When is a backup not a backup?

Call me old-fashioned, but to me a backup is an exact copy of the data in the source (usually a file, folder, folder-path, entire disk or embedded-flash device). If I ask for a full backup then the result should be a 1:1 copy of everything, no exceptions. If I request something funkier like an incremental backup or a diff/patch backup, then only a portion of my current data needs copying because the older stuff is already in the backup set and the backup utility 'knows' that. The sum of the old data plus the new data should be either an exact aggregate of all my current data, or a superset thereof.

Apple thinks differently, and that's potentially very dangerous because it's not really that evident. An unsuspecting iPhone owner making an iTunes or iCloud backup of their phone is not backing up in the traditional sense. There's an explanation in the small print on the Apple website:

Your iCloud Backup includes information about the content you buy, but not the content itself. When you restore from an iCloud backup, your purchased content is automatically redownloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store, or Books Store. Some types of content aren’t downloaded automatically in all countries or regions. Previous purchases might be unavailable if they've been refunded or aren't available in the store.

Note that this is only about the content you buy - anything you synced to your device from local files on your PC/Mac (e.g. PDF's, MP3's, JPG's) is not part of an Apple device backup. They don't explicitly tell you that, you have to deduce it.

Now I perfectly understand why it makes sense not to copy 'standard' stuff that's on millions of iPhones around the world (like Apps, Books/Music in the iTunes store, etc) because that standard stuff can indeed just be re-downloaded when you do a device 'restore'. Apple knows that it still has that stuff lying around on its servers and can serve it up again any time you ask for it. However, it's a big mistake to apply the same reasoning to non-Apple data that a user synced to an iDevice. Sure, you had that PDF or MP3 somewhere yourself when you synced it to your iPhone, but what if you don't have it any more? For example, a colleague emailed you a PDF of a Powerpoint presentation last year, or you downloaded the instruction manual for your espresso machine in PDF format. After you asked your iPhone to 'open it in iBooks' you deleted the source file or email because now you had it safely in iBooks, right? Wrong. When you backup your iPhone, that data is not backed up ! When you get a new iPhone in a year's time and restore everything onto it from your newest backup, none of your PDF's, MP3's or any photos other than those on your camera roll will be there. If you uploaded the vacation photos you took using your big Nikon SLR to a folder on your iPhone, they won't be there either. Now is it me, or is that not really a backup?

If this is the way Apple chooses to do it, fine. Just don't call it a backup. The fact that certain data will never be included in a backup needs to be expressly communicated with a loud warning that anything synced to the iPhone remains your responsibility to re-sync after a restore - if you delete it from your non-Apple universe it will not be available on an iDevice in the future. The Apple fanboys may buy all their content in the Appstore but not everybody does. I have an iPad with over 800 PDF's stored on it. Everything from instruction manuals to purchase receipts to white-papers and copies of presentations I've done over the years. Recently, when I upgraded from an iPad Air to an iPad Pro, none of them were included in the backup I had made of the Air. Luckily, I knew about the dubious nature of Apple's terminology and I still had the source PDF files. Nevertheless, it was a royal pain to manually get them all onto the new iPad because iTunes had in the meanwhile dropped its inclusion of the Books view for an attached device and there was no explanation anywhere of what to now do with books. I call that lousy.

There's also the issue of transparency - you cannot 'see' the backup contents created during an iDevice backup. A visit to the directory on the local machine where the backup is stored reveals just a huge collection of obfuscated filenames bearing no resemblance whatsoever to your original data structure. If you backup a Linux or Windows computer using just about any backup utility, the result is viewable/explorable with your normal file and directory names. That gives an extra degree of confidence that your files really are being copied. It also (usually) allows partial restore because if you accidentally delete a single file or directory on the source, it can be selectively restored. With the Apple backup concept, it's all-or-nothing. A lot of blind faith in Apple is presupposed.

Oh, and one more thing. If you live in the Netherlands, there's a real danger in relying on anything cloud-based for a backup (iCloud or otherwise). To quote Arnoud Engelfriet, renowned Dutch IT/Internet Lawyer:

"There is no cloud as such, there is only the outsourcing of a (data)-service and thereby a full dependence upon your service provider. He is perfectly entitled to alter the service at will, and if that includes removing access to your data then that's your problem. Just like a butler who forgot to do the grocery-shopping. Under Dutch law, there's absolutely no difference between a butler and a cloud-service - both are simply a form of service-provision and a service can be altered or cancelled at any time. End of story."

In other words, if something goes wrong with your data while it's in the cloud, or if the backup never really reached the cloud in the first place, that's just your tough luck. You have no legal grounds whatsoever for recompense, even if you are paying for the extended storage option. That's a second worrying fact worth remembering about iDevice backups...