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He's talking about the full-phone backup that occurs before the update is applied. The size of the OS upgrade image has nothing to do with the amount of bandwi

He's talking about the full-phone backup that occurs before the update is applied. The size of the OS upgrade image has nothing to do with the amount of bandwidth required to send an entire phone backup, media and all, to the cloud.

bryanlarsen 16y ago
The full-phone backup shouldn't be much data, either, if done properly. After all, you don't need to back up anything that was downloaded from iTunes -- which includes the operating system, all applications, most users media files. No more than a checksum is needed for those. A directory checksum would work -- you don't even need a file checksums.
- ugh 16y ago
  Doing that is not easy and Apple is not very good at it. I'm not surprised that they are not there yet.
  - ghhj 16y ago
    gyyi8o0-=
- Xuzz 16y ago
  I think the main issue here is more than media files: it's the data stored for each app on the device. Music might be a common app with lots of data (and is, as you said, relatively easy), but what if you've saved a 200MB file locally with the Dropbox app? Stuff like that needs to be backed up too, the and the backup service has no way to know if an app's data is "essential" (the user made this!) or just "downloadable content" -- and, all apps would need be updated to know how to re-download after a restore. It's a complicated problem: it's more than just storing a few hashed and re-downloading from iTunes.
- alfredox 16y ago
  An what would be the proper way to do it? For me, this is the proper way of doing updates in a computer: - create a full backup (bootable image) in an external disk - apply the update - if happy, let's move one. if not, recreate the image of step one. You could argue that you do not need the whole image of the computer, only the image of the system. Well, the system in a computer is from 1Gb to 4Gb. In an iOS device, the system would be between 500Mb and 1Gb. At least, you need to back that up, and OTA is not feasible right now.
jakeg 16y ago
What's the issue? Backups can be trickled to their destination, and so can the OS update. It's just done in the background and when it's ready, it's ready. There's no technical or user experience related reason why an iOS device needs to ever be connected to a PC.
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  And there goes your battery and data plan...
  - jakeg 16y ago
    Assuming WiFi connection? A fair number of iPads are WiFi only anyway.

bryanlarsen 16y ago

The full-phone backup shouldn't be much data, either, if done properly. After all, you don't need to back up anything that was downloaded from iTunes -- which includes the operating system, all applications, most users media files. No more than a checksum is needed for those. A directory checksum would work -- you don't even need a file checksums.

ugh 16y ago
Doing that is not easy and Apple is not very good at it. I'm not surprised that they are not there yet.
- ghhj 16y ago
  gyyi8o0-=
Xuzz 16y ago
I think the main issue here is more than media files: it's the data stored for each app on the device. Music might be a common app with lots of data (and is, as you said, relatively easy), but what if you've saved a 200MB file locally with the Dropbox app? Stuff like that needs to be backed up too, the and the backup service has no way to know if an app's data is "essential" (the user made this!) or just "downloadable content" -- and, all apps would need be updated to know how to re-download after a restore. It's a complicated problem: it's more than just storing a few hashed and re-downloading from iTunes.
alfredox 16y ago
An what would be the proper way to do it? For me, this is the proper way of doing updates in a computer: - create a full backup (bootable image) in an external disk - apply the update - if happy, let's move one. if not, recreate the image of step one. You could argue that you do not need the whole image of the computer, only the image of the system. Well, the system in a computer is from 1Gb to 4Gb. In an iOS device, the system would be between 500Mb and 1Gb. At least, you need to back that up, and OTA is not feasible right now.

jakeg 16y ago

What's the issue? Backups can be trickled to their destination, and so can the OS update. It's just done in the background and when it's ready, it's ready. There's no technical or user experience related reason why an iOS device needs to ever be connected to a PC.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago
And there goes your battery and data plan...
- jakeg 16y ago
  Assuming WiFi connection? A fair number of iPads are WiFi only anyway.