When iOS 5 was announced along with iCloud at WWDC 2011, the release date for both of Apple’s services were set to be launched in the fall of 2011. Well as far as iOS 5 is concerned the beta has already gone out several times to developers and now it appears it is iCloud’s time to shine.
Just released a few hours ago, developers who have a developer account with Apple are now able to access the beta. Pricing for the cloud service has also been revealed in the process. For those interested in making use of Apple’s iCloud services in the future, it will be important to take note that iCloud will come with 5GB free, and considering that we are buying 1TB external hard drives, 5GB does seem like a pittance but that’s where Apple’s business strategy kicks in.
Now if you are looking to add on more storage to your iCloud, an additional 10GB will cost you $20 per year, bringing your total storage to 15GB. For an additional 20GB of storage it will cost $40 per year and will net you a grand total of 25GB worth of storage. If you feel that 25GB is not enough, the last option appears to be 50GB which will cost you $100 per year which will give you a total of 55GB worth of storage capacity.
Based on those price plans, it appears that Apple does not seem to be offering bulk discounts and we’re not sure why. Perhaps they’re limiting the amount people can store on their cloud accounts to prevent piracy?
It has also been revealed that if you decide not to go with an upgrade or cancel your yearly subscription (and be content with 5GB of storage), Apple will offer a 15-day refund window for upgrades and a 45-day refund window for yearly subscriptions. Anyway if all of that sounds good/fair to you, expect iCloud to launch this fall.
Filed in . Read more about Beta, Cloud Storage, Icloud and Storage.