Apple Driving iCloud Conversions with Free Copies of Snow Leopard for MobileMe Users

amiganut said:

I am becoming an orphan. Both my G4 Mac's still work. I'm 74 on SS and a small pension. At this point, the only path to keep my e-mail account is on my iPod touch. Of course the "Cloud" will be of no use to me. Now I know how users of OS9 felt when OS10 was released.

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You won't lose your email account. You can still access your email, contacts, and calendars from the icloud.com website. You need to switch to iCloud before June 30th, but if you don't have a computer with Lion you can still use the iCloud stuff on the web.

The switch is actually done over the web but so you don't need Lion for that.

*LTD* said:

Still running an Early 2008 Macbook Pro. Ran every OS since then beautifully. Added 6GB of RAM recently. Easily has another two years in it, if not more.

You don't *need* to run the latest version of OS X on it, either.

No one is "forced" to do anything.

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First world problems here: Us iOS developers have no choice. If I'd found more well-paid web work, I'd upvote your posting with the other hand still typing in 10.6 on my 2009 MBP.

JimAtLaw said:

+1. I am still on MobileMe because they idiotically removed keychain sync for no reason and with no replacement.

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FWIW I have given up and thrown my trust at Keychain2Go (http://www.jinx.de/Keychain2Go.html), maybe because it's written by fellow Germans. It does sync over Bonjour, no fishy third-party server is involved. But it's still another party I have to trust with, basically, root access to everything I own.

Lone Deranger said:

Yep, same here.

Apple, I might have upgraded to Lion by now if you hadn't axed Rosetta.

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Exactly. I do not need to upgrade my current Quark 6 software on 2 Macs and a Laptop.

So, in axing Rosseta Apple is telling me to pay for an additional 3 x Quark 9 licences for software I do not need, or lose out on planned future services. Also probably the ability to own and sync a future iPhone or iPad. I qualify this statement with the fact I had to upgrade from Tiger when I purchased my iPad.

I am not even clear if I can even upgrade from Quark 6.5 to 9 in any case, but paying £897 or £2397, is not an option for the basic usage we need this software.

You CAN technically run iCloud on SL or any other previous carnation, if they wanted you to.

There is NO argument for me to consider from any fan boys in Apple's defence, when you can run the latest version of iTunes 10.6.1 and iCloud on any old ropey PC running Windows XP. So please..., unless you or Apple are now telling me that Windows XP is a better and more powerful OS than Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger etc, save it.

Apple want to keep the millions of potential and prospective PC based iPhone/Pad/Pod users happy, but are content to screw over their loyal existing Mac community.

This is not what Apple was about when I 'switched' in 1996.... In fact it was Apple's unique selling point that all software was backwards compatible and in contrast it was Microsoft that was forcing premature upgrades to software and hardware.

Big unfunny joke.

Rant over...

ehh

I'm waiting for Ivy Bridge...

Give me that, and they won't have to send me a free CD to upgrade. I'll pay Apple $2000...

Otherwise, I find it completely silly to upgrade to Lion for a computer that I will be retiring very, very shortly.

At this point, eligible users might as well install Snow Leopard and wait for Mountain Lion (assuming it can be upgraded from Snow Leopard).

Although I am more or less productive with Lion, it is indeed RAM hungry, often refusing to reclaim inactive memory and ultimately causing page outs. I had to upgrade my MBP to 16GB as a workaround.

Taz Mangus said:

I have Lion installed on a 2009 2.0GHz Mac-Mini with 4GB of RAM on it and Lion runs great on it. RAM is cheap these days so why not add it if you can. Besides the more RAM you have the less you have to worry about page-outs due to running multiple programs at the same time.

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Sounds to me like you are extremely lucky if it runs well in only 4GB or RAM. I have Lion installed at home on a 2008 2.4GHz iMac and it runs like molasses a good bit of the time. I also have it at work preinstalled on a 13" 2011 MBP i7 with 8GB and although it runs better it will certainly not win any speed contests. I wish I could easily go back to SL on both (retaining all of my apps and data) and I would do it without a thought.

newagemac said:

You won't lose your email account. You can still access your email, contacts, and calendars from the icloud.com website. You need to switch to iCloud before June 30th, but if you don't have a computer with Lion you can still use the iCloud stuff on the web.

The switch is actually done over the web but so you don't need Lion for that.

Click to expand...

Is this true?
The only reason I would upgrade to Lion is to keep my mac.com email address and be able to receive and send emails with that address. So I thought I needed iCloud access to do it.
Can I stay on SL and use icloud.com for email?

Morod said:

Is this true?
The only reason I would upgrade to Lion is to keep my mac.com email address and be able to receive and send emails with that address. So I thought I needed iCloud access to do it.
Can I stay on SL and use icloud.com for email?

