Why are iCloud backups no longer recommended?
As you have noticed, there has been a couple of changes recently related to RepCount and backups recently. Here is what has changed.
1: (iOS): Creating an account is the recommended way to keep your workout data safe and synchronized between devices
2: (iOS): iCloud backups are no longer recommended.
3: (iOS and Android): Email backups have been removed.
Why this change?
A bit of history:
When RepCount was first released in 2013, there were no logins, no accounts, and in-app backups. RepCount workout data was backed up with your phone backups on iTunes. This has some flaws. First, if you delete the app, your data would be gone. If you used more than one device, there would be no way to sync. If data was lost, there was nothing we could do on our side to bring it back. A couple of years later a separate manual backup system was introduced. You were now able to send a data dump via email or back up your data to iCloud and then restore your data from that backup. Great! But this wasn't without problems either. People tend to forget to use the backups feature or think that it would automatically sync. It was far too easy to overwrite existing data by accident.
RepCount today:
Fast forward to 2020, and RepCount is available on both iOS and Android and has great account-based backups/sync. The advantages are many. Your data is automatically backed up. If you switch platforms you can simply sign in and your data is right there. If you use multiple devices, then you can track your workouts on both without problems.
The old file-based backup system is not compatible with the new (vastly superior sync), which makes it hard to support both. On top of that, it is confusing. For example, what happens if you are signed in, create a manual backup, log workouts that are synced, and then restore?
Removing email backups
The final decision to remove email backups completely was not ours. With the introduction of iOS 13, Apple made changes to how you open files. Previously, you could click on a RepCount backup file in any application and then click "open in RepCount" to restore your data. With iOS 13, this option didn't always appear. Instead of showing RepCount, you would get a list of other applications to open the backup file in, even though these were only supported by RepCount! On the Android side, Google also had objections. We were no longer allowed to open backups files in our app. The database RepCount uses is a binary file, and even though the backups were safe, google complained that importing files this way was a security issue. So we were forced to remove it!
iCloud Backups and modern multi-platform applications
When it comes to iCloud backups, you can still use them, but we don't recommend it. The ability to backup on iCloud may be removed in a future version. The reason is simply that supporting iCloud backups is not good for our users and is not compatible with the direction RepCount is going. RepCount is now multi-platforms (iOS and Android) and we are preparing for a future where there might be even more platforms where you can run RepCount (iPad, Web, etc). To provide a great service to you guys, accounts are the only way forward.
About accounts
Some are uncomfortable creating accounts, but here are a few things that are great to keep in mind.
1: RepCount supports Sign in With Google and Sign In With Apple so that you don't have to create a separate account just for RepCount and can use the credentials you already have
2: RepCount uses industry-standard authentication services, which means that if you decide to create an email/password-based account, RepCount will never have access to your passwords.
3: RepCount will never sell your data. Period
This is only the beginning of the RepCount journey, and with this change, we will be prepared for the future. If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out to me personally at simon@repcountapp.com.
Best Regards,
Simon Persson - Founder and Developer of RepCount