The bottom line is, this change is mainly to save Apple the bandwidth and storage costs associated with iCloud backups. It's a straightforward solution to offe

The bottom line is, this change is mainly to save Apple the bandwidth and storage costs associated with iCloud backups. It's a straightforward solution to offer developers a programmatic way to opt-out. With maps or news readers, I might want to keep a local copy indefinitely on my iPhone but do I want these constantly backed up? No. I wouldn't mind re-downloading them when I upgrade my phone. But do I want them deleted arbitrarily when storage runs low? No because I have no control over it. Just imagine your browser cache being cleared by the OS at random moments when other applications trigger an arbitrary file limit and causing errors at random moments. If Apple could offer a way for users to allocate a fixed amount of space for certain apps and opt out of syncing certain data per app, it wouldn't be a problem. What's more this change suddenly happened. There was no bright red warning sign going into the release, these developers are finding out the hard way.