>Unfortunately newer versions of iTunes don’t let you backup and restore IPA files anymore and even “iPhone backups” don’t include apps themselves anymore, only

>Unfortunately newer versions of iTunes don’t let you backup and restore IPA files anymore and even “iPhone backups” don’t include apps themselves anymore, only your app’s user data. This was a real bummer, and feels mostly borne (like many modern big tech company moves recently) not so much out of any sort of monetization strategy or whatever as a basic but irritating bubble: a bunch of tech workers who simply can't comprehend being on a "broadband" connection of the 5/1 ADSL sort (or worse) that much of the world, including America, is still stuck on. It's not a security or DRM issue, the old backup system still signed/encrypted everything and still required calls into the mothership and the like. It's mainly sucked just because it makes it enormously slower to restore a phone for people with poor connections. I wish Apple had seen a chance to differentiate themselves there with more local support (presumably which could be leverage into hardware product sales) since unlike Google they are not dependent on ad/cloud revenue, but perhaps it was inevitable as they lost track of all SoHo efforts with the Mac. As a startup org structure it's just hard for Apple to multi-task as well for better and for worse.