Which is handy for us geeks who stereotypically would have a higher chance of running a computer 24/7 and so backing up locally can be "just as painless as iClo

Which is handy for us geeks who stereotypically would have a higher chance of running a computer 24/7 and so backing up locally can be "just as painless as iCloud" for us. However it doesn't really help the other 99.9% of iOS users. Even if they did, you then have the chance of the user forgetting the password they used to encrypt the data, simply because you only need the password when you a) want to change the password b) use a local backup. Side note - doesn't really have nothing to do with backups :-P: When I took my phone in for a battery swap (Apple did it for free so I didn't botrher replacing it myself) they asked if I had backed up my phone as there was a small tiny chance they would have to wipe the phone. I said I had. When they were booking it into the system the person booking it in questioned me on the backup because his software wasn't showing a backup. The person booking it in was looking for iCloud backups.