Brendt,
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you say. I too, want the freedom to choose with whom and where I share my data. As was pointed out to you, Apple is a US Company and subject to the laws of that country. The data they are forcing us to store in iCloud is kept in servers within the continental US. US data protection laws are nothing near as tight as they are in Europe. There are dozens of agencies within the US that can demand, without recourse to the courts, access to our personal data. I only takes one untrustworthy employee of these agenices to make all Apple's reassurance of safety and encryption absolutely useless. How many times have read of the laptop or memory stick left on the bus or train carrying gigabytes of personal data?
I have an old ipod which we use to use as a back up for calendars, addresses and music. This device is not iCloud capable and now we can't even sync by USB. Apple's answer is that I should go out and buy another iPod!
I am recently retired and can't nor shouldn't need to afford this expense. I shouldn't also be forced to pay the additional expense of data connection every time I turn my iPhone on, simply to synch with iCloud.
No this is a very bad move by Apple and I am as mad as ****! I am seriously looking at what alternatives I can use.
By the way SyncMate won't work because Apple removed the wifi synch module with Maverick!!