Last night I listened to yet another podcast in which complaints were being made about the cost of iCloud. This has been going on for years now.

But here’s the thing, and this is anecdotal. When my granny needed to upgrade her iCloud storage to back-up her iPad I suggested the 99 cent tier. She shrugged and said sure. When my parents started getting the message I suggested the same tier. They shrugged and said sure. Everyone in my family is paying for it and I’ve never heard one of them complain. Even the $9.99 plan, for 2 TB which can be shared within a family is a good deal if 4 to 5 people are using it. For them it’s just a cost of using/maintaining the devices.

I’ve been using the $2.99 plan for the past year. I dropped my $10/month DropBox and am saving money. Funny thing, I never hear people complain about the cost of DropBox. Many of the nerds that complain the loudest about the lack of more free iCloud storage are the same people yelling from the rooftops that everyone should happily support app subscriptions. Now, I get that there is a difference between a small app developer and Apple. But a service is a service. Once we start down the road of demanding that a company give us this or that because we purchased their product, well, that’s a slippery slope. Heck, I’d like to demand free music every month too. They owe it to me. And let’s have them throw in a free movie every month too. They can afford it.

Enough. If I can afford a $400 or $600 or $1,000 iOS device that also requires fees for monthly internet and apps to be useful, I can also afford a monthly .99 or 2.99 a month for added iCloud.

When we buy our wash machines we know that we also have to buy laundry soap and we don’t expect a certain amount of that to come with it. When we buy cars we know that we’ll need to get oil changes and buy gas. Even a bicycles require new tubes and the occasional tune-up. Years ago I worked at a bike shop and we provided a free 30 day tune-up to tighten the chain and check everything out on new bike purchases. But if someone came in a year later for a tune-up they paid for it. As I recall a basic tune-up was in the $60 range. If they needed a new tube they paid for it to be installed. They didn’t get to demand that service for free.

Do I need to go on with the examples?

I don’t know why we now have this trend in which people feel the need to incessantly complain. Am I the only one that finds it tedious? I’m not suggesting Apple or any company is above criticism. It just seems to have become the constant hum. It’s not even a background hum. The snark is front and center with most Apple oriented podcasts and blogs. Seems to me we have issues far greater in our world than whether or not Apple is charging my granny .99 a month to back-up her iPad.