<story><title>Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript</title><url>https://andykong.org/blog/icloudconfusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Dalewyn</author><text>&amp;gt;So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem,&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;p&gt;I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than a Franklin a year, and most people won&amp;#x27;t even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a Jackson a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying a Washington per month to Apple for 50GB of iCloud.&lt;p&gt;The amount of money I would save from managing photos myself locally isn&amp;#x27;t worth the time spent nor the money spent on the hardware.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;For the downvoters, consider this: If I were to manage all this myself, I would need at least three storage mediums with one being a different form factor to satisfy the 3-2-1 backup scheme. I would also need to procure arrangements for that third backup copy in the 3-2-1 scheme. And I would need to spend time managing it all.&lt;p&gt;That is going to cost me more than a Franklin per year. Life is short, my time is precious, and my money is ultimately expendable.</text></item><item><author>frostix</author><text>Differential backups or any sort of versioning seemed like one of the most obvious culprits (that and or total redundant storage to preserve the file) but the issue with all of this is it’s entirely opaque.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you’re increasingly tethered to some service for your storage that you pay for periodically based on total storage yet you have little-to-no information how to best optimize that storage if you want to operate in a fixed cost bracket or lower storage&amp;#x2F;cost ratio. So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem, especially now that devices are increasingly pushing everything, including storage, as a subscription service to meet my actual functional needs (that realistically could be met by local storage options if manufacturers didn’t have a vested interest in pushing me towards service based storage solutions)?&lt;p&gt;The modern business strategy in technology is simply hiding behind complexity. The cost is too complex for you to understand, it gives too much information away about our internals to competitors, and so on. Yet somehow these metrics are derived to assure the business is operating above cost because when the rubber meets the road it must be done, yet when the consumer wants to understand it’s suddenly too complex. The problem is that tech in many cases is growing to scales that really is too complex and business managers know this, so it’s often a valid excuse to hide behind. Conveniently that’s where they focus on investment and padding margins though.</text></item><item><author>mft_</author><text>Okay, so it could be a bug, but it is possible that iCloud is secretly storing more than one version of the file in some cases?  (After all, Apple does similar things with other media files.)&lt;p&gt;The example given at the end is interesting:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; So iCloud says the video is 128MB, I download it and the video is actually 48MB, and my free storage increases by ~170MB when I deleted it. Interesting!&lt;p&gt;This suggests that iCloud isn&amp;#x27;t simply misrepresenting the size of the example file, as then you&amp;#x27;d expect that deleting the 128MB file would clear ~128MB of iCloud space.  Instead, the deletion clears &lt;i&gt;roughly&lt;/i&gt; the space it reports (128MB) &lt;i&gt;plus&lt;/i&gt; the space of the downloaded version (48MB): 128MB + 48MB = 176 MB - which might be close enough, allowing for rounding errors, as iCloud reports the free space (from the article&amp;#x27;s example) to the nearest 10 MB.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Terretta</author><text>Presidents on US currency:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - $100,000: Wilson
  - $1,000: Cleveland
  - $500: McKinley
  - $100: Franklin*
  - $50: Grant
  - $20: Jackson
  - $10: Hamilton*
  - $5: Lincoln
  - $2: Jefferson
  - $1: Washington
  
  * not a president
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than $100 a year, and most people won&amp;#x27;t even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a $20 a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying $1 per month to Apple for 50GB of iCloud.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;While we&amp;#x27;re at it, iCloud+ offers these monthly storage plans now:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  United States:
  50GB: $1
  200GB: $3
  2TB: $10
  6TB: $30
  12TB: $60
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
See everywhere in the world here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;HT201238&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;HT201238&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript</title><url>https://andykong.org/blog/icloudconfusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Dalewyn</author><text>&amp;gt;So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem,&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;p&gt;I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than a Franklin a year, and most people won&amp;#x27;t even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a Jackson a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying a Washington per month to Apple for 50GB of iCloud.&lt;p&gt;The amount of money I would save from managing photos myself locally isn&amp;#x27;t worth the time spent nor the money spent on the hardware.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;For the downvoters, consider this: If I were to manage all this myself, I would need at least three storage mediums with one being a different form factor to satisfy the 3-2-1 backup scheme. I would also need to procure arrangements for that third backup copy in the 3-2-1 scheme. And I would need to spend time managing it all.&lt;p&gt;That is going to cost me more than a Franklin per year. Life is short, my time is precious, and my money is ultimately expendable.</text></item><item><author>frostix</author><text>Differential backups or any sort of versioning seemed like one of the most obvious culprits (that and or total redundant storage to preserve the file) but the issue with all of this is it’s entirely opaque.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you’re increasingly tethered to some service for your storage that you pay for periodically based on total storage yet you have little-to-no information how to best optimize that storage if you want to operate in a fixed cost bracket or lower storage&amp;#x2F;cost ratio. So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem, especially now that devices are increasingly pushing everything, including storage, as a subscription service to meet my actual functional needs (that realistically could be met by local storage options if manufacturers didn’t have a vested interest in pushing me towards service based storage solutions)?&lt;p&gt;The modern business strategy in technology is simply hiding behind complexity. The cost is too complex for you to understand, it gives too much information away about our internals to competitors, and so on. Yet somehow these metrics are derived to assure the business is operating above cost because when the rubber meets the road it must be done, yet when the consumer wants to understand it’s suddenly too complex. The problem is that tech in many cases is growing to scales that really is too complex and business managers know this, so it’s often a valid excuse to hide behind. Conveniently that’s where they focus on investment and padding margins though.</text></item><item><author>mft_</author><text>Okay, so it could be a bug, but it is possible that iCloud is secretly storing more than one version of the file in some cases?  (After all, Apple does similar things with other media files.)&lt;p&gt;The example given at the end is interesting:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; So iCloud says the video is 128MB, I download it and the video is actually 48MB, and my free storage increases by ~170MB when I deleted it. Interesting!&lt;p&gt;This suggests that iCloud isn&amp;#x27;t simply misrepresenting the size of the example file, as then you&amp;#x27;d expect that deleting the 128MB file would clear ~128MB of iCloud space.  Instead, the deletion clears &lt;i&gt;roughly&lt;/i&gt; the space it reports (128MB) &lt;i&gt;plus&lt;/i&gt; the space of the downloaded version (48MB): 128MB + 48MB = 176 MB - which might be close enough, allowing for rounding errors, as iCloud reports the free space (from the article&amp;#x27;s example) to the nearest 10 MB.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ebiester</author><text>Now, consider a world where you are making $42,000 a year. That&amp;#x27;s 20 dollars an hour and a very common wage. How do they handle the same when there are so many competing Franklins for them?</text></comment>