How to insure that contacts and calendar are NOT synced with ICloud?

Question

Hello,
I do not understand, why it is not possible anymore to sync your contacts and calendar data between your mac book and your mobile devices using USB cable.
I also heard that with Maverick and Itunes 11.1.2 you can not sync anything using USB anymore, is that true?
Why is it not possible to let the customer decide how to sync their data? Why not leaving both options?
In case it is true that with Maverick and Itunes 11.1.2 you are not able to sync using USB anymore, does anybody know a good app to sync your photos and address data between your computer and mobile devices?
How can I insure that my contacts and calendar data are NOT automatically synced with ICloud?
Yesterday I synced some Photos from my macbook to my IPad and wondered why I had the photos twice. I realized that my IPad had ICloud enabled, after disabling ICloud one picture folder (Photostream) was gone. What do do to avoid that my MacBook is sending Photos to ICloud?
However, when I opened ICloud today, I did not find photos, but I found some address data from my MacBook in the Cloud.
I do not want to have my contacts and calendar data anywhere else on a server.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks Hark

Answer 1

Connect your phone to your computer using the USB power cable that you charge your phone with.
Launch iTunes, it will go thru the normal sync back up progress bar thing at the top, let it finish.
Then
double  click on the phone in the left side bar then click INFO at the top of that pane, it will allow you select what you want to sync (contacts,calendar,etc) make your selections and click apply, then click sync. There buttons along the top for different functions (Movies, Apps, etc) just make sure that you do not have anything checked (like your whole music library) that will not fit on the phone.