I preface this by acknowledging there are many, many helpful and knowledgable people of all status levels on these forums, for whom I'm grateful, and who have helped me out of many binds in the past.
However, to those on these forums like you who bring a heavy dose of condescension:
As it relates to this problem of restoring an iPhone from a disabled state without losing data (though I'm confident this attitude carries over to other topics), not only is it unhelpful for you and other "experts" with high status levels to say things like, "you should have backed up your phone", it's not even a well thought out remark. Apple's security features clearly are sufficient to keep virtually anyone out of a customer's iPhone (I won't bring up the FBI's hack), but there's no reason to think those features are mutually exclusive from owners' ability to access their phone in the event of an accident. Accidents do happen, and it seems to me that it's dangerously lazy to settle for a security system that doesn't allow for that. Take the system now, and then place it next to a hypothetical security system in which hackers and thieves cannot access customer's data, AND customers can access their data in the event of an accident. THAT would be a superior system, and one for which Apple should strive. Incidentally, it appears there's little difference between setting your phone to erase itself upon too many password entries, and forcing customers to restore their phone after too many password entries. In the latter, only those who are able to sync to iTunes can (supposedly) get a backup done before a restore.
Further, to suggest customers are irresponsible for not backing up their phones on a regular basis is both insulting and intellectually dishonest. To expect customers to use the cloud is unreasonable - there are justified security concerns about clouds (wasn't Apple's hacked?). And so then one must use iTunes or another backup program on a regular basis. Well, some people don't use their computers every day; and even if one does backup daily, there are still pieces of data captured between backups.
Finally, I know for a fact that data is still on the phone after it's been disabled. My car's bluetooth not only allows me to still make calls out from my "disabled phone", but I can access the music on my phone through the same means. Saying things like "if your phone is disabled the data has been erased" is incorrect and careless. Another one was from a customer service rep at Apple Care who told me "once you're in recovery mode you HAVE to restore the phone". That's preposterous, as I've hard reset my phone out of recovery and DFU mode (Besides all that, Apple says you can backup data from a disabled phone that's synced to iTunes before restore). I find these type of inaccurate statements troubling from a company branded as having smart techies, and from High Status experts on these forums. Perhaps you and others with this attitude toward us novices should check-in with yourselves.
By the way, my accident...My screen cracked which caused the phone to literally punch in the wrong passcode over and over until I was locked out. Couldn't even shut the thing off.
