Apple Accused of Trapping 40 Million UK Customers Into iCloud Service

[benwiggy]

If Apple brings back "My Photo Stream" as a result, that would be good. Syncing photos from iPhone to devices without using iCloud is a real PITA. Apart from that, it's pretty easy to manage user data without paying for iCloud.

And I don't see that it's difficult to use other cloud services instead.

 

[contacos]

The only thing I agree on is that you should be able to make back ups to other services or even on your own NAS.

On Android I can even make a back up to thumb drive.

Right now you literally have only the choice between paying Apple or not making a backup at all. This seems indeed anticompetitive.

 

[cjsuk]

Hmm if that was the case then how come you can’t get close to equivalent experiences on android with windows or Linux?

Competence issues.

None of the vendors have enough discipline to produce finished products.

 

[erinsarah]

I'm less interested in this lawsuit than I am about finding ways to understand the intertangled web of confusion created by trying to manage a family of 4 people and their gazillion photos and other data across dozens of devices without the IT admin dad ripping what's left of his hair out.

 

[Starfia]

This stuff is feeling so tired.

Is "anti-competitive" the new term we're aiming to piledrive into meaninglessness?

 

[ProbablyDylan]

"Which?" is a terrible name for an organization. Bad names aside, I can see what they're getting at.

This whole iCloud deal is the same thing we hate about modern car subscriptions, just in our phones. You bought a new phone but if you want to make the most of it you have to buy a subscription from the manufacturer.

 

[applepotato666]

It was cool that it was reversible, then it's been vastly surpassed by USB C.

Surpassed in popularity yes but design-wise absolutely not. Lightning is a whole lot more durable. The male portion being inside of the phone is not a good design. That wafer is fragile and it gets worn out quick. And nothing beats the satisfying click of the lightning.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

And I don't see that it's difficult to use other cloud services instead.

As a quick example, I can't store full backups of my iPhone to a different provider from my iPhone. Yes, I could make a full backup on a PC and save that to a cloud provider, but that's additional friction that just isn't there when using iCloud.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Surpassed in popularity yes but design-wise absolutely not. Lightning is a whole lot more durable. The male portion being inside of the phone is not a good design. That wafer is fragile and it gets worn out quick. And nothing beats the satisfying click of the lightning.

Quick? I have USB-C stuff that is years old and it's not worn out. My wife used a Pixel 2 until spring of this year, so seven years, and the plug is just fine.

Even if it's less durable, I'll take it over a proprietary connecter any day.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Surpassed in popularity yes but design-wise absolutely not. Lightning is a whole lot more durable. The male portion being inside of the phone is not a good design. That wafer is fragile and it gets worn out quick. And nothing beats the satisfying click of the lightning.

I used to repair those too, it felt like having the bending pins inside was about as much of a problem as the wafer if not more but I don't have any data on that.
But, well, I was mostly talking about the practicality of having one port to rule them all. One port that Apple seems to like, since they used to make a computer that had a USB C.

 

[Jamie0003]

Why can't you backup your iPhone to your macOS machine?

Then you have multiple choices for backing up your macOS machine(s).

Not a one-stop continuous backup, of course. It might take some thought and a little effort.

(I have no idea if iPhones can be backed up to non-macOS machines. So there might still be some restriction imposed.)

Because I don’t want to? Local backups isn’t the best idea in my opinion, I’d rather backup to the cloud, encrypted. And iCloud is the only option, plus I shouldn’t have to have a Mac running 24 7 just to backup my damn iphone

And no, there’s no other local backup option

 

[macfacts]

Leave Apple alone

<Insert leave Brittany alone meme>

 

[MilaM]

Surpassed in popularity yes but design-wise absolutely not. Lightning is a whole lot more durable. The male portion being inside of the phone is not a good design. That wafer is fragile and it gets worn out quick. And nothing beats the satisfying click of the lightning.

