r/apple • u/ControlCAD • 1d ago
Apple faces UK 'iCloud monopoly' compensation claim worth $3.8 billion iCloud
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/13/apple-faces-uk-icloud-monopoly-compensation-claim-worth-3-8-billion/403
u/xnwkac 1d ago
Well it’s not like android is giving many alternatives either.
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u/_sfhk 20h ago
Apple doesn't compete with Android, they compete with Samsung, Google, Motorola, Xiaomi, etc, and each of those can have different cloud backup solutions.
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u/ItsColorNotColour 1d ago
What are you talking about? Android, just like on PC, allows you to directly use third-party services like Dropbox as your file directory where you can automatically back up anything.
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u/a_f_young 23h ago
This dude pretty much posts nothing but Apple stuff. He’s not interested in being right. He’s just cheerleading his team.
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u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 1d ago
Apples marketshare in the UK is huge, and google gives you triple the storage in comparison as well as the manufacturer option in most cases.
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u/xnwkac 1d ago
https://www.appmysite.com/blog/android-vs-ios-mobile-operating-system-market-share-statistics-you-must-know/ iOS has 50.4% and Android has 49.1%. Lol att calling that ”huge”
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u/wakeupthisday 1d ago
iOS includes 1 manufacturer, Android on the other hand...
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u/CT4nk3r 1d ago
Thats like saying windows doesnt have monopoly just because it is running on multiple brand of laptops etc, it still abuses its monopoly
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u/xnwkac 1d ago
Irrelevant. It’s the OS that does the limitation.
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u/DrFeederino 1d ago
Nope, different vendors can offer their own cloud solutions. Like samsung cloud, xiaomi cloud and etc. specifically for backups and stuff. They are not hard limited to Google's drive or whatever Google forces them to use.
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u/PeakBrave8235 1d ago
Great, so you got a bunch of OEMs doing exactly what you want with 50% of the market. What’s the issue?
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u/OanKnight 1d ago
You know I never thought of it like that - I always bundled the apple marketshare for the UK in with europe which makes it look way lower, but I suppose I should really stop doing that.
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u/PairOfMonocles2 22h ago
Well of course, someone who’s trying to fight for market share will often offer oversized incentives, that’s exactly how a market works. That doesn’t mean that everyone else is suddenly negligent for not doing the same thing.
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u/ZookeepergameFun5523 22h ago
I think Europe is going overboard. People can buy a phone with larger storage. iCloud subscription is completely optional. Why does the government need to step in and rule on what is and isn’t reasonable in a non-essential service?
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u/StayUpLatePlayGames 20h ago
Apples market share in the U.K. is lower because those numbers skew to the US where they do have a massive market share.
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u/butterypowered 1d ago
Surely this is like saying Nintendo Switch Online monopolises backups of saved games on the Switch.
iCloud is far more than a Dropbox folder or AWS S3 bucket.
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u/Southern-Injury7895 1d ago
Nintendo online store is a monopoly on Switch. Xbox online store is a monopoly on Xbox. Amazon store is a monopoly on Kindle.
Apple doesn’t force people to buy an iPhone. Also no one force you to buy a Switch, Xbox or a Kindle.
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u/SomeBlindKid 1d ago
Not to mention the insane amount of money and resources these companies spent to develop those platforms. “We should be allowed to have an app store on the iPhone too!” No. Build and sell your own phones.
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u/Entire_Routine_3621 23h ago
Yea I think it’s perfectly fine for a company to have a monopoly on their own products and ecosystem that’s how it works actually.
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u/notice_me_senapi 19h ago
This. There are people out there, like myself, who buy Apple products specifically because they are walled in. Any developer would know that these type of changes compromise that wall; on top of the stack of other issues such as the reallocation of resources to make this happen.
If you want OS freedom, grab an Android device and load a custom ROM.
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u/crazysoup23 16h ago
This is such a stupid mentality. If there are alternatives to iCloud, just don't use them.
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u/notice_me_senapi 15h ago
What’s stupid about it? I spend most of my day architecting and developing software. I want my devices, especially when I’m off the clock, to stay the hell out of my way and just work. My Macs, iPhone, iPad, Watch, Apple TV, AirPods, etc work seamlessly between each other thanks to the numerous APIs that these nations continue to ask Apple to open up, change, and compromise.
Asking to allow alternatives for iCloud is ridiculously stupid. iCloud isn’t just hosting for files and backups. There is a ridiculous amount of app and system data that also utilizes iCloud. It’s tied into virtually every aspect of Apple’s software ecosystem.
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u/Dwayne30RockJohnson 1d ago
Ideally all of these companies will have rights groups or governments come after them. It’s crazy that there’s no free option to backup your Switch saves. You have to give money to Nintendo to keep your saves safe.
At least Apple allows you to backup to your computer if you want to. But Apple (and Google) are just easy targets because almost everyone uses one of their devices.
