I bought my mother in law a new iPhone 12 for her birthday. She wanted 256gb of memory, because her old phone was maxed out and she wanted more space for photos.

Incredulously, I asked her why she had so many photos on her phone, and doesn't iCloud back the photos up to the cloud for you?

Of course she and my father in law don't use iCloud. Guh.

ME: Okay, so, what happens when you lose your phone? What happens to all of your pictures and videos and messages?

MOM-In-Law: Oh, we back up the phone to dad's laptop.

ME:. ::I glance over to the aging laptop:: When was the last time you backed up the phone to the laptop? When was the last time the laptop was backed up?

::crickets::

ME: So, why don't I buy you guys an iCloud subscription. It's a few bucks, you can back everything up, and you can also share full resolution photos of my daughter with us instead of texting me blurry thumbnails over sms.... Also, you save like a 100 bucks on each phone since you keep nothing else but photos on there.

FATHER-in-law:. ::Angry defensive guffing like only an Asian grandpa can do:: No iCloud. I never know what's been backed up, and I lose my data...

ME:. ::Backs away::... Uh.. pretty sure Apple has that worked out... but ok.

So, I don't use iCloud. My iPhones are work managed, and I spend a sum total of 10 minutes a week on it to clear work voicemails. My household is otherwise Android/Google/Windows. We use Google Photos, Drive, Gmail, and Backup without issue across many devices over the yeaes. Help me understand what the concern is with iCloud, if any,...so I can refute them and get their phones synced up to the cloud. I'm guessing he fucked up a backup at some point with iTunes and swore it off.

Don't try to fix technology for others. It's not your problem.

quote:

Originally posted by caneau:
Don't try to fix technology for others. It's not your problem.

Yes this. But I'll add, that for the moment, apple makes it's money selling hardware, not services. So keeping customer's information private is good for the brand.

well, many worry about security in, um, the cloud.

Er, yeah. English is not their first language, and being older, technology is not their strength. They also live with us during the pandemic (yay, free child care!), so without a doubt, if something breaks or gets lost, it's going to be my problem to fix. A comprehensive backup strategy, including continuous backup to the cloud makes good sense. If I visited their house and didn't see a fire extinguisher, I'd fix that too.

Regarding privacy, they're Chinese. They spend a fair bit of time in Shanghai each year. They use WeChat as their primary messaging app. They have no expectation of privacy.

I have never used iCloud either. Not a fan of hosted anything. But I do back all that stuff up to a desktop. You also don’t need access to all your photos on your phone all the time. You now how much time it takes to finger scroll when there are too many photos on a phone? It’s cumbersome.

I always have at least two backups of my computer, and use iCloud for the iPhone and iPad (so many “i’s” you’d think I was Obama talking).
ICloud is very secure and reliable in my experience of a number of years—and I’m 77. OTOH I’ve used computers since the 70’s.
Apple makes everything as easy as it can be, that’s the best thing about using their devices.

My 1st Gen SE was dropped one too many times. Last month the power button stopped responding. At least five bad things happen when that button stops working.

I powered up an identical spare iPhone SE (glad I had a new SIM card in the drawer). Called Sprint. Swapped my number into the 2nd phone. Logged the 2nd phone into iCloud and *presto* the spare was cloned. Four years old with 100% battery.

I have never and will never use the "cloud."

Why don't you just acknowledge their concerns and take it upon yourself to back up their phones to the laptop every few weeks for them.

They will feel like you still take them seriously and you will get the piece of mind from having their data backed up.

I use iCloud and it's great. When I get new phones every couple of years, I just wipe the old ones and do a restore from the cloud for my new ones.

Easy as it's possible to be to migrate to a new phone.

And I don't worry about anyone seeing what pictures I've taken as I'm not into porn or illegal activities.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
I always have at least two backups of my computer, and use iCloud for the iPhone and iPad (so many “i’s” you’d think I was Obama talking).
ICloud is very secure and reliable in my experience of a number of years—and I’m 77. OTOH I’ve used computers since the 70’s.
Apple makes everything as easy as it can be, that’s the best thing about using their devices.

