This story teaches me that it can be dangerous using APPLE products. One Failure on the apple site cn produce your cutout from Apple developers, cut your Apple cloud and stop delivering updates to all your devices from one day to the other.
I am really hapy that I always have a backu running Linux so I could stilll work. And that I have my own cloud for all of my Data. Horrorscenario.
This is a little scary. Especially as you have no way of knowing if a gift card has been redeemed until you try and if it has, they lock YOUR account. Sounds like more regulation is headed Apple’s way.
That’s why I take care to have everything also working on Linux. If they stop the account I would immediately loose money. After two weeks it would become possibly dangerous.
While blocking of an account can happen, Apple’s handling of the case is grossly incompetent and does not instil confidence. Not having a properly working escalation process for such cases is just unprofessional.
Being myself an Apple customer, this scares me a lot.
this is exactly the reason, why i am using my Nextcloud on my own hardware right next to me in my homeoffice, reverse-vpn’ed to a rented public host with own ipv4 and ipv6 and DNS.
P.S. look at the beauty next to the printer, an 37 year old schneider euro-pc, my 1st PC still working today 
What I don’t see here or in the linked blog is backup redundancy. What happens if your “office” is destroyed by fire or natural disaster? How do you recover your years of projects and data? The same applies to someone that keeps everything in one cloud provider like the OP article. What happens if that provider goes offline for whatever reason?
I’ve been bitten by multiple backup failures, both local and cloud, so now have redundant backups in both local and cloud systems, meaning two separate backup methods locally and three and a half backups spread among cloud providers. A loss of any one of them will not affect me at all.
And I have found that you constantly have to test restoration ability. Just because the backup system reported no errors, doesn’t mean it can reliably restore something when you need it. Again, learned from experience. I have switched cloud providers several times because of test failures like this.
One of my main mottos is “you can never have too many backups”.
The people relying on time machine backups. They are encrypted. So you need our mac account to open. If you don’t have access to it there is no “backup”.
Next backup is in apple cloud. Simple and without any problem. Also: if your access to the account is restricted you may have a few more tears in your eyes.
I am workung with Synology Drives, one in my company, one at home and one at my mother in law. So I realized exactly that structure: two complete backups on different places. So three houses would have to burn. Chance that this happens would be when Putin smashes a nuclear strategic weapon on my home city. I guess I din’t need any data after.
To be serious. Prople relying on Apple and also Microsoft with their Data and having their backup in the microsoft Cloud. This is a dangerous situation. And if you look further this is also the case with CAD Data (3D mechanical development and electronics development) which are in many cases already cloud only so you don’t have your own Data in your hands. Even exporting will not help. If you are not able to use your account the data you have are worthless cause they are locked inside the ecosystem of the CAD System.
Brings me to develop electronics with KiCad and do mechanical development with 3D Software running on my Desktop and isn’t a pay per month model which also more and more vendors have. Also that model will produce this problems. Forget to pay a bill. They will cut you directly and you can’t work with your entire Data.
That’s why I decided to use Software which is a buy an eternal license which will always run and - where ever this is possible and usable - use Open Source Software like KiCad.
Even my Software Development Toolchains are available as open Source. So even if I will retire one day: I can still work with my data why ever it will be neccessary for me.
US fighter planes software must call home, else, after a month or so, it stop working.
And countries around the world buy these planes (F35 as an example).
F35 Fact Sheet is certainly silent on this.
BTW: do you know there is a GIT repository that is called Genius ? Certainly owned by a “big feet guy”…
It is normal that they need the Server connection every now and then. And that people ar ebuying this stuff makes it not better. But do you believe Eurofighter is not calling home?
oh of course there’s redundancy - I didn’t mention it. You may see the dark external USB HDD on the lowest position of the rack with the green LED. These are my 4TB backup media from my proxmox which I rotate every week. More on this here
If your house burns down you may have no data anymore. that IS a problem and no redundancy
Nonsense. If this story should teach you anything it’s not to lay all your eggs in one basket, it’s that simple. This kind of unfortunate accidents can occur if you stash all your digital shit with Dropbox, Google, Microsoft or any kind of cloud service there is. This can happen if you have a backup of all your local stuff, but you keep it in the house. And IMHO this can happen to all of us, except the most paranoid ones who will have backups all over (which most normal people do not have).
You can’t insure yourself against every possible accident, otherwise you’re not working anymore, only making backups and verifying them all the time.
Edit: I read the guy was up and running again after 5 days (and that WAS with a weekend in between, so not sure why people blow this up like this?)
This happened while Apple plays almighty. Simply
And Microsoft never did that? And Google? And even as we speak Nvidia is building a very high cliff to fall off in the very near future.
You can also fiddle around with Linux if you like, but you’re only kidding yourself if you claim that results in a nice, comfortable working environment. Linux is nice for people who like to build a printer driver just to print stuff, but not me. Been there, done that when I was like seventeen. Now I just like it simple and I have never experienced computers more simple than with a Mac. Don’t argue with me, because that’s my experience and your experience can differ, that’s fine. But what I don’t do is put all my eggs into Apple’s basket. I use Google Drive, Dropbox and I run backups at home and I still manage to lose a file once in a while.
Sorry this is bollocks… using linux since a decade as daily driver coming from macOS and Windows before.
I was just rattling some chains here
Every OS has it’s pro’s and cons. After the Amiga died I was forced to switch to Windows and I hated it. It was so much worse than the wonderful Amiga experience that I never came to like it. I used Linux for some years after my frustration grew too big, but I’m not that guy that’s always fiddling with code and compiling stuff and I was perplexed with all the different versions and graphical interfaces. Then in 2004 I discovered the iMac and OSX and it gave me the same feeling as my Amiga did, so I fell in love instantly. I have been using it ever since and even switched my company fully to Mac’s and working with computers never was easier for me. No need for an IT guy (although it’s not the same since Steve died).
I can understand why people don’t like the closed system Apple has on it’s products (even I don’t like the iCloud system, I use Google to sync everything because I also use Windows/Android sometimes) but it also has a lot of advantages for normal users. Everything just works, no need to understand difficult error codes, although Windows has come a long way too.
The one I know / share is:
You know what they say about backups. When you have one you have none, when you have two you have one.
I have at the end gour on different Servers which are all with the same stored Data and one physical Backup per Week for all of my Data, stored on physical medium always sunday 0:00 o’clock. Should be a backup. The entire Synology Server content is stored on every Device - Linux and also mac - stored. So if I would loose all my stuff cause of fire, I still would have my data on the Server in my Company office and on every of my computers in my office and at home. If I would loose all of them I would have my Data still on my physical backup weekly and I could work. More security nobody needs. The Data are stored secure enough and nobody can cut me from my data what would be super dangerous for me.
