The Future of MobileMe
While last Monday marked the advent of Apple’s groundbreaking iCloud service, it simultaneously sealed the fate of another. As of Monday June 6, the company’s previous cloud based offering, MobileMe, “ceased to exist” as succinctly put by Steve Jobs. For many, this wasn’t of great concern until the wave of post Stevenote euphoria began to settle.
As iCloud contains several—but not all—of the services previously offered by MobileMe, many subscribers began to panic over what was to become of the service and consequently their data. Sensing the brewing turmoil, Apple was quick to release a detailed set of documents thoroughly describing MobileMe’s future, and what is in store for current subscribers.
The most re-assuring of these announcements is that current MobileMe services will continue as usual through June 30, 2012—several months past iCloud’s tentative fall 2011 release date. Though the service is no longer accepting new subscribers, current subscribers—regardless of their sign-up date—will receive a complimentary extension into next year. This information was posted almost immediately following Monday’s keynote on Apple’s official MobileMe info page.
Supplementing this announcement, the company released a support document covering the transition in greater depth, and acknowledging some anticipated points of concern. This document confirms current me.com and mac.com email addresses, as well as MobileMe contacts, calendars and bookmarks will easily transition to iCloud when it debuts later this year.
The document also states that no new MobileMe accounts or 60-day trials can be created, though users with a Family Pack subscription can still create additional family member accounts with any remaining licenses. Though this news is likely appreciated by those with unused family accounts, the release also states individual accounts can no longer be upgraded to Family Packs, and that all accounts are no longer eligible to purchase additional iDisk storage space.
Though MobileMe was intentionally made hard to acquire building up to iCloud’s WWDC announcement, Apple will refund users who managed to purchase a boxed copy and haven’t yet used the activation code. Full details and a refund request can be found here
Today, an email exchange between a MobileMe subscriber and Steve Jobs was reported by a variety of Mac news sites, supposedly shedding insight on the future of MobileMe domain hosting and iWeb. According to the exchange, iWeb will cease to receive updates, and domain hosting will be discontinued in June of next year. Users will then need to seek external domain hosting services. While unconfirmed, this claim falls in line with Apple’s actions regarding .Mac Homepages last December. It is likely more details will be disclosed in the near future.