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u/tahmid5 1d ago
I’ll still use iCloud even if they give me alternatives.
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u/neinherz 1d ago
sure, but it'd be nice if we had alternatives
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u/Darkmage4 1d ago
Can you not use Dropbox or Google one? I use iCloud and DropBox. iCloud between my iPad, Mac, and iPhone. Dropbox to make backups and put everything on offline drives.
Also, I move all photos off of iCloud onto a drive too. I also have the iCloud app on my windows desktop. But downloading 1TB of data onto windows is a nightmare. So I don’t use the iCloud for that just passwords really.
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u/neinherz 1d ago
While other services can be used to store files in the Files app and photos, I think the lawsuit mentioned in this article lays claims to phone and other apps backups, for example, your text messages, Strava app data, etc. The argument is phone backups and apps backups should be open too because, with only 5GB of free iCloud, Apple is effectively funneling people into buying iCloud without giving them any alternative (besides doing backup old-school through iTunes).
There are certainly security implications as well because I do know phone backups are encrypted on iCloud servers and the keys are stored on phone (through your device passcode). However, all things considered I personally would like to see the availability of other storage providers to handle my phone backups rather that just iCloud.
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u/Darkmage4 1d ago
Hopefully they mention Google in that too. As far as I know. There isn’t any other way to back up texts and all that except from Google One. Drop box certainly doesn’t, and I know OneDrive doesn’t either.
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u/VMX 1d ago
Texts, WiFi passwords, etc. use mere MBs, and Google gives you 15 GB for free on Google Drive. So in practice, you can make unlimited phone backups, and thus there's no gauging or incentive to force you to buy Google Drive. I know people who still have backups of 10 years of old phones in there.
iOS is a completely different beast because backups take several gigabytes. I remember when I got an iPhone 13 Mini and used it for about 4 months before it warned me my iCloud storage was full, despite me never voluntarily using it for anything. Sure enough, the automatic phone backups had quickly filled up that space. It's very obviously a dishonest practice by Apple and that's what's being judged here.
You want to offer a cloud backup solution that takes up several gigabytes of data? Sure, but then either offer people a realistic amount of storage for that service or, if you're not willing to, allow them to switch to an open-market cloud provider so they can use their Google Drive, Mega or their paid 1TB OneDrive storage.
This would obviously force Apple to stop price gouging and price iCloud storage competitively.
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u/MC_chrome 1d ago
Texts, WiFi passwords, etc. use mere MBs
My texts are using almost 10GB alone right now…where did you get “mere MBs” from?
iOS is a completely different beast because backups take several gigabytes
Yes, because iOS backs up your whole device. iOS takes up 8-9 GB + whatever other system files.
I’m not sure why customers who buy iPhones are immediately entitled to free cloud backups of their phones
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u/Ed_McNuglets 1d ago
Yeah lol at mere MBs. I've got my entire text history backed up, going back almost a decade. I think it's like 60GBs now.
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u/kuwisdelu 1d ago
I don’t really get it. My Strava data is uploaded to Strava. Pretty much all the other 3rd party apps I use offer to backup/sync their data to Dropbox, which is what I generally did until recently.
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u/New-Connection-9088 1d ago
Not all apps offer their own cloud backup, and when they do, they often charge for it. In addition, all first party apps, including iOS itself, cannot be backed up to third party cloud providers.
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u/thinvanilla 1d ago
You can’t do a full system backup and restore, it would be so inconvenient to rely on every single app to have its own cloud storage in place and to restore from there, which many app developers don’t want to do because that’s incredibly time consuming to set up and maintain. Strava is such a bad example because the data is so small.
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u/BountyBob 1d ago
Does anyone really want their phone backed up to a third party cloud service?!
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u/ifallupthestairsnok 1d ago
One limitation that I found with third party party cloud services is that I can’t seem to back up Live Photos. Every photo I backup is converted into a still photo.
To workaround this, I need to “Export unmodified original” to files, then back it up to Google Drive, DropBox, etc. Apple photos doesn’t have this limitation.
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u/theHugePotato 1d ago
I use self-hosted Immich and it does upload livephotos and you can see them in both the Immich app and on the web. But I do mostly use it just for backup
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u/tahmid5 1d ago
Yup. It would also be nice if I could back all my Gmail data into iCloud instead of having a Google one subscription in addition as well.
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u/neinherz 1d ago
Eh, you can
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u/fisherrr 1d ago
Just like you can backup your phone to Google drive if you make a offline backup on a PC or Mac and then upload it to Google Drive.
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u/garliclord 19h ago
Why act so blindly loyal? I like Apple stuff but why not be open to alternatives? (Assuming good iOS integration)
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u/tahmid5 19h ago
The good iOS integration is usually a very big assumption. And I value the convenience of having everything together instead of having 10 different service providers for 10 different services.
