Apple retired on Sunday its paid cloud service MobileMe, following a several year process led by former CEO Steve Jobs to pack up the product for good.
The company announced last year that it would be closing MobileMe and urged users to move their accounts to iCloud, Apple's first big push to unify its product lines with online storage.
For MobileMe users who haven't yet moved their files and photos to iCloud, data can still be retrieved — Apple notes on its homepage that it has extended the deadline to move content. However, Mac users without memory to support OS X Lion needed to run iCloud will be unable to make the switch.
The move to shut down MobileMe was years in the making. According to a Fortune report, Jobs once claimed that the rocky launch had the potential to "tarnish" the brand during the 2008 launch of the 3G iPhone.
In October 2011, the company rolled out iCloud, which is free to users with an iOS 5 device, as a part of a major initiative to reboot and rebrand the service.
Are you surprised it took this long to shutter MobileMe? Were you a user of the service? Let us know in the comments.
BONUS: How iCloud Works
The iCloud login page should look familiar to former MobileMe users. The big difference: Linen.
You can be forgiven for thinking this interface looks just like Mail on iPad and Mail in OS X Lion.
As mail layouts go, we think iCloud is one of the best looking web interfaces for any mail service.
Like Mail, the Calendar app in the web version if iCloud looks almost exactly like Calendar for iPad and iCal for OS X Lion.
The calendar syncing tools are top notch, we just wish it could also suck in our other WebDAV calendars, like those attached to Google accounts.
Aperture 3.2 and iPhoto 9.2 for Mac OS X support the new Photo Stream feature.
With Photo Stream, the last 1,000 photos taken with an iOS device (or manually synced via Aperture and iPhoto) are accessible across devices. Think of it as easy-access to your last month of photos. Anywhere.
When I open up Keynote on the iPad, all of my presentations created or edited on my iPhone or iPad are instantly accessible.
Likewise, Pages for iPhone pulls documents I have created or edited on the iPad.
Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't integrate well with the full versions of iWork. Rather than getting easy access to these files within the apps themselves, users have to upload or download documents to sync with iCloud.
To edit a document started on the iPad or iPhone, I must first download the file from the web.
After downloading the file, I can make edits. However, if I want those edits saved across the cloud I must upload the file back to the web browser.
Anyone who thought iCloud could be a replacement for Google Docs (or even Dropbox) was sorely mistaken.
With iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud, you can easily access your full music library even if those tracks are not on your local PC.
Songs and albums show up like normal files, can be added to playlists and smart playlists and played. If you want to download a playlist, album or selection of tracks for offline and permanent listening, that's easy to do.
For $25 a year, iTunes Match may be one of the best services out there for music lovers with large collection of music and lots of Apple devices.
iCloud requires OS X Lion or Windows Vista/7. A new panel in System Preferences controls the various iCloud features.
iCloud is free for 5GB of storage. Additional storage is $40 a year for 20 additional GB and $100 a year for 50GB.
This pricing is in line with what Dropbox charges. iCloud, however, is no where near as feature rich (at least now).
The iCloud login page should look familiar to former MobileMe users. The big difference: Linen.
You can be forgiven for thinking this interface looks just like Mail on iPad and Mail in OS X Lion.
As mail layouts go, we think iCloud is one of the best looking web interfaces for any mail service.
Like Mail, the Calendar app in the web version if iCloud looks almost exactly like Calendar for iPad and iCal for OS X Lion.
The calendar syncing tools are top notch, we just wish it could also suck in our other WebDAV calendars, like those attached to Google accounts.
Aperture 3.2 and iPhoto 9.2 for Mac OS X support the new Photo Stream feature.
With Photo Stream, the last 1,000 photos taken with an iOS device (or manually synced via Aperture and iPhoto) are accessible across devices. Think of it as easy-access to your last month of photos. Anywhere.
When I open up Keynote on the iPad, all of my presentations created or edited on my iPhone or iPad are instantly accessible.
Likewise, Pages for iPhone pulls documents I have created or edited on the iPad.
Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't integrate well with the full versions of iWork. Rather than getting easy access to these files within the apps themselves, users have to upload or download documents to sync with iCloud.
To edit a document started on the iPad or iPhone, I must first download the file from the web.
After downloading the file, I can make edits. However, if I want those edits saved across the cloud I must upload the file back to the web browser.
Anyone who thought iCloud could be a replacement for Google Docs (or even Dropbox) was sorely mistaken.
With iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud, you can easily access your full music library even if those tracks are not on your local PC.
Songs and albums show up like normal files, can be added to playlists and smart playlists and played. If you want to download a playlist, album or selection of tracks for offline and permanent listening, that's easy to do.
For $25 a year, iTunes Match may be one of the best services out there for music lovers with large collection of music and lots of Apple devices.
iCloud requires OS X Lion or Windows Vista/7. A new panel in System Preferences controls the various iCloud features.
iCloud is free for 5GB of storage. Additional storage is $40 a year for 20 additional GB and $100 a year for 50GB.
This pricing is in line with what Dropbox charges. iCloud, however, is no where near as feature rich (at least now).
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