I want to remove iCloud (shock, horror) because its like pulling teeth...

There isn't anything to uninstall. The software to connect with iCloud services is a feature of the operating system(s). You can go into the settings on your iPhone, iPad and Lion's System Settings and disable all the iCloud services.

If you have sync'd your contacts (at least the way it works on iPhones), when you disable the sync you should be prompted whether you wish to keep contacts on the iPhone or delete them. To be completely safe, why not just open contacts on your computer and make a backup copy file of the contents? Address book has a built in feature to make a backup copy of its contents, and just tuck that file away somewhere.

There is no going back to mobileme as far as I know. Mobileme is deprecated, and will completely disappear sometime soon next year. It has effectively been replaced by iCloud and will only remain for a little while to allow users to completely migrate to iCloud, or move to something else (eg. moving web sites to new hosts and finding online storage for files).

You can disable all of the iCloud sync services and such, but still keep the iCloud @me.com email active and in use. The email is independent of any of the sync'd services, so you could just keep using your iCloud (@m3.com) email without using any of the other iCloud services.

Same thing goes with the find my iPhone/iPad/Computer feature - you can enable only that, and still disable all of the other iCloud features, including email.

Do you have everything backed up? Just asking as it is always wise when experimenting with things like this.

That sounds odd to me, regardless of how much stuff you may have sync'd (the default free space is only 5Gb afterall). One thing you could try, is disconnect your internet connection and reboot the machine. Without reconnecting to the internet, go into the iCloud settings and disable the things you do not want (ie. uncheck them), then reboot and reconnect your internet connection.

I'm suspicious that your sync is/has gotten corrupted somehow, and the system is stuck trying to either update or complete a flawed sync? By rebooting you may flush any temp. cache related to the failed sync. And then with the connections to iCloud turned off, hopefully it would sidestep the system from trying to complete a sync or unsync, wherever it last got hung up.

I have tied getting rid of iCloud but it is not that easy. Having spent some 10 hours with apple support over 2 weeks trying to get Mac, iPhone etc working it has all gone awry again. Partial synching of addressbook (760 on the mac and 176 on the phone), lost iphone apps which cannot be redownloaded fro the Appstore (that feature said it had but did not work so each time I reset the phone I have to download via the phone).

My comment is that iCloud is like herpes - once you have it..............

I can help after spend many hours and even rebuilds, first iCloud *****!

Steps

1 go to iCloud in Settings delet account

2 go to mail setup iCloud account this is the only screen where you can enable the iCloud settings that work like "mail" and "find my phone"

If you do it from iCloud it enables all options and then frezes if you try and turn any off

I want to disconnect iCloud. I don't have it activated on my iPhone - so I just don't want to use it in sync with my Lion. However, I went in to system preferences and unclicked the Calendars and everything in my Calendars in my computer disappeared. Will this happen to my Emails and Documents? if so how can I disconnect the iCloud - I definitely don't want to lose my emails and my documents. I wish I had known this when Apple told me I had to move over to iCloud. I wouldn't have done it. Please tell me how I can stop using iCloud WITHOUT losing everything I currently have in my Lion.

About email - iCloud provides an email service use the me.com and mac.com addresses. If you are using these for your email account, then yes, emails will be lost. If you have a different email provider, like gmail or a corporate account, then they have nothing to do with icloud and will not be lost.

Abour documents - you'll lose anything that has been copied to and stored in iCloud. If you copied Pages documents to iWork in icloud, then be sure you have local copies.

About calendars, contacts - If you look in your mac's applications (iCal, Address book), you'll find calendars and contacts listed under either "On my mac" or "icloud", just drag everything in icloud to on my mac. However, I believe that if you try disconnecting from icloud, you'll be given the chance to have all the data kept locally on your mac. -- hopefully Winston will see this and comment. Or anyone else??

UPDATE: check this thread -

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3976245?tstart=0

Message was edited by: pvonk

When you say to to mail set up - are you talking about in iCloud (not in the computer)? Were you successful in the end? Did you lose anything? My iPhone is not connected to WiFi so don't have to bother with that...when I get this straightened out I will reconnect my iPhone to WiFi.

vatersify wrote:

I want to disconnect iCloud. I don't have it activated on my iPhone - so I just don't want to use it in sync with my Lion. However, I went in to system preferences and unclicked the Calendars and everything in my Calendars in my computer disappeared. Will this happen to my Emails and Documents? if so how can I disconnect the iCloud - I definitely don't want to lose my emails and my documents. I wish I had known this when Apple told me I had to move over to iCloud. I wouldn't have done it. Please tell me how I can stop using iCloud WITHOUT losing everything I currently have in my Lion.

Backup before you do it, it's only common sense.

I want to ask kevan65 UK - if he ever succeeded in deleting iCloud and reverting to to having his Mac running as before??? If so I'd like to know he he did it.

This may sound dumb but can you tell me how to do a back up of things on the iCloud before I disconnect?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4910