peter i dont agree with your logic yes we do have a full backup of our devices and thats fine if we have made a recent backup, i normally backup my devices to my imac every few months so if i restored to that i would loose months of work but would still have a working ST3 where i could get away with it , so this back up is ok but not great, the way we do manual backups now is ok but not great for two reasons, one is you have to manually consistantly make backups or your backups will be so far out of date you might as well restore your monthly device backup, this wastes a lot of time if you have multiple devices you want to have current backups, if you have to restore your software and use a manually created backup you will loose some work depending on how often you go through the time wasting backup procedure.
My way of thinking is the software is automatically always backing itself up, to the point if you had to re install ST3 it would automatically restore to the default backup and restore itself without any effort from the user, yes this default backup file can be copied and saved for later use or transferred to other devices but it does not involve any manual saving, its your choice when to save it to create a time frozen backup for later use but its automatically always up to date , this creates a seamles workflow for those that just want to get on with music and are happy to be safe in operation not just to the last backup but more importantly to the exact moment when they needed to restore due to a problem and not loosing any work at all.
Now icloud backup and its problem, i am all for having a system where all your devices can be synced to be as up to date as possible , this introduces another problem of having to upgrade you icloud services for more memory , this is why apple would definitely agree with this proposal as it would force people to spend more money on a monthly basis to have this ability, i dont like anything i have to be regularly paying for as it is designed to rip you off, i expect these very expensive devices to be capable of automatically sync between each other using airdrop or similar system so we dont involve expesive icloud.
Icloud has its place and thats for those that want to sync their devices world wide, so no matter where you are in the world you can be in sync and you will pay for this, thats fine if you really need this then you can pay for it, but its not fair to all other users that should be able to easily sync all their devices at home where a system is already in place but it is not used as it doasnt make money for apple.
I definitely wont be paying any more for icloud memory in which case the new system of syncing wont help me at all, unless apple allow me to have more memory so i can actually use this option without any extra cost.
Where design effort should be put by apple.
Apple can you please allow us to sync all our devices and all software using a system like Airdropp so when we get home and all our devices are near by they auto sync themselves.
Apple, once we have automated backup working seamlesly on all professional software can you introduce a simple method of restoring our backups by date and time, so if i do find i am not happy with the last 2 hours of work i can just restore to two hours earlier and start again from there, this would be a much greater improvement to your devices than spending a fortune to design a new version of the same product for the last number of years beeing so thin that it can float in a breeze has no handy connectivity and cant easily sync to other owned devices.
I hope this little message triggers some logic with your managment team.
Regards Damir a very happy ST3 user.