Exactly. It’s almost impossible to not hit the free 5GB limit and get nagged to death about it being full.

There’s really no easy way to offload data off Apple devices unless you pay for third party apps, again contributing revenue to App Store. This is why my primary computing device is and will never be an Apple device.

I think there is a little bias here from power users. I rarely see any non power users gobbling up storage in large quantities. In fact 256Gb is probably the most common I have seen in the last 10 years and there's aways at least 80-100gb free for most people even on machines that have had several windows versions go through them.

Not sure what the iCloud point is. I don't use it other than for stuff I want to share between my iPad and my Mac. It's not required and to use it as overspill storage is a stupid idea. And as for my Mac I've got a 512Gb one and it has 268Gb free still. That contains everything I have ever done on a computer from 1984 to date, every photo I have ever taken, every bit of code I've written.

Now the pricing I agree is shit but if it's a really a problem, my usual advice to people is to tidy your shit up, stop hoarding stuff and stop moaning about it.

That might be true if people don't have an iPhone but the moment you start taking photos and videos you're on a trajectory towards one day reaching that limit and get stuck having for only choice to upgrade your iCloud account for more space.