14 DAY TRIAL // iCloud went through a storm last week after the Celebgate. About 100 celebrities have seen their private photos leaked online after being stolen from iCloud. The hackers have used social engineering and brute force attacks targeted at the celebrities accounts in order to gain access to their information.
Apple's CEO, Tim Cook himself has explained that iCloud was not breached and suggested the fault belongs a little bit to the celebrities who fall for phishing emails and have setup short, easy-to-remember passwords.
The Cloud is back
Since everyone forgot about the issues, Apple has revealed even bigger plans involving their Internet Services. Apple Pay is the new method of paying with an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus equipped with an NFC chip. The contactless payment method is not new, however, the way Apple has implemented it may finally turn customers and merchants to use it.
iCloud for less
Apple has also switched on the new iCloud plans available for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. The prices are somewhat similar to other similar services offered by Dropbox or Google.
If you have an iCloud account, you still get the same free tier – 5GB per account. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't care if you just bought the new iPhone with a 128GB flash Storage to give you more space in the cloud. They also ignore the fact that you may need to use the same iCloud account with multiple devices and the 5GB are not even enough for backups.
The best solution there would be to create an iCloud space that is at least half the size of the device you're using. Did you pay for the 16GB iPhone? Get at least 8GB of storage in the cloud. Got the latest iPhone 6 with a whopping 128GB? Get at least 64GB to store all those HD videos, photos and app content.
The new iCloud plans make much it easier for users to get some extra storage and the first reason is the pricing. For 20GB you only have to pay $0.99 (€0.76) per month. Get ten times that storage, 200GB and you pay only four times the money.
The 500GB plan is $9.99 (€7.71) per month. To be fair, for the same amount of money you can get 1TB of storage from Dropbox. Only if you pay $19.99 (€15.44) you will get 1TB of space on iCloud.
Previously, the plans were priced at $19.99 (€15.44) for 10GB and $100 (€77.22) for 50GB.
All you have to do to activate the new plans is to go on your iPhone, for example, and choose Settings – iCloud – Storage – Buy More Storage. You tap the plan you like, you will be charged and that will show up in your account right away.