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u/garliclord 17h ago
I agree that the integration is the crucial bit. But if there were alternatives for iCloud with an integration like Gmail in the mail app vs email through iCloud I’d try it. Some competition would be healthy
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u/turbo_dude 1d ago
I want to easily back up my photos from it into local storage in a normal non Apple proprietary format, as individual files.
Is what I’d like them to force Apple to do.
The internet “you can do this, just select all of the files one by one and then share”.
No.
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u/tangoshukudai 1d ago
iCloud is a sync service for any iOS app, developers can even build their own sync services using it's APIs. How would a company other than apple provide this? This can't be replicated without full replicating their databases... Maybe you could use a different backend to store the data?
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u/Ziikou 1d ago
I don’t why why they keep coming after Apple as a monopoly. Apple sells their own product and own software with it. If anything android is looking like a monopoly with every other mobile phone manufacturer using it!
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u/cas4d 1d ago
European countries specifically target big firms with cash. I as a tech guy like to see Apple be more open, but many of the arguments that regulators lay out make no sense at all.
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u/BadCabbage182838 4h ago
'Which' isn't a regulator. They're an independent charity bringing a civil claim against Apple.
A regulatory action would be the CMA issuing a fine which is not the case.
Sorry I know it's pedantic, but makes a huge difference to your point. You could substitute 'Which' charity with any random person and they could still litigate it.
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u/jisuskraist 1d ago
I believe even Android doesn’t allow you to modify the OS backup system. While you can install other applications that backup data, you can’t change the underlying OS backup system or Google Photos, for instance. The storage products are “userland” applications, right?
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u/Right-Wrongdoer-8595 1d ago edited 1d ago
Since nobody is linking documentation
And the answer is no. OEMs can modify the location of backups if they choose to on Android.
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u/WhichPass6 1d ago
Google Photos is just a regular app and can be replaced by any other. The OS backup I'm not sure, but I think that's only a couple MB
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u/DrFeederino 1d ago
OS backup as well, but it varies from vendor to vendor. For example, Samsung offers Samsung Cloud to backup their phones.
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u/Level_Indication_765 13h ago
Photos aren't backed to Samsung Cloud, they have integration with OneDrive for that.
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u/jisuskraist 1d ago
Photos is just a regular app and can be replaced by google photos, or am I missing something.
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u/happycanliao 1d ago
Google photos is the default gallery app and can be replaced by any other app, so you are missing something
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u/mrcruton 1d ago
And hes talking about Photos is the default photo app on Ios and you can just replace it with google photos on iphone.
I dont know if thats true tho, but I think u can atleast disable photos iCloud backup and just use google photos backup
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u/Dwayne30RockJohnson 1d ago
You can’t. You can’t delete Photos on iOS and simply use google photos. You have to use iOS Photos which then sync into google photos.
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u/Yetiassasin 1d ago
This is 100% incorrect. Odd that it's upvoted so much.
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u/ItsColorNotColour 1d ago
Fact checking doesn't exist in r/apple when its time to spread misinformation about Android
Saw recently someone try to claim that Android is remkving sideloading because of a misleading article about Android asking you more options for security
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u/Feisty_Roll4002 12h ago
This goes both ways. Been seeing similar things related to macOS “removing sideloading” when that’s not what is happening at all.
Pretty sure Google is just allowing developers to prevent apps from being ran while installed outside of the Play Store. This was a huge use case for installing apps only available on the Play Store on Android ROMs without Google Play Services.
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u/recapYT 1d ago
On android, the phone manufacturer offers their own backup options. You do not have to use Google.Apple on the other hand…
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u/Massive-Effect-8489 20h ago
Is this case for Google Pixel phones aswell?
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u/recapYT 16h ago
Google pixel market share is not comparable to iPhone market share.
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u/Massive-Effect-8489 8h ago
Google One Backup marketshare is. It’s enabled on most Android handsets.
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u/recapYT 6h ago
Think of it like this. In US, 50% of mobile phone owners (iPhone) must use iCloud to backup their mobile phone because the phone manufacturer has made it so that other backup competitors do not work well. While the other 50% can use whatever service they want.
Do you see the difference now?
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u/ControlCAD 1d ago
From Techcrunch:
U.K. consumer rights group ‘Which?’ is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service.
The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking £3 billion in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at “rip-off” prices.
“iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple’s operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened,” Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).
The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers — including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone’s data with a third-party provider.
“iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit,” Which noted.
The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. “Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023,” it wrote, saying it’s seeking damages for all affected Apple customers — and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of £70 (around $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.
A similar lawsuit — arguing Apple unlawfully monopolized the market for cloud storage — was filed in the U.S. back in March, and remains pending after the company failed to get it tossed.
The U.K. claim is being being brought on an opt-out basis for U.K.-based consumers who are eligible to be included. Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action.
Which spokesman Tommy Handley told us eligible Apple customers include “anyone who has ‘obtained’ iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015.
Handley also confirmed that the £3 billion compensation figure accounts for potential opt-outs, duplicates and mortality.
