Yes, I am aware that in the first place Apple is facing legal action for offering 5 gigabytes of iCloud storage for free It may sound strange to say the least.. When I first saw it myself, I was somewhat surprised, but the truth is that once we get to the motivations that led the whistleblowers to bring those from Cupertino to justice, we can find it.

But let’s start from the beginning, because it is likely that many people, especially those who do not use Apple devices and services, do not know what exactly we are talking about. iCloud is Cupertino’s cloud storage service And as with other providers of this type of service, the technology company offers a basic level that is free and gives the user five gigabytes of online storage.

While this amount is less than what other services offer, such as Google, which provides 15 gigabytes to free accounts, it does not appear that “giving away a little” is a reportable offense. Maybe Apple can be accused of being a little stingy in that sense, but that’s an opinion, not something the justice system needs to interfere with, right? Seen in this way, in isolation, it is the first conclusion we can come to. However, everything gets a little more complicated when we reach out direct relationship between iCloud and Apple operating systems, more specifically iOS and iPadOS.

This of course brings us back to a space that is already familiar to many, the famous walled garden, i.e. the iPhone and iPad ecosystem, which from the outside is a fortress that wants to be impregnable. A power in which, while not impossible, using third-party cloud storage services to create backups can be extremely complicated. Something that in turn translates into what you’ve surely gathered by now, which is that the integration of iCloud in both operating systems makes it by far the easiest cloud storage option out of these devices.

The lawsuit therefore raises that the small amount of space offered on free iCloud accounts, added to the integration of said service into operating systems, leading many users to have to contract storage plans with larger capacity and of course paid for. So we are faced with a lawsuit that attacks one of Apple’s weakest points in court matters, anti-competitive measures.

In this way, and as we can read in the lawsuit, which Bloomberg repeats and which you can read here, accuses Apple of arbitrarily limiting the cloud storage of certain files, forcing users to purchase iCloud storage plans. Something that closes access to other providers of this type of service, which means that, according to the mentioned text, Apple dominates the market even though iCloud does not stand out from the competition in any sense.

While we await the legal outcome of this class-action lawsuit, it seems unlikely that Apple will be forced to compensate users who join it. It seems more likely, yes, that either judicially or extrajudicially, the company increases the capacity of free accounts (Remember, they haven’t grown in that sense since the service launched in 2011). It is expected, of course, if the regulators decide to pay attention to this matter as well.