I was holding off on changing over from .mac because they wanted me to only have one account, and I have different ones for itunes and .mac.

There is also the problem that they really want you to run Lion, and I have lots of PPC programs that I cannot upgrade. If one uses nothing but new programs, or only apple programs, fine.

Which I agree is a shame. It does not affect me personally, but it could have if I hadn't been using the same account since 'iTools.'

If they did allow this, I would merge my account with my wife's account. So that it would be easier for us to share media. That's the biggest argument in favor merging if you ask me. Many are screaming for this. I hope it happens, but it doesn't look good.

And yes, Lion and iOS 5 is where we are at now. If I had PPC programs to run, I would either set up a partition for an older OS to boot into, or I would just have an old PPC machine.

Use Parallels to run a Snow Leopard VM and use your PPC apps in there. Bit convoluted but once it's set up it's easy as pie. Or SheepShaver if you have any really old Carbon apps that will run under OS9.

I'm on ML, but honestly there's nothing REALLY compelling about it or Lion beyond SL if you don't want iCloud or are madly in love with iOS - pretty much all that's been added is iOSified/simplified user interface stuff that I've not much use for and have switched off or avoided (reverse scrolling, Launchpad, Mission Control, &c.). The full-disk FileVault is nice, but I'm a paranoid little monkey like that

I love iCloud too...but, when I hook my iPhone up to my computer, I do not want my contacts to sync, therefore that box is always unchecked. However, occasionally I open my contacts on my phone, and they have been synced...and I end up with tons of people's numbers and email addresses that I manually remove...I only keep in my phone the numbers I need frequently.
And, I've had two iPhone 4S's..they both did this. When I am on my macbook, I constantly get the Sync Contacts screen which tells me that I will lose some contacts and asking if I want to continue...I just say no...but it comes back later.

I am a long time Apple fan, but not technically savvy...so forgive my lack of understanding.

I might be too cautious as I don't even trust online banking. However after the privacy scare from the hack into that prominent journalist's Amazon, Apple, Google and Twitter accounts, I'd prefer to keep my iPhone contacts backed up in an offline copy stored on my PC in addition to (or instead of) using the iCloud. Here is what I use as an alternative to copy my iphone contacts to my computer.

I have to admit, though, that there is nothing more convenient than having multiple Apple iDevices and seamlessly syncing your contacts between them.

The worst part is, similar loopholes have been used in the past and Apple didn't even follow their own security protocols. I remember reading about somebody who only used publicly available information found on places like Facebook to eventually crack online bank account passwords back through other email addresses by using the fact that security questions pretty much universally suck at providing real security. What is your dog's name isn't a legitimate security question.

Although Mat Honan did help out by having some poor security practices of his own. He really should have known to have a redundant backup and to not always use the same username format of first name last name@.

Having a single point of failure is a mistake. Relying simply on the cloud to protect you, opens you up to having that point breached and everything gone.

In short, if you use iCloud, have a second backup system for your contacts and photos etc.

my iPad. Otherwise, I just don't use it.

A lot of my data-centric apps now sync to iCloud. I also back up my iPhone and iPad to iCloud.

Yesterday I installed Mountain Lion on my Mac. So far backing native apps to iCloud seems to work fine.