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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

This is no longer the case with iCloud.

All of my 'iDevices' are now untethered from my computer. When I bought my iPhone 5 they actually made me wait for the iCloud restore to complete before I could leave the store.

Backed up my iPhone 4 before jumping the train to the Apple store. Walked in, purchased the new one, iCloud sync, walked out with virtually the same data I walked in with on a faster and prettier device =)

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Same here. When my iPhone 5 arrived I basically turned it on, chose 'restore from iCloud backup', waited a few minutes, and presto: all my apps and their data, settings, text messages, address book, call log, etc, all transferred from my old 3GS.

I still had to sync all my music from iTunes though, but I don't see how the Surface would be able to do this without requiring to be 'tethered' (iTunes has WiFi sync) to a PC.

>I still had to sync all my music from iTunes though, but I don't see how the Surface would be able to do this without requiring to be 'tethered' (iTunes has WiFi sync) to a PC.

By storing your music in Skydrive, this removes the need to 'tether' to a PC

But can they restore from a problem state without a PC? I honestly don't know, but I suspect Apple's approach to a recovery partition is still 'Run iTunes' or 'Talk to a Genius'. Which is less good for, say, my grandma than me being able to restore from a hidden partition. User data can still be backed up to the cloud; that's probably a good thing generally.

Restoring the firmware in DFU mode is not possible without a laptop. But, it's uncommon and I think you can let Geniuses at the Apple store do that for you.

" they actually made me wait for the iCloud backup to complete before I could leave the store."

Are you being positive about Apple devices or not. Because that statement could be taken two ways.

Is this being touted as an Apple feature that Android retroactively stole 3 years in the past yet?

Downvoted. Nobody mentioned anything about Apple being first, merely that this feature exists and is useful.

I wish. Unfortunately the backup and restore situation was miserable three years ago and still is today.

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