I have a camera, on my phone. I just want to be able to sync my pictures and videos to my own device, not cloud storage. This is becoming especially prudent in these times of nearly monthly major breaches exposing personal data stored in the cloud, as well as companies deciding to change their terms of service and use your data for purposes you might not want it used for.

apple doesn't allow for that. They support their own solution, suppress what they don't like (music syncing) and actively interfere with other solutions, even some they wrote long ago.

non-icloud reminds me of the jackling house

> In 1984 Steve Jobs purchased the Jackling House and estate, and resided there for a decade. After that, he leased it out for several years until 2000 when he stopped maintaining the house, allowing exposure to the weather to degrade it.

You can do some of it with image capture/files to read raw DCIM stuff, carddav/caldav, but that stuff may or may not work.