Even if USB-C is less durable. The 'weak' part is the cable, which is cheap and easily replaceable. A lot of engineering know how went into the design. Fun fact ... Apple was involved and surely gave a lot of input. They were going to switch to USB-C anyway, just maybe some years later.

 

[freedomlinux]

You can back up your phone to the Mac and use TimeMachine for external backups of the lot.

Interesting. The downside of starting with an iPhone->Mac local backup is that it's something the user has to remember to do. I am guilty of this too - neglecting or delaying periodic backups that need manual steps.

Ideally, consumer backups are as automatic as possible. Wouldn't it be convenient if the existing iCloud functionality could use the iCloud storage and/or directly connect to TimeMachine/TimeCapsule (without the Mac in between)?

 

[tennisproha]

Although I have beef about how poorly some of the features like Hide My Email work on iCloud, the storage options are straightforward and allow for seamless syncing across devices.

 

[Powerbooky]

It's still incredibly sad that by ~2010, capitalists went with cloud direction instead of making well-integrated self-hosting solutions.

Imagine having all your stuff on a Mac mini at home, including phone backups, contacts, etc. Free forever, fully yours, just don't forget to replace hard drives once in a while.

I'm certain that every person could easily manage that setup, just like all the "normie" people used to pirate music for their iPods back in the day.

But of course, it's harder for police and for data brokers to access data that way, so here we are.

Didn't we have "Back to my Mac" that could also access the HD storage on the AirPort Extreme?
Even longer ago there was this project Not-dot-Mac, it redirected all .Mac network traffic to a server on the local network.

But I have to say, there are some options to avoid iCloud storage and use a local NAS, but none of them involve easy configuration as iCloud does (at this moment).

 

[jz0309]

The only thing I agree on is that you should be able to make back ups to other services or even on your own NAS.

On Android I can even make a back up to thumb drive.

Right now you literally have only the choice between paying Apple or not making a backup at all. This seems indeed anticompetitive.

You can make backups to Mac.
And u believe that you can make backups to Windows via iTunes SW for Windows, at least you could when I had a windows computer

 

[MNGR]

I have no issue with the iCloud system and pay for the 2TB offering however I wish apple would offer the ability of hosting iCloud equivalent services on a local NAS sync or at least make it possible to sync to another service provider. I have plenty of WAN accessible storage of my own, it would be great to be able to use that instead of or along side iCloud.

I don’t understand. I back up to local USB drives and a NAS. Using Time Machine and iMazing. There is also Carbon Copy, Super Duper, etc on my mac
plenty of choices out there.

 

[Krizoitz]

It's still incredibly sad that by ~2010, capitalists went with cloud direction instead of making well-integrated self-hosting solutions.

Imagine having all your stuff on a Mac mini at home, including phone backups, contacts, etc. Free forever, fully yours, just don't forget to replace hard drives once in a while.

I'm certain that every person could easily manage that setup, just like all the "normie" people used to pirate music for their iPods back in the day.

But of course, it's harder for police and for data brokers to access data that way, so here we are.

Tell me you don’t have a clue about data storage without telling me you don’t have a clue about data storage.

1. No, most people actually can’t manage a local backup. We know this because local backups have been around a lot longer than cloud backup and have NEVER been as popular or easy to use.

2. Local backups are a TERRIBLE idea compared to cloud backups. Cloud backups are redundant and available anywhere you have a connection. Local backups are single point of failure and not available locally OR at best at much slower speed because your home network can’t match Apple, Google, Microsoft, et. al. Not to mention people are generally terrible at security and updates when left to their own devices.

3. My iCloud backups are E2E encrypted. No one can access them unless maybe they’ve got a working quantum computer. It would be a hell of a lot easier for the police to just steal a hard drive out of my own house rather than try and break the encryption iCloud uses.

So yeah, you are basically wrong in every possible way on this. Bravo.

 

[NMBob]

Is it Which or Witch?

 

[macfacts]

Ummm, they can buy a pc and backup and offload files there.
But it would probably be cheaper to use the iCloud storage, even the 2TB plan.
Of buy one of these like in the old days of a digital camera.

