During the development of Windows 8, the idea of automatically backing up your data into your Microsoft Account and your OneDrive account began gaining traction. The Microsoft Store would remember what apps you had installed on which computers, and your Documents would be backed up on OneDrive, and the system would back up your settings onto your OneDrive account. If you got a new computer, you could ask that the system auto-install the apps you had, recover its settings from your most recent backup, and sync your documents from your OneDrive account. Your new computer would be all ready to go, with all your data, and set up exactly the way you liked it.
For some reason, the scenario was always described as “dropping your tablet in the pool” and setting up its replacement. It seems there was a lot of dropping of tablets in the swimming pool back in the day. Personally, I would just be more careful around swimming pools.
This example exhibits some of the Redmond Reality Distortion Field, wherein it is considered a common activity to lounge by the pool with a tablet PC. This presupposes that you own a pool (fancy), or that you go on vacation to a place that has a pool (fancy), or that you regularly go to the local pool (less fancy but still a little fancy).
Nobody ever considers the probably-much-more-likely scenario of “You accidentally drop your tablet PC and it’s broken.” Maybe because that would be an indictment of the fragility of tablet PCs? Whereas nobody expects a tablet PC to survive a dip in the pool.
A tablet falling in a pool may still be recoverable.
Once I used the hypothetical scenario of “if the user laptop falls into an active volcano” to illustrate full data loss case.
This was a fine feature until it was turned on by default, with no opportunity to opt in or out on new installs or new computers.
As though we all only have one machine, with one use case, and want everything synchronized across those contexts.
I don’t have to imagine dropping tablets in pools, weather they be electronic devices or chlorine/bromine tablets. I do imagine myself having my own pool…
You say that, but I went on a cruise at Halong Bay a few years back — and one of my fellow tourists did indeed drop their phone during a kayaking exercise, right to the bottom of the bay… taking with it a substantial part of their holiday photos, since they didn’t have cloud syncing enabled.