Comment Re:Make iCloud optional or enable Airdrop b/w devi (Score 1) 54
This would be genuinely useful for iOS.
Currently you can back up either to icloud or to a macos device, but this requires your mac to be reachable on the network while the phone is charging, and it backs up to the expensive internal storage of the mac (which can then in turn back up to time machine). Backing up a 1TB iphone and a 1TB ipad very quickly fills your macbook storage, but wouldn't make a dent in a cheap HDD.
Being able to push backups to a strongly authenticated (eg mtls) server would be great. The images themselves are encrypted over the top so you have an added layer of protection should the server or storage protocol be compromised.
Time machine is almost there, but it uses SMB which is blocked by most ISPs, a lot of people would not be comfortable exposing SMB publicly and it's very slow over a high latency link. Something like webdav with mtls would be better. I can theoretically perform time machine backups from across the world if i connect a VPN to get around blocking of the SMB port, but it's too slow to be usable.