Before I got my first Android phone, my phone book was stored in featurephones with proprietary address books that couldn't be accessed without going to a phone store. Now my address book is everywhere with internet access. Whether I'm calling from my phone or a web browser, I type in a name and it just works.
The people who don't want this experience are a small minority.
With the older iphones, the phone book was backed up every time you synced. The phone numbers are still accessible on the computer and you could even get vcards from it. Then, when you upgrade (like I did from 3GS to 4S) transferring numbers was a snap: just connect and hit sync.
Note that no phone numbers were stored on google's or apple's servers. A very significant portion of the iPhone crowd still sync via cable.
You're ooking at it from a different point of view than the author. While there are privacy concerns in handing over such data to a 3rd party, there is some merit in being able to conveniently access data from multiple devices without the headaches of managing multiple instances of it.
I think given the choice, most consumers usually pick the later since convenience trumps privacy concerns...that is until privacy/ownership bites them in the behind...
Although, I would prefer to have that choice rather than being forced to go one way or the other...
The author's point of view here is silly. Yes, conveniently accessing data from multiple devices is good. No, having your social security number and other personal information in the cloud is bad. I'd be willing to bet close to 99% of those people who do want their phone book in the cloud wouldn't want their record of, say, medical illnesses or sexually transmitted diseases stored on google's or apple's or facebook's servers.
As much as those companies would like you to think that, I'd say that multiple is closer to 2x. There is still a very significant portion of the iPhone population that haven't and most likely won't have apple completely manage their phone book from the cloud.
"No, you want your phone book to be managed by Google or Apple"
I suspect lots of people will never ever want any company to manage their phone books.