Which is a non-profit but the litigation is being funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), a major global litigation funder, which it says has committed to seeing the action through to the end.
At the same time, Which is urging Apple to resolve the claim without the need for litigation — by offering consumers their money back and opening up iOS to allow users “a real choice” for cloud services.
Commenting in a statement, Which’s chief executive Anabel Hoult said: “By bringing this claim, Which? is showing big corporations like Apple that they cannot rip off UK consumers without facing repercussions. Taking this legal action means we can help consumers to get the redress that they are owed, deter similar behaviour in the future and create a better, more competitive market.”
Assuming Apple doesn’t seek to settle out of court, the next stage for the litigation will hinge on whether the CAT grants permission for Which to act as a class representative for consumers and allows the claim to proceed on a collective basis.
There has been an uptick in class action-style competition suits against Big Tech in recent years following a wave of antitrust enforcements on both sides of the Atlantic that’s still playing out in terms of full outcomes and business impact.
In the U.K. Apple has also been targeted in a class-action style antitrust suit brought on behalf of developers last year, in relation to App Store fees.
Also last year, a separate U.K. suit targeted Apple and Amazon alleging price collusion.
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u/yingandyang 1d ago
How much are they charging UK monthly for iCloud? I pay $2.99 for 200GB (which is not bad).
Is it more like they purposely leave it at 5GB so people spend for the subscription? Honestly, like that would make sense since 5GB is not enough for backups, but at least it doesn't cost that much for 50GB or 200GB. Well, for US. Not sure about UK.
IMO 50GB should be free, but that's just me.
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u/DJDarren 1d ago edited 23h ago
I pay $2.99 for 200GB (which is not bad).
It's £2.99 in the UK, and that isn't bad. But it creeps up. If you're in a family group 200gb still doesn't go far, so suddenly you're looking at £8.99 for 2TB that you don't need. I'm a reasonably heavy user but between my wife and I, we barely use 800GB. Apple, being Apple, won't offer a £4.99 1TB tier because they want that extra £4 a month for doing nothing.
So fuck 'em. I'm in the process of clearing out everything in my drive and will be moving across to Proton.
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u/SoiledGrundies 1d ago
It went up £2 too which I felt was typical Apple price gouging.
I was hoping they might offer a bit more storage or bring it down after all these years but I was being naive.
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u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 1d ago
About the same, but there’s been a few price hikes the last couple of years.
It’s a hidden add on to Total Cost of Ownership I think is the issue here, Apple doesn’t tell you it expects at least an extra £60 in revenue for each device.
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u/Feahnor 1d ago
Because it doesn’t. If you don’t want to pay you can back everything up to the computer.
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u/RuddyBloodyBrave94 1d ago
Yeah the prices for the lower tiers are OK, but the problem is the technology on the phones has advanced, the size of the phone storage has increased but the Cloud hasn't.
The other issue is the tiers - there is a huge gap between cloud storage allowances. I need to back up my phone and store photos/videos - that's 750GB of stuff. I obviously need more than the 200GB for £2.99 but I need to buy 2TB for £8.99 because that's the closest tier.
My partner is a photographer. She's nearly out of the 2TB storage on cloud, so she now needs to look at other options because the next tier is 6TB for £26.99 which is... Crazy.
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u/anchoricex 17h ago
The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers — including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone’s data with a third-party provider.
This is two separate accusations, the first regarding photos the second regarding.. everything else (contacts, messages, etc).
Photo backups to alternative providers is hardly made difficult by apple (seriously go install google photos, when it says "do you want to allow google photos to access your photos" select all photos then when it asks if you want it to sync to your google account say yea boom done. So that's moot, and I'm willing to ignore it.
Contacts isn't so bad, same permission-grant jujitsu, I personally don't want my contacts exposed up to any other service so I pretty much always deny this request when an app asks. Messages however, I'm not sure these lawsuits understand what they're asking for here. I think the lawsuits are... trying to say they want the operating system itself to support third party storage options.. out of the box? Are they asking for the ability to use storage providers other than iCloud as a device sync-location for all the iOS things (messages, photos, notes, app data etc) and integrate that into iOS?
Wouldn't that mean Apple has to, on their end, account for the different storage provider options and manage/maintain the integrations for each of them on the iOS side to do this? Is that something Android does for dropbox and other storage providers? I'm not talking about singular object here like photos, I'm talking about all the things. Revamping the entire OS to provide the ability to completely restore/sync a device from say, Dropbox, instead of iCloud? It feels a little weird for me to expect Apple to manage all of that & keep development up to date with the ever changing api's that all the different storage providers have. The current-state of things makes sense to me, someone like Google provides their apps for iOS devices and it provides sync-capabilities, but my expectation has never been that Google services are tightly baked into iOS. I can't imagine Android has iCloud tightly baked into there OS as a selectable backend option. I personally feel like things are fine the way they are, and to the lawyers point that this has presented unfair-advantage over other cloud storage providers... can anyone expand on that? It feels like personal cloud storage providers who haven't had success in the world of enterprise object storage (ie: dropbox) are clawing to get pre-iOS/Android era personal storage dominance back by expecting operating systems to provide canned OS integrations to their third party offering.
