Apple reminds users of MobileMe closure
Apple's MobileMe service will be shuttered for good on June 30, so be sure to retrieve all of your files from it.
If you have been a subscriber to Apple's MobileMe service, there is little doubt you've missed news on Apple's transition to iCloud, but if you are still using the older MobileMe service, then Apple is issuing reminders to get your data off of the service before it shuts down.
While iCloud has been around for a while now as a replacement for Apple's less-than-stellar MobileMe services, you may have held off on the transition in order to keep using features like Web hosting and the iDisk online storage options. These and similar features are currently not included in iCloud, so many who have used them have not yet jumped onboard with the new service.
Unfortunately the old MobileMe's days are numbered, and Apple will be shuttering the service for good at the end of this month. To help remind users of this final step in the transition to iCloud, Apple has issued e-mail notifications to all users of its MobileMe service to inform them of the impending closure and have them retrieve data that will no longer be available.
Even if you have already upgraded to the iCloud services, you might still have files in the MobileMe services that you might wish to keep. To get these files, follow these steps.
- Log in to MobileMe
Go to the MobileMe Web site at www.me.com, and then log in to the service. When you initially log in you will see a blank page stating that MobileMe has moved to iCloud, but you can still access your files for the services that are going away by clicking the small cloud icon in the top-left corner of the page. This will bring up a selector menu that contains Gallery, iDisk, and a link to iCloud.com. In this menu you can go to either of the selected services to get your files. - Download Gallery photos
To get your photos, once you have opened the gallery service you have several options. The first one is to download all albums in your gallery by clicking the small "Download Albums" button in the yellow warning section at the top of the page. This will compress all of your albums into ZIP archives and download them to your computer. Alternatively you can select individual ones and click the down-arrow button in the toolbar to just compress and download them. - Download iDisk files
If you have upgraded to iCloud you may not be able to access your iDisk in the OS X Finder, even though the service is still active. Therefore, the only option may be to access it through the MobileMe Web site. To get your files, go to the cloud button in the menu bar and choose the iDisk option. Then you can browse your files and download ones you wish to keep. Browsing individual files might be a cumbersome task, so you can expedite the process by downloading all files on your iDisk. Apple does not provide an option to download all files at once, similar to the "Download Albums" button for the photo gallery; however, you can select all of your iDisk folders (press Shift while selecting them) and then click the down-arrow toolbar button to zip the folders into archives and download them to your system.
The iDisk contains your personal Web sites from both Apple's "Homepage" and iWeb services, so you do not need to perform any special steps for downloading your Web sites, as they will download with the rest of your files on your iDisk.
Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or
e-mail us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.