Apple offers MobileMe to iCloud transition details
Apple has taken the wraps off which MobileMe services are making the cut on the road to iCloud. The good news: you can still use the Web front-end. The bad news: three MobileMe services are getting axed.
Apple this morning posted a frequently asked questions page about the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, including a note that the company will continue to offer a consumer-facing Web site for certain services.
The details come roughly two weeks after Apple took the wraps off its iCloud service at its annual developers conference.
In a question about whether users will be able to access iCloud services from their browser, Apple said Web e-mail, calendaring, contact management, and the Find My iPhone tool will continue to be available, in much the same way they are now, through Apple's Me.com. Users will access those services through iCloud.com, a domain Apple acquired earlier this year.
Not making the transition when MobileMe shuts down next year are Apple-hosted Web sites made using iWeb, Apple-hosted photo galleries, and files stored as part of Apple's iDisk storage service. Presumably Apple's Gallery and iDisk applications for iOS will also be making an exit when MobileMe closes down. Additionally, Apple says the syncing of dock items, keychain passwords, Mac OS X Dashboard widgets, and system preferences will not be carried over once MobileMe is shuttered.
The official end of life for MobileMe is June 30, 2012. Between now and then, the MobileMe features that are being shelved will continue to work, even after users transition their accounts to iCloud. That gives users of iWeb, iDisk, and the Apple Gallery service time to transfer their files to other hosting providers before MobileMe permanently goes dark. Apple has provided instructions for moving an Apple-hosted iWeb site to another provider, as well as downloading photos and files from Gallery and iDisk.
The eventual shelving of Web hosting from Apple as part of iWeb brings into question whether Apple plans to keep around the software as part of its iLife software suite. A purported e-mail to a customer from Apple CEO Steve Jobs earlier this month suggested the company was doing away with it.
iWeb was added to the iLife suite in 2006 as a way for Mac users to design Web sites with a WYSIWYG ("wizzy-wig," or what you see is what you get) editor. For users with a MobileMe account, the software let them push a site design straight to Apple's servers, or elsewhere using FTP. With Apple site hosting eventually reaching an end, the usefulness of iWeb within Apple's software and services ecosystem now seems less clear.
(Via TechCrunch)
