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Comment by iamnotsure | Hacker News Reader

managed software, managed hardware, managed people

One of the worst things about the move to smartphones is the inability to make full backups. I don't understand. It's my own device, all the data belongs to me, and I should be able to back it up whenever I want.

Some data is even completely unaccessible, like the app usage on Android. You can view it, but you can't export it in any shape or form.

It seems like you can, with the usageDirect app.

It’s very easy on iOS to make a backup of your phone including all apps, settings, and data. Either to the cloud to locally to your own storage. What am I missing?

You never had chat apps that don't let you back up the chats? How about login tokens, authentications? That counts too. Are you able to roll them back selectively when an app misbehaves?

Cloud does not work. If you have an app that is no longer available in the App Store, when you install from a backup you are out of luck because that app can’t be downloaded from the App Store.

If you choose to manage your phone from a Mac, then you can save a full backup.

It's not a binary choice: you can do a full local device backup occasionally and still use iCloud. That way you'll have saved copies of old apps available in case they get discontinued on the app store.

FYI for anyone who just needs to backup using a Windows machine (for me: download hundreds/thousands of photos reliably), iMazing has worked well enough.

Unless something changed I believe on macos it has to back up to the system drive. I paid my $200 premium to get my 1tb drive on my laptop and my ios backups take up like 30% of that outright. In a perfect world I’d have a server that everything gets dumped to but macos and ios do not make that sort of setup very easy. There’s this ios issue. And people report issues with time machine over network. The whole ecosystem is a little screwed up. But yet I want their hardware so here I am dealing with the hoops they make me jump through. Always some poorly documented issue I run into like with their launchd or all the bullshit they make us now deal with for “security”. No issues when I write for work on centos of course, a proper os. What I would do for a macbook that shipped with no os.

I was able to relocate the backup via symlink.

> to the cloud to locally

Requires payment for backup of any meaningful size.

> locally to your own storage

I don't own a mac. I own Linux. How do I backup iOS to my device? How do I restore it?

From Linux you literally cannot

You can run macOS or Windows inside a VM on Linux.

Tecnically yes but slow as hell and you are using a software you are not licensed for in this case.

>I own Linux.

That's the trouble with these niche desktop platforms, people don't write software for them.

Is windows also niche?

I think he meant iOS.

You can backup your phone to a Windows machine (using iTunes).

> I own Linux

Does idevicebackup/idevicerestore not work anymore?

But agreed, there's no technical reason why the phone can't just accept normal USB-connected storage and store a file in there (in whatever proprietary/encrypted format it wants, but at least the _storage_ is standards-compliant).

It seems to be actively maintained, so I would assume it still works:

https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice

The backup part definitely works, I haven't tried the restore part.

Back when I used to play with roms in the Android world being able to back things up was neat… but also took a ton of space and was crazy cumbersome.

I kinda prefer iCloud style backups.

That is why many people complain about not really owning the device. And some others defend not owning the device because - cool reasons; and if someone owns his own device that breaks the magic for everyone involved, somehow /s

Do something about it? Get an Android phone you can root and own your device;

And if you feel you are missing something, slap an apple sticker on the back /s

Even worse, now some apps are not allowing screenshots. That's bullshit, it's my phone, I should be able to screenshot whatever the hell I want.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You're 100% right. Android lets apps block screenshots with FLAG_SECURE, and iOS does too with https://github.com/JayantBadlani/ScreenShield, and neither one gives the owner of the phone a way to override that.

The wildest one I've seen is Chrome on Android not allowing screenshots in Incognito mode. I'm struggling to understand the rationale there except maybe to prevent people from accidentally screenshotting sensitive stuff like porn or domestic violence resources? Either way, it's really not something the app should have control over.

My guess would be to stop surveillance apps from taking screenshots - is that a thing?

> the inability to make full backups

Says who? I have been using this for years:

    adb backup -f backup.ab -apk -noshared -all -system

Apps can stop you from doing it, and many will, then it fails silently. It's also a deprecated feature. When I mean a full backup, I mean a bit for bit identical copy, not what the app developers think you should be able to access.

The issue is that Android lets app developers set <application android:allowBackup="false">, and doesn't give the owner a way to override that. Your command will just skip any such apps.

It's my own device

That's what you think, but based on the actions of the companies doing this stuff, clearly they don't and strongly want you to be happy with owning nothing.

are you an anarchist, then? i am curious

I question the sanity of anyone who takes a good hard look at the world around them and isn't a little bit of an anarchist.

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