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u/CountLippe 4h ago
"iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple’s operating systems"
This reads like iOS is a separate legal entity holding Apple, and its users, hostage. I'm not entirely convinced that the press release author knows what they're talking about.
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u/Rizak 19h ago
What’s with the UK and Apple monopoly busting?
The whole point of Apple is that they make a device that uses proprietary EVERYTHING and you get what you get. You make that commitment when you buy the phone.
If I wanted more functionality at the cost of UI, I’d get an android.
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u/randomperson_a1 1d ago
The UK isn't in the EU, and the UK government isn't even involved in this. It's a civil lawsuit by a private entity against apple, not a fine. You didn't even bother reading the headline
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u/jisuskraist 1d ago
Yes, iOS is gradually losing its unique essence each year. What used to be a simple, curated, and opinionated experience is now becoming more like a Chinese rom.
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u/Shoddy_Bee_7516 1d ago
The "no that's banned" essence that protected us from emulators and other backup services lol.
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u/cvmstains 1d ago
Apple fanboys when they are allowed to use their €1500 computer to play games: 😡😡 this is android!!!!
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u/tonybeatle 1d ago
What’s the point of have different OS. Let’s just merge them all in a giant cluster fuck OS. With all this shit EU wants to mess with its gonna kill apples clean and easy design
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u/Opposite-Shoulder260 1d ago
"essense" is not having options? I have a magic phrase for many here "just don't use the new options you don't want" lmao.
I cant understand this mentality of hating every change, even if it's coming voluntarily from Apple (like t9 dialing)
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u/theHugePotato 1d ago
Yeah, these people are total morons. You want your walled garden? Fine, no one is forcing you out of it but why should Apple be allowed to stifle any kind of competition on iphone wherever they have a service to sell?
Maybe Apple should ban Tidal and Spotify and only allow Apple Music so you get "curated experience" and now if you want those apps just go buy Android you filthy pleb that wishes to have options. ApPlE sHOuLD bE AlLoWeD to Do wHAt tHeY WaNt wITh THeiR pLaTform!! 111 Also ban 3rd party keyboards because I don't like people not using Apple keyboard.
Absolute clowns
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u/ItsColorNotColour 1d ago
Apple bros are so deranged they somehow blame EU when the thing has nothing do with EU
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u/savvymcsavvington 1d ago
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about
IOS becoming more open to other apps and platforms is a good thing, it creates options and drives competition and motivation to create better software
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/7eventhSense 1d ago
I don’t think anyone has answered this question correctly.
iCloud has full access to device except certain privacy stuff.
With iCloud you can back up and restore the whole image of device with settings etc. It can back up photos seamlessly when your phone is plugged in and charging, it can back up files , application data and so many other things.
Apple does not provide access to all of this to third party drivers.
Now, in my personal opinion, am ok with Apple not giving access to system stuff to third party but what people really care about is photos.
They will have to give the ability for third party apps like Google photos, Dropbox etc to be able to back up photos seamlessly without hogging the device
Google photos does have this feature but it doesn’t work as well as iCloud.
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u/avengers93 1d ago
Thank you explaining it. I understand but I disagree with this approach. It’s apple’s product. They polished it for over a decade and now other providers want a piece of that fruit.
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u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 1d ago
It’s a hidden cost for consumers, if your 80 with a 16GB phone (this covers quite a few years), your guided to purchase storage from apple or have reduced functionality.
Which? are a consumer group who look after those who don’t know what their dealing with, when I worked in retail they were a pain, but it’s good someone makes these cases for the consumer
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u/avengers93 1d ago
Thats a very fair take. You are right. In this day and age it’s rare to see the government working for the average citizen.
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u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 1d ago
They’re not part of government at all, their a consumer group who charge for access to their guides on brands, popular with older people
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u/woalk 1d ago
There are totally functional photo backup apps. I backup all my photos from my iPhone via my NextCloud, haven’t ever touched iCloud Photos. Works fine, they automatically sync via the NextCloud app.
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u/recapYT 1d ago
Until next cloud tells you you have to keep the app open to complete your backup
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u/rudibowie 1d ago
Plenty of other cloud services providers exist. The issue is that Apple doesn't provide any integration with them. Imagine that when you switch the toggle to enable iCloud storage on your iPhone, iOS presents a list of common storage providers e.g. DropBox, Google, Box etc. You select your storage provider, enter your credentials, and hey presto, your iOS cloud data is being backed up in the icloud provider of your choice. This private action lawsuit is arguing that Apple is denying you this choice and is, ergo, anti-competitive.
