[SilverRed]

I don't think you can do the full device backup on anything but icloud and I agree that should change but your own storage has the same access as google does on ios. You can have your own photos app which automatically uploads everything in the photo roll and can delete photos to keep them in sync with your cloud.

[kondro]

You can absolutely do a full device backup on any computer via Finder on Mac and iTunes on Windows.

[cunthorpe]

The conversation is about cloud though. Local backups are nice but that means connecting the phone daily to my turned-on computer instead of just plugging it into the wall every night.

[cunthorpe]

Yes there are plenty of photos apps but they’re no Apple Photos and they can’t upload in the background unless you open them regularly. Unfortunately they’re not as convenient. Chances are that they’re one-way syncs too, like Google Photos.

[acomjean]

Based on what I’m seeing with google one and box’s iOS app, I’m going to agree. You can try to back up your pictures but it’s always a compromise.

I ended up just plugging the iPhone into the computer and exporting the photos that way.

[SilverRed]

iOS is opening up to 3rd party services quite a bit in recent releases. The files app and allowing setting default apps are nice improvements which have come recently. As well as allowing 3rd parties in the find my network.

I think we could see full device backups to other cloud services later. I guess the problem is they would want to provide a specific api for 3rd parties to implement rather than trying to drop a 256GB zip file on google drive with no differential backups.

[cunthorpe]

Backups are so personal, complex, and niche that I doubt we’ll ever see Apple opening that up to third parties. Ever. It just won’t happen. Normal people don’t care about backups and Apple makes money through iCloud backups.