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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

thats' fair, iCloud is not meant to be used with non-apple signed binaries. so you fall outside the usecase for iCloud.

personally I keep my mac stuff and my linux stuff very very seperate, 1password doesn't really work on linux so it's a non-problem for me that iCloud doesn't function for the platform.

I'm going to sound like an apple fan-boy here; I promise you I'm not; but you said "fail" which implies it's not working as intended while appearing like it should. Could you provide more information on this? usually if the iCloud option to sync is present it works as intended for me, and I've never had otherwise (unless it's a fault with the mac/iProduct or networking).

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> thats' fair, iCloud is not meant to be used with non-apple signed binaries. so you fall outside the usecase for iCloud.

What do you mean with this?

if you're downloading software from outside the app store then you can't be angry that those packages aren't allowed to talk to iCloud- probably (and I'm speculating) each binary is signed when it leaves the app store so it's allowed to talk to iCloud, I imagine this is a seperate mechanism than the one needed for auth.

and using iCloud from non-mac devices is another. I don't expect my Linux machine to be able to access iCloud.

but perhaps I'm underestimating the flexibility, or overestimating the security.

That has basically told me "never use iCloud, it's a proprietary Apple system that you can't get your data out of without their blessing".

I've never claimed otherwise.

this thing is good for syncing data, if you want the data back get it from your programs.

it's designed to be secure and easy for users not easy for hackers/coders.

I can't think of any iCloud data you can't download from the website or that is not already on your machine anyway.

> it's a proprietary Apple system

Yes, that's true.

> that you can't get your data out of without their blessing

No, that is not true.

I genuinely don't know, I develop in Windowsland and what I'm going on is what I read in this thread. A post above said:

and

I don't expect my Linux machine to be able to access iCloud

which suggest that there is something specific about this that locks the user into Apple hardware and software.

Is getting a Linux machine to talk to it just a matter of reverse-engineering the protocol, or is there more to it?

I'm just saying there is a difference between a proprietary system and needing a company's "blessing" to get data out of it.

If I save bookmarks in IE on Windows 8, I can only sync that data with another Windows 8 machine. That doesn't mean I need Microsoft's blessing to do so--just one or more of their products--which anyone can buy on the open market.

Firefox and Chrome will sync my bookmarks to any device I use. Safari and IE will not. I will not buy an iOS or WinRT device.

I don't understand. Why can't I be angry about Apple artificially limiting what apps can use the service, and also indirectly limiting what apps can do if they use the service?

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