Apple Dropping Support for iCloud Backups on iPhones and iPads Running iOS 8 and Earlier

[psingh01]

One month notice before they delete your backups.

 

[dutchyonabike]

Yeah. Ive been wanting to keep a local backup of my entire photos library for months but struggle to save up that AUD$10000 for a macbook with 8TB internal storage. It was absolutely beyond crazy. 8TB external storage was far cheaper but I couldn’t use it as photos library since it was on external drive.

I have seen a few people report the same issue. After a recent OSX update I could no longer import images into Photos using my library located on an external SSD, which had been working fine before the update. I read that an external drive needed to be formatted as APFS and not exFat to work. I copied the data off and then reformatted the drive to APFS, replaced the data, and it now works fine.

 

[dutchyonabike]

My concern is not so much about old phones from 10 years ago losing their iCloud library, its what will happen to current phone’s cloud storage 10 years from now. It seems everyone stores everything in the cloud these days, their entire digital life and the files are huge. In 10-12 years or so, will that data be classed as obsolete and also deleted? And I don’t even use the cloud but others do.

 

[Loyola]

My friend got an email and it shows -

On December 18, 2024, devices will require iOS 11, iPadOS 11, or macOS 10.12.6, or later to sync bookmarks or restore bookmarks......

 

[Big_D]

Given the age of the devices and the lack of security updates for the last decade, are these things even still on the Internet? Given the age of the protocol, it probably also has security issues; consolidating the available services on Apple's servers to ones that are under active maintenance makes a lot of sense from a security posture view point.

At least the devices can still be backed up locally - which given the security issues on the devices in question, is probably the better alternative anyway.

 

[Big_D]

Fair enough of the discontinuation of device backups, but seems a bit harsh deleting the existing backups.

If the service is going offline, what is the point of keeping the online backups? The device won't be able to contact the servers to request a restore, because the relevant service is no longer on those servers to reply to the device...

 

[callea]

No iPhone is involved.
The first iPhone to support iCloud is the 4s which is updatable up to iOS 9.

 

[Shirasaki]

I have seen a few people report the same issue. After a recent OSX update I could no longer import images into Photos using my library located on an external SSD, which had been working fine before the update. I read that an external drive needed to be formatted as APFS and not exFat to work. I copied the data off and then reformatted the drive to APFS, replaced the data, and it now works fine.

Using External drive as photo library only works for me when my computer is stationary and has UPS. I think a cheaper approach probably would be buying the new Mac mini with M4 and low tier config, connect a large external drive and run it as my local photo library. Still a lot of money but hopefully not $10000 lot of money.