Dude really? Nice injection of politics into a non political thread.

Some old people and technology are like oil and water. We had a tech discussion at dinner the other night with couples our age. 70’s you know. I mentioned I have a Nest for temp control, a couple of Rachios for sprinkler control, 7 wireless cameras, SmartThings for lights and motion, Harmony Remote for A/V. Plus a bunch of apps to monitor other things. Talk about blank stares. Oh well.

I miss having a photo album of actual pictures. They used to be valuable, special because they were so few. Now I can look through our photos and there are 34 pictures of the same exact moment. Shot in 34 minutely different ways. Photos used to be so special. I think they have lost that. An old photo of mom and dad before they were married. Now you will be able to see 400 photos if mom and dad as they got ready for prom. Is that better?

Good luck convincing old people of anything. I’m getting there and I pray I don’t get that way in my 60’s and up which seems to be the bewitching hour. My FIL is convinced that mailing a physical check to the power company is safer than an ACH payment from his bank to their bank. There’s just no convincing him. Good luck, but you will lose. Lose in the least painful to you way is my advice.

I'm not a big believer in cloud for important things. Those I micromanage and have under personal control.

Your FIL may be the same way. The iCloud may be the right thing (probably is, actually) but he needs to buy in.

Starting off with a top-level observation: Personally, I'd rather have a good relationship with my FIL, than have a FIL with a backed-up phone that is ticked off at me.

His stated objections seem reasonable, when abstracted:

1) he can't tell when something's been backed up and
2) he's worried about data loss

I'm not an iCloud expert, but it may be that there's some way to tell:

a) what's been backed up to it,
b) when it was backed up,
c) how to get at the backup, and
d) if you want to trigger an immediate backup or restore, how to do so.

If your FIL can be confident he can find out these things, that may help with objection #1. I wish I were an iCloud expert, to tell you how to explain those aspects, but that's not in my wheelhouse. But this is SIGforum, where all things are revealed, so there's hope!

RE: #2. My guess is that if he can be confident about #1, that'll help a lot with fear of data loss.

Best of luck.

At minimum, try to get him to back his phone up manually on a computer with his iTunes account loaded on it. As often as possible, so he has the most recent backup in the event of in incident.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
My 1st Gen SE was dropped one too many times. Last month the power button stopped responding. At least five bad things happen when that button stops working.

I powered up an identical spare iPhone SE (glad I had a new SIM card in the drawer). Called Sprint. Swapped my number into the 2nd phone. Logged the 2nd phone into iCloud and *presto* the spare was cloned. Four years old with 100% battery.

Have a similar phone backup strategy, but just swap the sim over and don’t bother calling anybody.

Phone is backed up and synced to the desktop at least once a week. Desktop is backed up at least once a blue moon. Need to get better about that...

No iCloud, no dictation. Apple already has way too darned information that is none of their business. Not giving them any more.

Personally as one of the geezer Luddite society, I've never used the cloud, nor discovrred the marvels therein.
Not yet convinced of potential advantage for my own use, it does seem like solution to a problem I don't have. Yet.

I resisted iCloud forever, but finally got tired of manually backing things up to my computer and bought 50GB of iCloud storage. I feel $.99 per month is well worth it. I do also backup to my PC now and again when I think of it and have some spare time. As to security, that is one of the things Apple takes very seriously, so in that regard I have more confidence in Apple vs third party clouds. And remember, you can also back up some PC stuff to iCloud. Of the 50GB I have, only 2.5 GB has been used so capacity is not an issue.

Maybe offer to pay for a years worth of iCloud for your FIL, and teach him how it works. That might give him some confidence in iCloud.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Have a similar phone backup strategy, but just swap the sim over and don’t bother calling anybody.

I thought that would work and tried it first. But the new phone would not function with the old SIM. Of my 3 SIM cards, one of them may have become corrupted. Luckily I had a fresh Sprint SIM card and that got it all working.

There are ways to backup via iTunes with a hard line, no Cloud required.