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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Instead of just saying "don't install iOS5", can't you continue to store files in their Documents, but tell them to flip off the sync switch for your app? http://i.imgur.com/acOje.png

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We could, but it would involve pushing an update to the app. The 'don't install' is a stopgap for people who may be counting on using their maps this weekend. Additionally, people collect geo information with our app, tracks and waypoints that they like to backup.

> Additionally, people collect geo information with our app, tracks and waypoints that they like to backup.

That could still be persisted separately if you stuff all that into iCloud's KV store instead of relying on file backup. (Just trying to brainstorm technical solutions; not suggesting they're at all optimal.)

The cleaning issue isn't something that just popped up with the GM build. It existed before then in some of the later betas. As a developer it's verging on the lazy to wait for the GM before you update an app for an issue that you've known about for month(s). As a developer, it's your responsibility to update your app to work with as little inconvenience to your users.

That's what I thought, but see marchdown's comment later on this page -- he says: "Apple prohibits developers to store stuff that can be regenerated or re-downloaded. So, arguably, you can't just switch to using Documents for downloadable data." If that's true, it would prevent such a simple solution.

Good to know there is a per-app toggle switch for this. Some of us make multi-MB files in the documents folder that weren't designed to be granular for backing up or syncing.

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