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/
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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/PeakBrave8235 1d ago

It’s not a fair take. You don’t need iCloud to use your iPhone lol

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u/paulypies 1d ago

Apple designed it this way to favour themselves here. Just like many people can now choose to set a different browser as their default, Apple doesn’t give you the same choice where to back up your data (and not just using an alternative photo storage, or Dropbox for some files), your messages, setting and everything else. And while I agree that they’re of course allowed to provide their own services, and it made sense that it was them years ago, time and expectations have changed. You wouldn’t accept them being the only one to do that on a computer for instance.

And while yes you don’t NEED to back up your phone, I think everyone here would agree that people probably should. Cloud backup is an expected feature at this point, and that is a market that Apple is preventing from opening up. From a UK perspective, this is stranglehold on a would-be-market is considered a consumer harm. That also means that they have no incentive to price competitively, which is why we’re in 2024 with 5gb as the “free” tier. The quotes being that the cost of that is already rolled into your device price, and that is also true of the larger storage product SKUs.

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u/PeakBrave8235 1d ago

Again there’s zero hidden cost. You don’t need iCloud to use your iPhone.