...the notion that some neckbeard on Slashdot (among the neckbeardiest of neckbeard sites) feels qualified to prognosticate on what is and is not a suitable platform for content creation, in spite of the evidence.

iOS backup is and always has been for whole-device recovery, full stop; there's no way, for example, to just recover your files, or just your apps, or just your settings.

iCloud has never been sold as a backup solution at all, at least as far as I'm aware. It's no different to OneDrive or Google Drive or DropBox or whatever. Well, it's different in that it has a much more annoying Windows client than the other options :D

I think most people don't do backups, over and above having a copy of their shee on one of the services above. Forex, I use OneDrive, but that's just synced cloud storage, not a backup system. I used to use CrashPlan for a proper online backup, but CP decided to fuck all their personal users a couple or three years ago.

I think most professionals - i.e. people whose living depends on it - do do backups, and they don't depend on iOS device backups for it.