Running your iPhone or iPad without iCloud on iOS

It’s possible, but not feasible anymore.

Some people don’t like to store their personal data in the cloud for a variety of reasons. Unlike Google’s Android which uses Google services a lot from the start, Apple users got away with this until now.

One of the reasons is with OS X 10.9 Mavericks Apple removed the ability to locally sync your address book, bookmarks, calendar, and email accounts. Now you have to use iCloud for this. The `Info` tab on the device sync screen is gone and Apple refers to iCloud for syncing this kind of data.

Obviously it’s more convenient and the syncing happens immediately and automatically. Every time. Without having to be on the same Wi-Fi network with your other devices. This is reason enough for Apple to get rid of redundant old stuff.

I don’t have a problem with having my data being stored on Apple’s servers. Keeping devices in sync all the time automatically is reason enough to not think about doing this manually as I live in a multiple device world (MacBook, iPad, iPhone) for some years now. Doing this manually is tedious work which should be automated. While it could be automated when being at home, I have a couple of devices with me when I’m on-the-go. And I expect my devices to work the same as if being at home.