Apple's position on privacy also led me to switch to iCloud recently. I migrated my mail and drive to iCloud (from GMail, Google Drive) for this very reason and while there isn't always a 1-1 feature parity, I prefer to know that my data won't be used to analyze and categorize me for the purpose of advertising.
Apple sells iCloud subscriptions though. And yet you're not worthy of their privacy if you didn't buy their completely DRM locked devices where they control even the content you're allowed to see.
Sorry, but I've been a iPhone user for many years, and will turn on iCloud about the 12th of Never. You totally give up all privacy for contacts, photos, appointments, etc. the moment you turn it on, and you can never undo that. Apple is NOT trustworthy enough to have that kind of insight into my life. (And Google is even worse, which is why I'm stuck with Apple as truly the lesser of two very definite evils.)
Why does this need iCloud and not just use the client?
I have three issues with that design: 1) privacy, 2) Apple banning your iCloud account for some reason without recourse, 3) and this further gives BigTech more control to wall off part of the web.
And it looks like they went and did this with CloudFlare and Fastly without requests for comments like most web standards?
> you do not need an iCloud account to use a mac or iPhone
... but you are similarly prompted and dark-patterned to create one anyway. It is just marginally easier to skip the choice, if you don't mind being nagged or diving into the buried option you need to switch it all off. And without an account, loads of features like family Screen Time don't even work.
Apple paved the way, while MS was being cautious because of the browser-related legal challenges. They made all this socially acceptable, so at one point the guys in Redmond rightly went "why can't we do the same?" and here we are.
Not everyone uses iCloud. I still refuse to have my most personal data backed up to a corp server. I’m probably in the minority but I’m sure there’s a sizable number of people like me.
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