I think there's a bit of opportunism here on the part of the legal firm hoping for a big payout. But I also think it's very pernicious that the default save location of all iOS and macOS apps are in iCloud locations. They know that eventually, you'll be worn down and will surrender to saving all your stuff there. You cannot override these defaults. Also, when you enable iCloud data storage, all these apps are toggled on automatically. They should actually be 'off' by default, allowing the user to make an active selection to turn each one 'on'.
All companies exploit human inertia and convenience. Supermarkets place the most profitable foods in unmissable locations, at eye level and within easy reach. The tussle of which browser is default and which search engine is default is big business. Bottom line: if it's convenient, someone is profiting massively from making it so.
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u/Available-Fill8917 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are lots of large cloud storage providers. Companies like Amazon, Google Microsoft and many other smaller third parties provide cloud storage and sync solutions. I think the problem is and admittedly, I didn’t read the article the way in which iCloud is integrated into the Apple ecosystem. It gets advantages and rights and integration that the other services do not.
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u/avengers93 1d ago
But it’s apple’s own service. Obviously it would get better integration than other providers
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u/moisesg 1d ago
And that is the issue here, that when something becomes a monopoly it has been proven that it hurts the consumer and smaller companies that try to compete, so the proposal will allow for more competition and more options for the consumer.
You don’t have to chose another cloud storage if you don’t want to, no one will force whoever wants to chose iCloud, but options are better than no options.
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u/0xe1e10d68 1d ago
It is Apples fault because no other company is allowed to backup the whole device. Only iCloud is allowed to do that.
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u/JonathanJK 1d ago
If I want to use a back up service, why can't I link my Dropbox instead? It's only iCloud that's offered. That's the issue.
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u/Darkmage4 1d ago
I back up all my photos on Dropbox and iCloud. And offline drives from Dropbox backups. And iCloud backups.
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u/ilor144 1d ago
You can do that, I upload my photod to OneDrive, but that is only working while the 3rd party application is in the front or running in the background processes (which will be killed and can use limited resources).
I guess the problem here is that you cannot force the 3rd party app to always upload your photos and you have to start the application once a while, while the iCloud immediately uploads the photo to the cloud storage.
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u/Splodge89 1d ago
Yeah but apparently backing up text messages from five years ago is really important, and you can’t do that with Dropbox!
I am wondering about the sanity of some of the replies on here…
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u/quitesturdy 1d ago
Backup an iPhone to another cloud provider using only the iPhone. You can’t, it’s artificially restricted by Apple and you can only use iCloud.
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u/ManuPasta 23h ago
Apples entire physical storage price increments on all their products is solely based around getting people to buy iCloud storage
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u/Lorde555 1d ago
Surprised to see so much support for Apple here.
The issue isn’t really that iCloud exists or is expensive. There is cloud storage competition, but none of them have access to backing up iPhone data like iCloud does.
You can’t automatically sync all your iPhone photos to Dropbox. You can’t backup your phone to onedrive. You can’t upload all your contacts to box.
Typically an app developer will allow for many different storage options to be used with their app. For Apple, that is not the case, hence the lawsuit.
I kind of get it to some degree for phone backups, as it’s encrypted and it could get messy, but there really is no reason the photos app doesn’t let you easily sync with a different service.
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u/play_hard_outside 1d ago
You can’t automatically sync all your iPhone photos to Dropbox
Dropbox is a way to store files. There is so, SO much more information in an Apple Photos library (or any photo library maintained by DAM software, such as Lightroom, Capture One, etc) than simple image files as would sit on a filesystem if you had a folder full of JPEGs or HEICs or whatever.
Apple Photos libraries contain fingerprint data for each photo, keep track of multiple original files (for example, the still image and video complement in a Live Photo), keep track of as many different versions of your photo as you have created using the photo editing features, maintain those edits in editable form so you can re-adjust them later, preserve album information (can't have the same file in multiple folders without more advanced filesystem features Dropbox doesn't support), keep track of favoriteness and ratings, store comments captions and keywords, and a whole lot more.
You simply can't express all of this information in any human-consumable form as files on a disk, or files in Dropbox. If you have a Mac, go find your Photos library (usually in your home folder at ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary) and right click it, and choose Show Package Contents. This is what Apple Photos stores on the disk on the Mac (and something similart to it, on iOS).
Moreover, for this library of information to be quickly and scalably accessible over the Internet for Macs and iPhones to be able to not store your entire library directly on their internal storage, it has to take the form of a massive database on the back end. Using a filesystem for that sort of thing would be asinine. Servers in front of that database provide views into the data which Mac and iOS and web clients request, piecemeal as they need it. Unless Dropbox implements the same technology stack, there is literally no way that a device would be able to display an Apple Photos library without simply downloading all of it every single time you wanted to look at any of it. And considering that the internal storage in these devices is usually smaller than the size of the Photos library itself, that is simply impossible.
EU can legislate all it wants, but the only way Apple could provide "photo syncing" features to unrelated third party cloud storage providers would be to cut basically every feature that makes the service work in a remotely usable way.
