Before the disastrous launch of Apple Maps, one of Apple’s biggest failures of all-time was the launch of MobileMe. Apple set a group of engineers out to rebrand .Mac and create a new cloud-based product that totally fell over the night it launched.
Steve Jobs famously met with the entire MobileMe team in the campus auditorium and fired the manger of the project on the spot. Then he told everyone, “you’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation … You should hate each other for having let each other down.” It was one of Steve Jobs’ most famous tough-leader moments, but according to one insider, Steve should have been yelling at himself because the MobileMe launch failure was really his fault.
Cult of Mac received an email today with some exciting news: Apple is extending the special offer of extra iCloud storage for all MobileMe customers who haven’t made the transition, yet. The extra upgrade was supposed to expire on September 30th of this year, but will now expire in 2013 on the same date.
When Apple was doing its damnedest to kick people out of MobileMe in June this year and get them to use iCloud instead, one of the incentives they gave the soon-to-be disposessed was a free offer that former MobileMe members would get 20GB of iCloud storage gratis, instead of the 5GB Apple gives the rest of us suckers. But it was only for a limited time, until September 30, 2012.
Looks like Apple may have extended their offer, though. Some iCloud usersare now noticing that they’ve got 25GB of iCloud storage to play around with until September 30, 2050, when their free 20GB should have been snatched away from them yesterday. Even more interesting is that some non-MobileMe users are seeing the same deal, and have found themselves getting a free 20GB bump in storage.
Ex-MobileMe customers must now pay to enjoy their existing 25GB iCloud plans.
When Apple launched iCloud last year, it killed off MobileMe and provided paid subscribers with 20GB of free iCloud storage when they migrated to the new service. Most of us have been using that storage to back up our iOS devices, but like most good things, it’s coming to an end. The company has now begun emailing previous MobileMe customers to inform them that their free storage will be no more come September 30.
I don’t use iCloud too intensively, mostly because I’d have to pay for extra storage and I already got 50GB on Dropbox. But if I were an Apple employee I’d probably use it until the wheels fall off because now Apple is giving all of their employees a free 50GB upgrade for their iCloud strorage accounts.
Along with today’s launch of iOS 6 Beta 3, Apple has started to roll out iCloud.com email addresses to developers. When iOS users signed up for iCloud in the past they received an email address @me.com. Now that MobileMe has been shut down, Apple is starting to transition over to @iCloud.com email addresses.
Apple has been warning users about the imminent death of MobileMe since last year, and July 1st 2012 marks the day MobileMe shuts down for good. MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery features have also been axed in favor of Apple’s newer iCloud offerings.
The good news is that MobileMe users still have the chance to retrieve and migrate their data to iCloud. Apple has made it easy to make the transition, and files can be saved directly from existing MobileMe Galleries and iDisks before it’s too late.
On Sunday, MobileMe will be dead, and anyone who is still using MobileMe and not Apple’s replacement service, iCloud, will be forcibly evicted. That means anyone still using MobileMe either needs to transition to iCloud and/or copy all data stored in their MobileMe accounts to their Mac or PC. Any files stored in MobileMe’s range of services that can’t be converted to iCloud will be deleted. If you opt not to use iCloud, all data in your MobileMe account will be deleted.
Although iCloud offers several advances over MobileMe, there are some MobileMe services that don’t have direct iCloud equivalents. These include MobileMe Galleries for sharing photos and videos, website creation using Apple’s iWeb, and iDisk remote storage and file sharing. File and information sync is available using iCloud, but the functionality is implemented a bit differently than in MobileMe. In addition, users still using Snow Leopard also can’t upgrade to iCloud.
It’s a tricky problem for thousands of users. There isn’t a single online service that delivers quite the same mix of features and functionality that Apple offered with MobileMe, but by combining some apps and services, you can get pretty close to MobileMe’s feature set. We’ve gone through all of the main competitors to try to find the best services for the soon-to-be dispossessed MobileMe subscriber.
As you’re probably aware, MobileMe shuts down on June 30, and along with it will go hundreds of thousands of users public webpages, photo galleries, and iDisk folders. In an effort to save this data, the Archiveteam has downloaded all of it. That’s a whopping 272 Terabytes, not Gigabytes, of data.
Widespread personal cloud adoption rests on iCloud-like mobile and desktop OS integration
Cloud storage accounts for just 7% of our digital content according to Gartner the industry research firm. Given the ubiquity of cloud services and their ability to sync personal data, photos, documents, and just about everything else with our iPhone, iPads, Mac, PCs, and other devices, that number may sound a bit small. After all, the range of content that iCloud is capable of syncing in Lion and iOS 5 isn’t exactly minor.
Gartner also predicts that the percentage of the average user’s digital property will grow to more than five times that by 2016. At that point, the firm sees most users store more that a third (36%) of their digital content in various clouds. That news isn’t exactly surprising for Apple customers. Apple is making a major push for seamless iCloud integration in Mountain Lion and iOS 6. That said, the firm’s report digital storage does have a few surprises in it. In some ways the report shows that Apple is leading rather than following the personal cloud industry.
![Getting Evicted From MobileMe? Here Are The Best Alternatives [Feature]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mobileme.jpg "mobileme")