SD Card Reader for iPhone/iPad, Trail Camera SD Viewer, USB Memory Micro SD Card Adapter, Plug and Play, No App Required

Plug and Plug,share Videos/Photos instantly. SD Card Reader with Lightening for iPhone, iPad, iPod,etc. Compatibility with iOS build-in "Files" App.Go to the "Files" app on your iPhone,go to "Browse Locations",and then find the folder of the SD card & all your items will be there. ...

www.amazon.com

Apple says the iPad is a "PC", how do you use an iPad to backup and restore the iPhone?

 

[cjsuk]

I'm less interested in this lawsuit than I am about finding ways to understand the intertangled web of confusion created by trying to manage a family of 4 people and their gazillion photos and other data across dozens of devices without the IT admin dad ripping what's left of his hair out.

This is my problem.

A good friend of mine runs an entire server farm for his family. That’s what you’re left with without one of these things.

In my case Apple Music is objectively more expensive than buying music but I have three kids so managing it would take up 50x the amount of time I use on it now.

The time value money trifecta is an important one.

 

[Tago]

Interesting. The downside of starting with an iPhone->Mac local backup is that it's something the user has to remember to do. I am guilty of this too - neglecting or delaying periodic backups that need manual steps.

Ideally, consumer backups are as automatic as possible. Wouldn't it be convenient if the existing iCloud functionality could use the iCloud storage and/or directly connect to TimeMachine/TimeCapsule (without the Mac in between)?

It`s merely a question of establishing a routine of some sort, and follow it. The effort is minimal beyond that. A separate backup of the iPhone would be good, I just pointed out a wrong statement about the impossibilities.

Actually, I`m not a huge fan of TimeMachine, but it should be fine for many. Once I move on to M4 Mini I will look into different (platform neutral) options as a matter of principle. So far I haven`t bothered, my gear was getting long in the tooth, backups became increasingly awkward, and I don`t really want to do a backup of the entire Mac. Just files primarily, and some setting secondarily. Have no need to backup software and so on.

Conceptually, I prefer all files like docs and media ++ to be stored and backed up apart from the OS and to arrange the file area to match my own logic. One of the things I used to do was to keep files I was over and don with (but still wanted to store) in a separate catalogue which only needed a new backup when files were moved there. Makes backup of files I use frequently ++ fast and easy. That`s a bit different from how Apple picture the world.

I`m on my backup machine for another few week (TP/Arch), and can`t be bothered to set it up 100% as the TP needs replacement as a backup in a little while too (actually like yesteryear).

 

[cjsuk]

Tell me you don’t have a clue about data storage without telling me you don’t have a clue about data storage.

1. No, most people actually can’t manage a local backup. We know this because local backups have been around a lot longer than cloud backup and have NEVER been as popular or easy to use.

2. Local backups are a TERRIBLE idea compared to cloud backups. Cloud backups are redundant and available anywhere you have a connection. Local backups are single point of failure and not available locally OR at best at much slower speed because your home network can’t match Apple, Google, Microsoft, et. al. Not to mention people are generally terrible at security and updates when left to their own devices.

3. My iCloud backups are E2E encrypted. No one can access them unless maybe they’ve got a working quantum computer. It would be a hell of a lot easier for the police to just steal a hard drive out of my own house rather than try and break the encryption iCloud uses.

So yeah, you are basically wrong in every possible way on this. Bravo.

Just a heads up here though: having your stuff in the cloud is NOT a backup. It’s a convenience. An offline backup is required for proper data recovery as that factors in loss of access to your cloud data or it being compromised from something destructive on your computer, be that faulty cloud sync or malware (I have seen both cause data loss).

 

[MNGR]

Apple charges an obscene amount for Mac upgrades when you buy it, between that and every other place they rip customers off on they aren’t short of money. Apple won’t up the free tier because they are simply cheap and very greedy.

So buy something else.