I don't believe this Reuters story that Apple dropped pans for encrypted backups because FBI. Encrypted backups are a useability nightmare that means customers would lose data.
reuters.com/article/us-app…
reuters.com/article/us-app…
A "backup" is what you resort to after some catastrophic failure, such as losing your phone and forgetting your password. Without encryption, Apple can still recover your data. With encryption, it's no longer a backup, and your data is lost.
I don't know how to have an encrypted iCloud backup that is truly a backup in case of catastrophic failure. Maybe some cryptographer out there knows how to do this, if so, they can explain it to me and prove me wrong, and I'll gladly retweet them in this thread.
Also, I don't believe in 'Apple' making this decision. It's not how corporations work. Instead, it's individuals and factions within Apple fighting each over such decisions.
The story cites 6 sources for the story. I don't believe that they were independent from each other. I think it's 6 separate people that are all part of the same faction that are unhappy they lost the political battle.
This tweet refutes my premise: that you can't even opt-in to it:
In other words, even if Apple can't solve the problem for the average user, they don't even allow power users the option of choosing the solution. Power users know how to safely store a key to their backup.
