I just checked, and my iPhone is using 152 GB of storage.

I have years of photos and videos on there. Apparently the 256 GB model was the right choice for me?

You haven't seen the size of my music, TV, or movie collection then. We have the technology to put it all on my phone and it should be cheaper, but it's not because of an absurd, money-and-design-only consumerist monoculture from the head bean counter who drifted far afield of the cool practicality and leadership of SJ.

Couldn't agree more. Cook deserves so much hate for what he did to Apple. I'm astounded people still worship Apple like nothing has changed at all.

All the changes under the Cook leadership are appalling and reveal what is definitely one of the worse character you can get as a leader. At this point even Bill Gates looks like a good guy in comparison.

The fundamental problem is TC and most of his immediate subordinates lack creative vision and the boldness to experiment and move beyond past wins that SJ shepherded. Apple needs a new leader who is both cool and interested in daring to take greater leaps of enriching the lives of users. First steps should be to give access to PCB circuit diagrams like computers of the 1970's, access to individual components for purchase by anyone through an "Amazon"-like supply chain, and access to security chip purchase and "recalibration" for verified owners. The works of art used as workhorses should be like an old Mercedes: able to keep going for years and treasured rather than fragile and disposable.

It stores lower res proxies on the device and full res in iCloud, iirc.

Only if it is explicitly turned on.

I have the 256 GB model as well, full resolution of 5+ years of photos (around 20k), around 200 GB used, 180 on iCloud via Family Sharing.

To be fair the ipod classic used a platter drive and ipads are high speed SSD storage. That being said, it's been years of the same storage options and at those prices it should be much higher, along with their iCloud storage offerings.

People don’t generally run out of storage that often. I think perhaps you overestimate how much local data everyday people store.

I can do it without even trying. I can't fit all of just any one of all of my music, shows, documentaries, books, or movies on any {i,iPad,tv,watch,vision}OS device ever made.

When you can buy a 256 GiB SD card for $40 or an actual 256 GiB SATA SSD for $20.

iPad Pros should come with 1-16 TiB of SSD, and 16-128 GiB of RAM.

I agree, the new iPad should have a spinning platter hard drive.

If 15 years of technological progress can’t find it cost effective to fit more than 256gb of solid state storage in a $1000 device, then what are we even doing here?

A 1 TB consumer-oriented SSD is about $50 today. At Apple’s manufacturing scale, do you have any doubt that the cost to them is nearly negligible?

So browse the web and play modern games on an iPod classic

The iPod Classic had spinning rust. Don't pretend it's comparable with a modern SSD.