Thank you for the kind and humbling comment. 
Google’s AI claims that one billion GB of middle tier AWS storage would cost $12,500,000/month
so 45GB * 1.5 Billion phones should cost about $837,000,000/month.
To quote the apocryphal comment of the late Senator Everett Dirksen: “A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
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Apple would get a massive discount on that figure due to volume. It’s pretty easy if you speak to the right people and have a certain volume of AWS spend to get significant savings.
And we’re assuming all would use it.
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As for Cloud Storage. It feels like we’re now in the era where the intermediate and above computing users understand that the Cloud storage is just storing your data on another company’s hard drives. There are umpteen ways of sharing files. Steve Jobs, IMO, was correct when he told Dropbox founders their company was a “feature and not a product”. Not even Apple has been able to really differentiate their cloud storage offering.
Where Apple has become more Microsoftian is in the overt ways they are “digging for dollars”. Apple formerly was a company who exuded this air of “It’s expensive because of it’s exquisite design” it was harder to see the money money mechanisms turn. When Jobs returned he amplified this to new levels. You just had to have that new Bondi Blue iMac followed by the insatiable lust for amassing an iPod collection and having your music everywhere.
Jobs passed and Tim Cook continued to insist that what made Apple great was “in our DNA” which I always doubted. Jobs was no angel but he could sell a vision once he was onboard with it. To witness Tim Cook’s mastery is to look at the sheer scale of what Apple can operate at but they have taken multiple steps backwards in software design. Ads infesting the stores with promises of more coming. Apple crammed F1 down our gullets (it’s a good show but the promotion was a bit excessive) and now the soon to be infamous purple plea in the software for woo us into subscribing to the Creator Studio. Apple’s ability to create genuine insatiable desire has waned. My hope is that if Ternus is the guy he actively listens to what the Apple masses are vocalizing.
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I agree. Some people upgrade every year or two. But most iPhone users probably get a new phone when their old one dies, or is killed by a drop to concrete 
I suspect Apple’s next CEO will face the same problems as TC. Find new sources of revenue to support the stock price, and try to reduce Apple’s dependence on China.
+1
Here’s one review for those who are interested
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It’s turning into that U2 album debacle, but a new debacle gets announced every other week as “progress.” Meanwhile I now can’t trust core apps.
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I completely agree. Something has drastically but slowly changed over the Tim Cook era. I’ve been using Apple products since 2003 and I’ve never kept the same hardware this long. I suppose that’s a testament to their build quality, but there isn’t anything pulling me to upgrade. The slow introductions of ads and upsells I still don’t get either. The App Store, Apple News, etc. have ads all over the place. iWork now pesters you daily if you don’t swap to the Creator Suite version and then is riddled with upsell in that new version. I don’t mind paying them more for a premium experience, but you have to deliver on that. I do wonder if they have just diversified their product line too much again and it’s hard to unify that vision like the Jobs era did.
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Companies should always listen to their customers, but they don’t always need to act on their customer’s wishes. For many years Apple didn’t have focus groups and did what they thought was good.
Proposed designs for an Apple Phone famously revolved around evolutions of iPods and hardware keyboards. Apple blew the industry away.
Look at tablets pre iPad, they were stylus driven, had attached keyboards and had relatively poor screen and battery life. There was no “Me too” from Apple, the designed what they thought Customers needed rather than what customers wanted.
On the other side with Butterfly keyboards, Customers were complaining about hardware reliability, but I doubt it was the customer complaints which caused a change, rather than the cost of the replacements which caused a return to a reliable design.
But returning ports to the MBP could only be because of customer complaints/press feedback and rejection of the need for additional dongles.
I want Apple to forge ahead and innovate, not design by committee.
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If Apple becomes the new Microsoft, I’ll weep, rage, and return to my native Linux ecosystem.
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Because I’d have no idea how to deal with Linux, I’ll return to analog. Who knows, that could prove to be a blessing in many ways! 
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I see your phrase as the biggest problem Apple needs to tackle if it wants to keep its ecosystem. They own a big chunk of digital distribution. But what is being distributed? What are we using computers for?
I’m intrigued, but I don’t quite follow; can you elaborate a little? I’m a slow learner.
Apple is a consumer computer company. If all that users do is just consume AI slop from TikTok and whatnot, what’s the value proposition in the longer term?
I’m well aware that the MPU demographic is way beyond this doomscrolling use case, but the company cannot only depend on Power Users.
You are right, of course. To buttress your point, I noticed that when Apple added windowing capabilities to iPadOS, I started seeing complaints about not having slide-over, etc. (though it was there but was activated differently). It seemed when Apple pleased power users, it displeased “normal” users.
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I installed GNU/Linux Mint last February, it was my first time. I’m just shy a few days of 1 year. It’s been a delight to use. And, it’s very pretty to look at.
- Installing the OS on a 2012 Mac Mini from a thumb drive took 15 minutes.
- Upgrading the firmware for the Wi-Fi card to be compatible took 2 minutes after the first boot.
- I’ve timed it because I thought I had to be imagining it but boot time is on par with an M1 Mac mini. Apps open as fast or faster than the M1 Mac.
- Lots of customization options with themes if that’s your thing. Far more customizable than macOS.
- I’ve done no maintenance.
- I easily found all the software I needed.
- You can test it by booting from a USB stick.
- Does not support M series macs but any old Mac or PC will work which is great. Lots of folks have old computers they’re not using. Once upgraded with Mint a 10+ year old computer now has an up-to-date OS with full support and security updates.
I don’t regret it for a day. Find an old Mac and have fun with it.
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Generally, it feels that way to me. While I’ve switched most of my work over to GNU/Linux I’m still using the iPad for a client that requires work with Affinity files and another with shared spreadsheets in Numbers. The new versions of the iWork apps with the prompts/buttons/branding for the subscription got irritating really fast. In general the uptick in ads and notifications as ads seems likely to be the first step in a process that will increase over time.
Add to that the changing by Apple of some of my default settings to their own that I’ve had to reset several times and it’s just another bit of Microsoft-like behavior that seems likely to increase over time.
The general growth and push to services seems likely to be a never-ending process because growth of profits is a never-ending process. It’s mandate of capitalism. And so, yes, enshittification is the ultimate outcome. Ultimately profit and stockholders come before users and customers.
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You know the difference between you and me? You know what you’re doing, I don’t. I would no doubt make a mess of things or take far longer than warranted.
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+1
I upgraded to Sequoia 15.7.4 this morning and noticed Apple had once again preselected upload documents and desktop to iCloud 
. They really want people to buy more iCloud storage.
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It does feel a bit like Apple are really closing the system. The move to M chips stopped installing other OS’s on macs. Moving their own online communication to where a user cannot stop it without a hardware firewall and now iWork apps going behind a paywall. It’s enough to stop me using any stock apps because of lock-in.
The most annoying setting to date is that when you stop auto software updates it disables the wallet. I’m now back to my physical bank card.
Apple seems to forget that my data is on this system and people don’t like being locked out or told how to run their system.
I wonder how long it will be where your system will stop working without an internet ping home once in a while?