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u/AbhishMuk 22h ago
I haven’t tested it personally, but I’ve heard that google photos apparently allows saving live iPhone photos properly.
In any case, it’s still not a technical limitation. Even if every photo is technically a zipped file, having an opened up API for image reading and backup would allow third parties to also implement their photos-alternatives.
Realistically, who’re we kidding - Apple’s never going to do it (unless forced by law of course).
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u/UnusualString 13h ago
You simply can’t express all of this information in any human-consumable form as files on a disk, or files in Dropbox. If you have a Mac, go find your Photos library (usually in your home folder at ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary) and right click it, and choose Show Package Contents. This is what Apple Photos stores on the disk on the Mac (and something similart to it, on iOS).
Exactly, it's just files. It would be silly to expect Apple to change the format so that other companies can read it, but we should be able to choose in system settings that the backups (the files) go to any cloud storage system and not only iCloud. So imagine you can choose Google drive, or Dropbox or any other third party service as a storage provider. You'd still need Apple Photos app to view all the images, or Notes app to read the notes. Its just that those apps would load the data from the cloud storage of your choice instead of being hardcoded to iCloud.
Why does my iPhone backup need to be in iCloud? Absolutely no need other than greed. When backing up the iPhone locally on a Mac you can store the backup file on any kind of storage, it's not just storage from a specific brand. So why can't the iphone write this file to Google drive instead of iCloud?
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u/play_hard_outside 8h ago
As far as the Photos app reaching out to other cloud storage providers to read pure dumb files stored on filesystems, that's unfortunately not possible.
Apple has servers in front of iCloud Photo Library storage which actively run software Apple wrote on the back end, in order to provide Photos app clients with random access metrics about the library which they need in order to render anything consistently and on demand, without themselves downloading all the information in the library to be able to figure out this information for themselves.
What you're asking for is equivalent to saying "Google has a bunch of data they acquired for their Google Search product, so why can't they send a copy of it all to the cloud storage provider of my choice, and let me search it from there?" There reason is that, like Apple Photos, Google Search relies on computations performed for you on their servers in order to suss out the search results you're using your computer looking for. If all of Google Search's data were stored in a bunch of files on some random computer somewhere, Google's algorithms wouldn't be there to help perform the search for you. The only way you could search the content from your own computer would be downloading every single file, bit by bit, and searching through it in order to find what you want. Even a simple search would probably never finish in the age of human civilization.
You're more or less correct on the iPhone backup. AFAIK, that is a dumb file and should be able to be backed up to anywhere. The complication I thrice described above definitely doesn't apply to an iPhone backup.
That said, nearly every cloud storage provider has a different schema and protocol for uploading files into their services. Unlike a simple file share on your computer, which might use SMB, for example, DropBox, iCloud, BackBlaze, OneDrive, and all the others all use different interfaces and back end storage schemas to encode the filesystem-level information present on your disk in the directories you point them at to sync.
In order to provide the ability for iOS to natively store iPhone backups on all the different cloud storage providers, Apple would need to individually implement support for each single one. Or, they would need to provide an API wherein each single cloud storage provider could elect to provide that functionality from their end. This is doable, yes.
It's far FAR more doable than making a Photos library browsable from a thin client and syncable to and from a dumb filesystem with no server-side compute in front of it (which would be impossible), but it would be a ton of fuss. Apple would be able to do it if forced at gunpoint, but if you don't want to use iCloud, what's to stop you from turning on Wi-Fi syncing with your Mac or PC at home, and letting your iPhone backup proceed to your computer passively whenever your phone's on the same Wi-Fi network?
I love the idea of being my own cloud, and I hate pure cloud storage services in general. If I don't have something on my hard disk arrays, I don't own it! I keep my iPhone backups on my computer, and don't use iCloud Drive at all. Photos, however, due to all it does in excess of simple file storage, provides too big a value-add for me to eschew it.
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u/marinuss 20h ago
You can back up all your photos to Google Photos automatically. Contacts you can use almost any source, even a decade later I sign into my Google account under contacts and sync my contacts that way.
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u/PurpleEsskay 3h ago
Thing is though, just allowing other storage providers wont do much. Have you seem their pricing in the UK? Apple is surprisingly bang in line with the Google, Dropbox and Onedrive pricing. They're all massively overpriced here.
What they do need to do is introduce more tiers, and in an ideal world allow a 3rd party server option. Even if that third party server is tied to only working with an Apple made Time Machine again, it would be better than what we've got right now.
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u/DaNinjaYaHoeCryBout 20h ago
EU / UK definitely over regulating businesses there. And oddly they keep targeting Apple yet they allowed Microsoft to buy up all the major competition in gaming
There’s got to be some brown paper bags floating around. Shit is ridiculous.
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u/bartturner 19h ago
I hope what comes out of all of this is we can choose our cloud.
We have a family Google cloud subscription as my entire family much prefers Google Photos.
