Apple’s latest operating system for mobile devices has been out for a few weeks now. The upgrade was mostly an evolutionary one and didn’t add too many new features. One thing apple has done tough was to tighten their grip on devices after they have been sold, by tighter integrating them into their iCloud service. If customers should wish, they can now upload their pictures, calendar, address book, bookmarks, notes, documents or location to Apple’s servers. Since the firm’s own data center in North Carolina isn’t finished yet, extra capacity was rented from Microsoft and Amazon. This is problematic, because now we don’t even know which company is handling our data.
This is one reason why I want to remind people that almost all of iCloud’s functionality can be realized by using a simple Unix-server as well. This includes email and notes by simply using IMAP. Contacts, calendars and reminders are based on CalDAV and CardDAV. For bookmarks, documents and photos one could use WebDAV.
When using the open version of iCloud, you don’t only keep your data under control, but can also use them from non-Apple Android, Windows and Linux systems.