coming up fast. Although it’s disappointing that it took Apple six long years to add higher storage tiers to a mission-critical system that most of their users rely upon, I’m very relieved that it’s here now. Count me in.

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