Lightroom for iOS Data Loss Bug
Adobe’s recent 5.4 update for the Lightroom for iOS app had a major bug in it that deleted user photos and presets, eradicating all content that had not been synced to the Adobe cloud service.
As noted by PetaPixel, complaints surfaced on the Photoshop forums on Monday, shortly after the update was released, followed by similar reports on Reddit and Twitter.
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Adobe has recommended that affected users try to restore an iCloud backup that might have the lost content, but there’s no solution on Adobe’s end to address the loss and no fix if there’s no iCloud backup.
And restoring an iCloud backup is problematic because you can’t just restore one app. Restoring your Lightroom data would also revert newer data from other apps. Maybe you could restore to a different iOS device and let Lightroom sync the restored photos to the cloud, hoping that none of you other apps upload old data to the cloud.
Previously:
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But but but... I thought Apple’s 30% fee + App Review + App Store restrictions are supposed to protect us from just this type of bad app experience and data loss? Isn’t that the story we’re being told?
In addition to the "App Store doesn't protect us from bad apps" line of reasoning, this is also an example of the harm caused by not allowing some kinds of apps onto iOS. People sometimes make this argument that there aren't any apps on Android that aren't also available on iOS, and therefore, Apple's restrictions don't prevent any useful apps from being released on iOS.
However, there are backup apps on Android that allow you to backup and restore individual apps and their data. In the past, I've used Titanium Backup to do this.
This kind of app is just not possible on iOS.
If you use your iPhone for actual work, and have valuable data stored on it, there's no way for you to manage your backup strategy. You have to trust whatever cloud syncing Apple and the app provider offer.
This really highlights how bad the all-or-nothing approach for iOS backups is. I understand the simplicity of it, but it would be very useful to be able to restore single apps (and a huge time-saver at that).
