Yep. It's going to start running into some real-world things like this, as the number of these devices increase, as some people opt to go iOS-only and as all these devices hit their 2-3 year birthday and their owners are looking at upgrading them.
As it stands right now, despite the whole "PC Free" feature and push, these devices
aren't PC Free when it comes to upgrading/migrating to a new model, or setting a new one up in the even of loss or theft of your old one.
If you have 50GB+ of data, no standalone Mac or PC and your iPad is stolen or lost...you're kinda screwed.
And I wouldn't really mind all this so much
if Apple themselves didn't make such a big damn deal about PC Free, making it one of the 10 key "show off" features for iOS 5 at that WWDC keynote. Remember? That got a huge applause and Forstall talked it up a bit. But it's not completely true, so it bugs me. Because it's really more like "kinda PC free, mostly...except for when you wanna get a new iPad and you need to get all your stuff from your old model onto the new one".
That ain't "PC free", not when a crucial, core function/task isn't easily performed without the thing you're saying you're eliminating.
Listen closely to Forstall's words in that first minute or so...
With my first option above, at least you'd have the ability to restore all your stuff back the way you had it, PC Free, should your device get stolen or lost. You buy a new one, come home, boot it up and begin the setup process and one of the options you're presented with is "set this machine up using the most recent backup" (which would've been that previous evening or even that morning).
Easy.
Hell, even if you just have 15-20GB data (which I think is completely realistic and reasonable to imagine...a couple thousand songs, a few hundred or thousand pics, a bunch of artwork or other projects), most people aren't going to want a yearly iCloud backup fee. They want their stuff there at home, even if it's a one-time, upfront price of $199-299 (which I'd gladly pay if my only devices were an iPhone and/or iPad...if that meant I could chuck the full-on computer when an iPad filled all my needs, that's worth $300 or so, sure, for seamless, automatic, at-home backup (and knowing that if something lousy happened to your device, once you buy a new replacement model, you're a few clicks away from getting it all back.
Apple's kinda ignoring reality and dropping the ball a bit here, IMO.
This is the week I bitch about Apple, apparently...I don't think I've had so many things to hammer them for as I have this past week. But I'm in constant support/help scenarios some weeks, and so some of this stuff just hits home a little harder than other times.
