MobileMe, the $92-a-year service that hosts
many Apple users' email, data, contacts, calendars, photo galleries and
websites, will cease to exist on 30 June. Here’s what to do now. You could
almost hear the sigh of relief when Apple announced last June that it was
discontinuing MobileMe and ‘transitioning’ to iCIoud. Itself a replacement for
the accident-prone .mac, MobileMe was initially so unimpressive that in 2008 it
provoked one of Steve Jobs’ legendary outbursts. Gathering the team responsible
for it in Apple’s in-house auditorium, he asked them what exactly the service
was supposed to do. After listening patiently to their answers, he asked: ‘Then
why the f-doesn’t it do that?’
Many subscribers had wondered the same
thing themselves.
Now,
after a year’s grace period, MobileMe is officially being superseded by iCIoud
Yet by the time its replacement, iCloud,
was revealed at WWDC 2011, MobileMe had come to underpin much of the everyday
Mac and iOS functionality that users relied on. Besides email (serving both
@mac.com and @me.com addresses), it synced contacts, calendars, bookmarks and
more. It hosted online photo galleries created in iPhoto and websites designed
in iWeb. It may have been a pricey optional extra, but for many it was an essential
feature of the Apple experience.
Now, after a year’s grace period, MobileMe
is officially being superseded by iCIoud. Only six months old, the new, free
service is already many things to many people. A fact often overlooked is that
it provides the brains behind Seri on iPhone 4S, whisking users’ requests to
Apple’s North Carolina server farm and bringing back relevant answers in the
bling of an I. More obviously, it’s the spiritual home of your Apple ID,
synchronizing purchases between your Mac, iOS devices and Apple TV.
Moving your MobileMe content
More visibly, it’s a stable email service
with an attractive web interface, an online address book and a synced calendar.
It’s the riverbed of Photo Stream, which shows you the last thousand photos
you’ve taken on every screen you own. It’s an automatic backup for iWork on
iOS, and when OS X Mountain Lion ships in the summer it’ll be an online
document repository for all manner of apps, including iWork, Text-edit, and
third party tools like IA Writer and Byword.
At heart, then, it’s a tightly controlled
and clearly defined set of tools and services that focus on duplicating data
between your devices and Apple’s remote servers. You set it up with one tap,
and there are no end-user options for configuring it to work the way you want,
or any of the software as a service (SaaS) elements that define other cloud
offerings like Zoho Office and Google Docs.
“The word ‘transition’ was a little
disingenuous. iCloud doesn’t offer web galleries, or website publishing, or an
online iDisk”
Perhaps the word Apple chose to describe
the journey from MobileMe to here - ‘transition’ - was a little disingenuous.
Like the victim of a faulty teleported, you’ll complete this voyage almost
instantly, but not with all your extremities intact.
iCIoud doesn’t offer web galleries, for
example; nor website publishing; nor the online iDisk that arguably formed the
backbone of the old MobileMe. And although there are signs that Apple may be
relenting on the galleries feature - a sort of equivalent called Journals has
popped up in the new iPhoto for iOS app - there’s still a worrying list of
features that didn’t make the cut.
Whatever you think of Apple’s choices, the
decision to move up from MobileMe is about to be taken out of your hands. After
30 June, subscribers will be locked out of their accounts at me.com, and while
essentials like email will automatically move to iCloud, those discontinued
features will simply disappear. So the time for action is now - and in this
article we’ll walk you through some of your best options.
If you never signed up to MobileMe in the
first place, try not to feel too smug, but do stick with us. With iCloud, Apple
may finally have got the hang of cloud computing, and you’ll pick up some
essential tips forgetting the most from it - and from the third-party services
that, as we’ll see, continue to fill the remaining gaps in Apple’s net.
When it’s time.
Whether or not you take up our
recommendations, the fact is that if you don’t act within the next few weeks your
content will disappear when Apple brings MobileMe to a close at the end of
June. At the very least, then, you should set aside a few minutes to organize
the transfer of your data so that it remains available to your Mac and iOS
devices after the transition.
Back up your contacts, calendars and bookmarks before moving
Apple has largely automated the process,
and really only needs your permission to get going. Make sure you have a local
copy of your important data before going any further, and then point your
browser to me.com/move and click the Get Started button. Click Next on each
screen as Apple explains which data it will copy across and which services will
stop working, then confirm that each of your devices - OS X, iOS and Windows
-have been updated to the required minimum level to work properly with iCIoud.
If they haven’t, it doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade, but you stand to lose
access to services on the incompatible devices. Check, as advised, that your
contacts and calendars are up to date on at least one device, and then accept
the iCIoud Terms of Service. Finally, click the ‘Move to iCIoud’ button to
perform the transfer.
You can still use the end-of-life services,
including iDisk, until your account expires on 30 June, even after converting to
iCIoud; just log in through me.com as usual, or find things in the same place
in OS X. After 30 June, however, unless Apple has an uncharacteristic
last-minute change of heart, this will no longer be possible.
