MobileMe is dead. Long live iCloud. But just what is iCloud? Well, the speculation is finally over. There won’t be any more vague press releases from Apple or questionable “leaks” published by Apple geek blogs. After the WWDC 2011 keynote, we have a clear answer. iCloud is a cloud storage solution that saves your music, photos, apps, and documents and wirelessly pushes them to all of your devices. The best part about it? It’s fully automatic. No more plugging your iPhone into your computer to sync your calendar or contacts. Thank God. This service will be especially useful for people using multiple Apple products. And it’s free. Well, it’s freemium. You get 5GB of free storage when you sign up and will have the ability to upgrade to more space. Note: iTunes purchased music, apps, and books don’t count against your free storage, which is a nice perk. iTunes Match, the upgraded iCloud music offering, will allow you to store your entire music collection in the cloud for $24.99 a year. iCloud and iTunes Match will be available this fall for iOS 5 and OSX Lion users.
MobileMe users may be wondering what this means for their service – which also offers limited cloud storage and the ability to manually sync data. The short answer: MobileMe is dead. Here are some key take-aways from the letter Apple sent out to all MobileMe subscribers (see full message below).
Quoted from a letter from Apple:
When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your MobileMe email address and move your mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.
Your MobileMe subscription will be automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After that date, MobileMe will no longer be available.
You can watch the streaming video from the WWDC 2011 keynote here where iCloud was officially announced.
LETTER FROM APPLE REGARDING MobileMe and iCloud
Dear MobileMe member,
We’d like to share some exciting news with you about iCloud — Apple’s upcoming cloud service, which stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to your devices. iCloud integrates seamlessly with your apps, so everything happens automatically. Available this fall, iCloud is free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.
What does this mean for you as a MobileMe member?
When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your MobileMe email address and move your mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.
Your MobileMe subscription will be automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After that date, MobileMe will no longer be available.
When iCloud becomes available this fall, we will provide more details and instructions on how to make the move. In the meantime, we encourage you to learn more about iCloud.
Sincerely,
The MobileMe Team
