That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that some

That would work for some stuff, but I'm not sure what would happen to the data stored by third-party apps. iTunes has a section to retrieve documents that some apps create, as long as the apps themselves are built to take advantage of that. However, if an app doesn't provide either that or some kind of export, I'm not sure if you'd get easy access to that data. And actually that might create an incentive for some apps not to add the functionality. It makes sense for Office-type apps to provide a PDF, or Office-compatible format, but I could imagine very specific apps that can lock you in since you don't get to (easily) reverse-engineer and convert their data because you don't get as easy of an access as you get on a desktop.