11/03/2024
How to go to war with Apple.
I’ve been working in the tech industry since the 90’s, I watched Apple have its Lazarus moment when Steve Jobs returned and launched the first iMac back in 98. In the years since then Apple have nurtured an incredible brand fortified by great quality and reliability. I personally have championed Apple for most of my career and being very experienced in the Windows environment, it was quite obvious which platform I would move a client to. My belief in Apple’s products and services has been underpinned by my experience, which has just been truly shaken. I received a communication from a client last week, regarding a data loss in the iCloud. The data loss was significant and inexplicable. After speaking with Apple support, I’ve come to the conclusion that the iCloud is not even close to as reliable as it appears. The dataloss involved a teenagers entire GCSE work and has caused huge stress for the family two months before she sits her GCSE’s. Apple market the iCloud as a backup service, but it isn’t, it’s a file synchronisation service. Although devices are backed up each day, the critical personal files within the synchronisation service are not included in the device backup. This is comparable to driving down a motorway at high speed with no idea if the brakes work. I went to some length with no avail to try to recover the data from device backups and the iCloud restore service. I had always relied on the notion that if all else fails the iCloud was protected by the device backups and to my horror I discovered this not to be the case. Then I started to think about my client base, of which many document their lives using Apple’s photo storage system, it then dawned on me that even with the local time machine backups, if the iCloud account suffered “inexplicable data loss” where would my clients be left if file optimisation is turn on, they would be in a potential and very real situation where their critical files would not be in the time machine backup and if Photos optimisation is turned on they would be in a very real situation of losing all hi res versions of their photo library. I decided since in all my years I have never had a client lose data in the iCloud, this must be a very rare and unusual event. But being a person who takes pride in the support and advice I provide to my clients, I had to verify this with some research and to say shocked isn’t close to the feeling I experienced AND considerably panicked by what I discovered. The iCloud has no underpinning historical backup, the iCloud device backups take no consideration for critical user data. In my opinion the iCloud is a disaster waiting to happen for each and every user. The terms and conditions probably state that it’s the subscribers duty to ensure they have their own backup, but if the file synchronisation service provided by the iCloud means a device does not necessarily contain the files it appears to then how can the clients backup be reliable. This is a huge oversight and a fundamental flaw in the iCloud service. It removes the subscribers ability to reliably backup their personal data and then doesn’t keep a historical backup for them… This makes no sense and I cannot conceive of an IT person subscribing to such a fundamentally flawed and dangerous service. As a result of my investigations, I be will advising everyone I work with and my client base to move away from the iCloud until this issue is addressed.