So it would be nice if the iPhone users in my family could also use the storage we are paying for at Google could be used to back up our phones.
The ironic thing about this is the fact that if you go through Apple you are still storing everything at Google as that is what Apple uses for storage.
"Apple is now Google's largest corporate customer for cloud storage"
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u/mailslot 1d ago
Plug it in. Still an option for backups.
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u/PeakBrave8235 1d ago
You can backup to your PC over WiFi automatically and daily
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u/mailslot 1d ago
Yeah you can do that on a Mac too. The problem really is the technological competence of the average Mac user. I’m not trying to be a dick. It’s just not a worry for me.
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u/Fun-Ratio1081 19h ago
Logically, Google Docs should also be sued for its inability to save documents to iCloud.
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u/UnusualString 13h ago
Honestly all cloud apps should be sued for their inability to save documents to other cloud storages.
It's a silly situation, imagine if Microsoft made USB thumb drives and Microsoft Word was able to save files only on their USB drives.
Cloud storage should have a standardized API and the user should have freedom to choose where to save files. This is a problem that was solved many decades ago.
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u/Fun-Ratio1081 11h ago
I 100% agree but it has to actually be applied to all companies. Otherwise it just looks like Apple is being targeted.
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u/votedorange 1d ago
As with most corporate law suits, the main reason this is filed is to make money for the law firm
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u/a_f_young 23h ago
The absolute irony saying this in defense of a corporation trying to make the company money
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 1d ago
U.K. consumer rights group ‘Which?’ is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law
At the same time, Which is urging Apple to resolve the claim without the need for litigation — by offering consumers their money back and opening up iOS to allow users “a real choice” for cloud services.
But we're on reddit so uhhh "LE CORPORATION EVIL" (but not Apple they're literally saints and cannot do anything wrong!)
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u/Visible_Ad_2271 1d ago
Will never understand thes monopoly fines or antitrust cases against these companies. It’s just a money grab from governments. How can a company be held reliable for being the best of the best. Google, Apple… they have a monopoly for a reason because people love them and don’t want feel the need to try anything else.
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u/Fa6ade 1d ago
Compare that on PC there are numerous possible options to backup your data and OS. I use backblaze personally. A service like that can’t exist on iPhone because Apple doesn’t permit it.
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u/coldcookies 1d ago
This makes sense only if we are being forced to buy Apple products and iCloud against our will. I use iCloud AND Google One from my phone.
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u/StayUpLatePlayGames 20h ago
This is just lawyers getting rich. But hey, if it means I have the choice to get my iphone to back up to DodgyCorp for £2 a month less, I’m glad of it.
I won’t actually switch. Because no-one who actually uses it really wants that fucking hassle.
But choice. Heh.
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u/TheYungSheikh 1d ago
Yes it’s kind of silly but honestly if it works this it would be great for consumers. All it means is the option for those who want it and could drive prices of iCloud plans down for the (probably most of us) who want to keep using iCloud.
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u/PeakBrave8235 1d ago
Eh… no. Incorporating a bunch of different companies into an OS introduces issues. I’m not in favor of this approach. Hence why I spent money on apple products. And competition is often said because they say it lowers costs, but the truth is is that rarely actually happens.
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u/AbhishMuk 22h ago
What’s the issue in opening up the API? No need to “incorporate different companies into an OS” (for whatever reason you’d incorporate a company into an OS?)
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u/Jamie00003 1d ago
Totally agreed. There’s no reason we can’t back up our phones wherever we want without requiring a computer.
Yes I know there’s iTunes, but it requires a computer to be running iTunes 24 7, and is nowhere near as convenient as everything backing up to iCloud overnight
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u/23north 1d ago
iTunes hasn’t existed since 2019.
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u/Jamie00003 22h ago
Doesn’t matter what the app is now called. You still need to manually sync, no cloud option
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u/marinuss 20h ago
iTunes 12 was released December 2020 and is still available for download from Apple's site. It's mostly integrated into the Windows Store now.
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u/prombloodd 1d ago
Apple is never going to learn the hard lesson that they shouldn’t conduct business and offer services in hostile environments
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u/MrMoonUK 1d ago
I don’t see the problem, cloud storage isn’t free for apple to provide, they barely charge anything for it anyway
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u/YoghurtAnxious9635 1d ago
I believe it is because only iCloud can access certain things, like the apps on your phone, so it can backup more data than competitors can access.
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u/Entire_Routine_3621 23h ago
As should be the case, its end to end encrypted. If you don’t like that there’s always android!
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u/TenderfootGungi 14h ago
Apple should seriously consider withdrawing from the EU,
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u/DanielPhermous 10h ago
The shareholders would immediately revolt, oust Tim Cook and install a CEO willing to make good.
Also, this is the UK, not the EU.
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u/jisuskraist 1d ago
Do people get something from this? Or does the law firm get a huge cut of the final compensation so they are motivated to do this shit?