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:
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
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.
Yes, that's true.
> that you can't get your data out of without their blessing
No, that is not true.