[ssorallen]

> Why must I pay monthly for gigabytes of storage to backup my iphone when a single $30 hard drive could do it?

This is “I could build that in a weekend” mentality. Your data on iCloud is replicated, available via the internet, available 99.99% of the time, etc. If your $30 hard drive fails you lose everything.

The price and being able to use other services is worth debating, but comparing it to “a single $30 hard drive” is disingenuous.

[chrischen]

My backup is also replicated. Once on my hard drive and once on my phone. Secondly, it’s apple’s job to build this feature. I’m not talking about why I do or do not do it myself. I’m talking about why apple doesn’t make it, which is because they want me to pay monthly to hold data that I may never actually access.

Third, apple did build this feature, but it has become a neglected second class citizen. You can do backups to a mac, but the experience is clearly neglected.

[__del__]

two $30 hard drives. many of us handle this sort of thing as a matter of course in our daily lives, and the walled ecosystem chases us out.