Theres no longer anywhere to store files that dont need to be backed up (or cant be, by the new policy) but shouldnt be randomly deleted. This is problematic for lots of apps, including this quick list off the top of my head:
- Instapaper and anything that saves web articles for offline reading
- Ebook and comic-book apps (including iBooks, if the rules apply to it)
- Podcast clients (the rules dont apply to synced podcasts from iTunes)
- Offline Wikipedia apps
- Offline mapping programs
The common theme is
offline. Its easy to assume that this isnt a big problem that surely, anything downloadable can be redownloaded at any time. But thats not the case.
A common scenario: an Instapaper customer is stocking up an iPad for a long flight. She syncs a bunch of movies and podcasts, downloads some magazines, and buys a few new games, leaving very little free space. Right before boarding, she remembers to download the newest issue of The Economist. (I think highly of my customers.) This causes free space to fall below the threshold that triggers the cleaner, which in the background, unbeknownst to her deletes everything that was saved in Instapaper. Later in the flight, with no internet connectivity, she goes to launch Instapaper and finds it completely empty.
(Last week, almost this exact scenario happened to one of my customers.)
It creates a terrible experience for everyone