[timdavila]

How does everyone back up their iDevices? Every article I read talks about iCloud, which is great and I use, but doesn’t follow this principle and you’re out of luck if you lose access to your Apple ID.

I’ve found some content specific solutions that will backup photos or contacts for example, but I’m looking for a fairly streamlined comprehensive solution that would back up everything-messages, contacts, photos, emails, bookmarks, basically iCloud 2 but without the Apple lock in.

[btgeekboy]

I basically don’t, at least not at the device level. Photos get synced to my home server using PhotoSync every once in a while (manually, but eh, it works). Texts are backed up on my laptop technically, but I pretty much consider them ephemeral. I don’t really care about bookmarks, and everything else on that list is cloud-first.

[colejohnson66]

You can always plug into your computer and use iTunes for a local backup. Not elegant, but it’s still there for those who want it.