[worrycue]

> Can we feel confident that an Apple HEIC sitting inside an iPhone can be read 120 years from now?

The photos are trivial to copy though and will likely be preserved, if the owner chooses to do so, by being replicated across multiple storage devices over time.

[jacquesm]

That's making a lot of assumptions.

[firecall]

We don't need to, and nor should we, save every photo that everyone has ever take on their smartphone.

Thats madness... :-)

Sometimes things get lost and destroyed, and thats OK.

[worrycue]

Companies like Apple kind of do it for you as you upgrade from iPhone to iPhone and data from your old phone is transferred to the new one.

[b112]

In 120 years, no one may have heard of Apple.

[pcdoodle]

We already have 40+ year old apple machines that the vintage community are preserving / keeping in operation / archiving software.

[b112]

Apple could go bankrupt in 30 years, and 30 years after that, only a tiny smattering of historians might known of it. What would be known 60 years later?

Nothing is certain.

[pcdoodle]

I doubt it. They created the industry milestone products. People like driving vintage cars, operating vintage computers and playing vintage games. These formats aren't going anywhere.