> There should be no real reason I can't point my iOS device at my own infrastructure to co-ordinate sync Well there is a real reason, you never own the iphon

> There should be no real reason I can't point my iOS device at my own infrastructure to co-ordinate sync Well there is a real reason, you never own the iphone you have. You never have control of the device, Apple does. They have final say in what can be built to run on it, what can run on it, what you can install, what OS you can run, whether you get updates, and what the phone does. You have no control over it, at all. So don't act surprised when Apple takes advantage of absolute power to screw you over. At that, I know owncloud exists for iOS, so you could just use that, at least for the bullet points you mentioned, not so much for the sensors-aware network of devices.