MobileMe no More

If you use an apple computer, iPhone &/or iTunes chances are you may also have started using some of the MobileMe services (they were one of those bloatware products that managed to install itself along with other software, you should realize you are using these mobileme services because they are subscription based offerings, ie costs you a yearly rental). Apple have announced that mobileme will be shut down on June 30th 2012. Much of its automatic synchronisation functionality will be transferred to iCloud (which is largely free). I guess the rub is that some of the services people actually used and liked are not being offered under iCloud, these are the features which offer on-line storage, iDisk (an on-line “hard drive”), iWeb (web publishing platform) & Gallery (web based photo sharing). I gather this is because apple doesn’t see themselves as a storage business (I read this to mean they don’t believe there is the money in it)

I’m sure apple will warn customers (but a quick ask around indicates they may not have here in Australia yet!) but you only have a couple of weeks to retrieve your works from Apple’s mobileme Gallery. So where else can you store your photos to share on the web? Well there are lots of places, here are some of the more popular ones, flickr, photobucket, smugmug, Picasa web albums (aka google+ photo) even facebook. The downside is they are not exactly well integrated down into all apples portable devices, but there are plenty of individual apps to provide the synchronisation into these services. Probably the most popular service for iphone photos remains instagram.

Good luck trying to get a refund!