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How can we avoid the cloud?

H

hairypoo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 2, 2011
24
0
Hi: Before installing 10.9 I am wondering, if there are options to avoid the ubiquity of Apple's cloud. I don't want to use it even if it's free. Does Mavericks force you to sync the keychain, contacts, calendar etc. via the cloud or are there acceptable options to avoid this?

Thanks.
 
You are not forced to use iCloud at all. Just don't turn it on in System Preferences and nothing will be synced. You don't even have to create an iCloud account to use your Mac if you don't want to.
 
Weaselboy said:
You are not forced to use iCloud at all. Just don't turn it on in System Preferences and nothing will be synced. You don't even have to create an iCloud account to use your Mac if you don't want to.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Does this mean that, if I don't activate the cloud, all syncs to iPad etc will be done offline?
 
hairypoo said:
Thanks.

Does this mean that, if I don't activate the cloud, all syncs to iPad etc will be done offline?
Click to expand...

If by syncs... you mean Calendar and Contacts from your Mac, there is a snag there. Previously you could sync that info from your Mac to an iPad manually through iTunes (without iCloud) but with the latest iTunes update that option is gone. So if you want to sync that data you will need to use iCloud or some other sync service like Google.
 
You can setup you own LDAP server with OS X Server ... That's probably the best way how to avoid any 3rd party cloud service :)

It's possible without server add-on from App Store, but it isn't that easy .
 
Yes, you can't — How can you be sure that data were REALLY deleted, that someone isn't spying you using your data on cloud? 99,9% probably isn't but there's always possibility. I use iCloud but I'm aware of this possibility ..
 
Michael Goff said:
Just wonder... why do you want to avoid the cloud?
Click to expand...

It is not that my laptop and desktop are necessarily safer than the cloud. But NSA for one collects the data from the various clouds (google, apple, amazon, dropbox, yahoo, etc) indiscriminately and bulk. If they get interested in my information that resides on my macs, then they need to specifically target my macs and won't have a copy on their HDDs automatically. Additionally, every hacking technology developed by NSA will rather sooner than later be general criminal technology. That's the difference between these options.

Naturally everybody is free to believe NSA's rhetorics and entrust their data to NSA's servers.
 
hairypoo said:
It is not that my laptop and desktop are necessarily safer than the cloud. But NSA for one collects the data from the various clouds (google, apple, amazon, dropbox, yahoo, etc) indiscriminately and bulk. If they get interested in my information that resides on my macs, then they need to specifically target my macs and won't have a copy on their HDDs automatically. Additionally, every hacking technology developed by NSA will rather sooner than later be general criminal technology. That's the difference between these options.

Naturally everybody is free to believe NSA's rhetorics and entrust their data to NSA's servers.
Click to expand...

I take it you also host all of your own email on your own email server.
 
It isn't that easy with mail server, every server between you and receiver has to support encryption - If it doesn't, you're out of luck, if you don't encrypt message itself..
 
I'm probably the last person on earth who doesn't really use email. The only thing I really use it is for online purchases. All my friends know me well enough not to try emailing me since I'll never see it.
 
pastrychef said:
I'm probably the last person on earth who doesn't really use email. The only thing I really use it is for online purchases. All my friends know me well enough not to try emailing me since I'll never see it.
Click to expand...
Mac Pro 5,1 3.2x8 - 48GB - GTX 680 - Crucial M4 SSD - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2.1GHz - C2D - 6GB - GMA X3100
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣

Wow pastrychef, you have so much kit and yet no email - welcome to the 21st Century!
 
Michael Goff said:
I take it you also host all of your own email on your own email server.
Click to expand...

Why are you so aggressive? My interest doesn't do any harm to any of you.

I just think that Apple should give a choice and not mandate to do this or that as it fits their cloud business model. Pushing the future revenue of their cloud business and thereby risking the security of their customers' data makes me angry.
 
voicebox said:
Mac Pro 5,1 3.2x8 - 48GB - GTX 680 - Crucial M4 SSD - Dell 3007WFP-HC
MacBook 2.1GHz - C2D - 6GB - GMA X3100
Mac mini 2.33GHz C2D - 4GB - GMA950 - 2 Drobos - SS4200 (unRAID)
iPhone 5 + iPhone 4 S⃣

Wow pastrychef, you have so much kit and yet no email - welcome to the 21st Century!
Click to expand...

lol. :p I avoid social media sites like the plague too. The only service I use from Google is search and that's only for lack of a truly better choice but I do not sign in to any Google account when doing my searches. I value my privacy and I don't like having my info scraped by companies like Google, etc.
 
Last edited:
hairypoo said:
Why are you so aggressive? My interest doesn't do any harm to any of you.

I just think that Apple should give a choice and not mandate to do this or that as it fits their cloud business model. Pushing the future revenue of their cloud business and thereby risking the security of their customers' data makes me angry.
Click to expand...

Aggressive because I asked a question?
 
hairypoo said:
Why are you so aggressive? My interest doesn't do any harm to any of you.

I just think that Apple should give a choice and not mandate to do this or that as it fits their cloud business model. Pushing the future revenue of their cloud business and thereby risking the security of their customers' data makes me angry.
Click to expand...

No one is forcing you to use anything. He was merely asking a question about how you reconcile hosted email use with your aversion to cloud services?

And if you're genuinely that worried, how can you ever have any computer connected to the Internet?
 
Michael Goff said:
You think you can't control your data if it's in the cloud?

Really?
Click to expand...

There was a test by... Arstechnica I think? a while back. The author deleted a picture on Facebook, and it stayed on the Facebook CDN for months, even when their privacy policy said deleted photos are deleted within a month.

Once data enters a cloud, you no generally longer are the "owner", from a legal standpoint, and lose all control.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
There was a test by... Arstechnica I think? a while back. The author deleted a picture on Facebook, and it stayed on the Facebook CDN for months, even when their privacy policy said deleted photos are deleted within a month.

Once data enters a cloud, you no generally longer are the "owner", from a legal standpoint, and lose all control.
Click to expand...

I didn't know that.

Is that just something for Social Networks, or for cloud services in general? If I delete a contact from my Google Contacts, or a file from my Drive (SkyDrive or Google's) and so forth... is it still there for a while? And doesn't that seem inefficient?
 
Michael Goff said:
I didn't know that.

Is that just something for Social Networks, or for cloud services in general? If I delete a contact from my Google Contacts, or a file from my Drive (SkyDrive or Google's) and so forth... is it still there for a while? And doesn't that seem inefficient?
Click to expand...

It's different for every service. I use Skydrive, and I'm pretty sure if I delete a file on my computer, it goes to the recycling bin on all of my computers, as well as a "recycling bin" on the Skydrive cloud. I don't know how long Microsoft holds onto the data, but as a rule data storage is cheap compared to the other costs of running a datacenter.
 
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