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correct, Lion is only needed for the full icloud features like photo stream and sycning contacts and notes and things like that

danny_w said:

Sounds to me like you are extremely lucky if it runs well in only 4GB or RAM. I have Lion installed at home on a 2008 2.4GHz iMac and it runs like molasses a good bit of the time. I also have it at work preinstalled on a 13" 2011 MBP i7 with 8GB and although it runs better it will certainly not win any speed contests. I wish I could easily go back to SL on both (retaining all of my apps and data) and I would do it without a thought.

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I did a clean install of Lion. I have heard people state that when they did a clean install they found that the performance of the system vastly improved vs. just doing a upgrade install over Snow Leopard. All 3 of my Mac computers, a 2009 Mac-Mini, a 2009 17" MacBook Pro and 2011 27" iMac all run with Lion without any lag.

amiganut said:

I am becoming an orphan. Both my G4 Mac's still work. I'm 74 on SS and a small pension. At this point, the only path to keep my e-mail account is on my iPod touch. Of course the "Cloud" will be of no use to me. Now I know how users of OS9 felt when OS10 was released.

Click to expand...

newagemac said:

You won't lose your email account. You can still access your email, contacts, and calendars from the icloud.com website. You need to switch to iCloud before June 30th, but if you don't have a computer with Lion you can still use the iCloud stuff on the web.

The switch is actually done over the web but so you don't need Lion for that.

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The person doesn't even need to use the web based email to keep using it on PowerPC.

Using the new settings you can still use the email service in Mail.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864
The funny thing is my settings are a little different to that. I had to check on the Intel Mac to see.

Outgoing is still smtp.me.com as long as you set it to use port 587. Incoming is, p01-imap.mail.me.com and you stick your email aliases (tom@mac.com, jerry@me.com and so on) if you have any, in the email address box below description.

It'll be like this problem never happened.

palmerc2 said:

I have no desire to upgrade to Lion, in fact it's the opposite.

Why not just make iCloud available on Snow Leopard??

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I believed they will come up with iCloud support for SL until I've finished reading this article...

aurichie said:

Your loss. You are missing out on some incredible Apple technologies by insisting on living in the Rosetta Stone Age. iCloud is the future of the internet and data storage. My advice would be get with today before the past leaves you trailing so far behind you'll never catch up.

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I really couldn't care less about iCloud. Why would I care about internet syncing my iPhone with my Mac? I plug it when I'm home to charge it and let it sync.

I can either have iCloud (useless) and use more RAM on Lion (nope) OR I can keep the best PC game (Age of Empires II), a great Latin dictionary, and a bunch of other random PPC apps I sometimes need badly.

If I ever get a new computer, it's going to run Leopard, and it's going to be crazy fast.

I have an early intel mac mini. (Core Duo)

Can't upgrade to lion. My other imac, desktop, and laptop are all PPC. Lame.

4 computers, all work pretty well still, and none can upgrade to lion. Just my story.

Year ahead

I don't understand you people. Apple gave you a full year ahead of time that MM was going to end in June. You guys are acting like you are just now being told about the ending and have to rush to get the change over. :/

As for 10.6.9, forget. It's not going to happen, it was a rumor and never stated that it was going to happen. iCloud is a selling point for Lion and Mountain Lion, they are not going to release iCloud for Snow Leopard because of this. :/

As for work arounds, there seems to be as stated in this thread, so you have some hope for you. I don't quite understand the work arounds, but I'm sure those that are posting them can help you.

Hugh

aurichie said:

Your loss. You are missing out on some incredible Apple technologies by insisting on living in the Rosetta Stone Age. iCloud is the future of the internet and data storage. My advice would be get with today before the past leaves you trailing so far behind you'll never catch up.

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In my opinion, Dropbox > iCloud.
If Google Drive combines the storage capabilities of Dropbox with the services of iCloud (all of which Google already offers in some way or another through its various services), iCloud will vanish into the annals of history.

Hugh said:

I don't understand you people. Apple gave you a full year ahead of time that MM was going to end in June. You guys are acting like you are just now being told about the ending and have to rush to get the change over. :/

As for 10.6.9, forget. It's not going to happen, it was a rumor and never stated that it was going to happen. iCloud is a selling point for Lion and Mountain Lion, they are not going to release iCloud for Snow Leopard because of this. :/

As for work arounds, there seems to be as stated in this thread, so you have some hope for you. I don't quite understand the work arounds, but I'm sure those that are posting them can help you.

Hugh

Click to expand...

I started moving my email and other services elsewhere right after the announcement of iCloud because I have already lived through 1 horribly botched Apple cloud transition and did not look forward to another. I finally signed up for the iCloud conversion recently just to see if it worked for me, and of course it did not (bookmark sync, the only thing that I really wanted from it, is fatally broken IMHO). If iCloud is a selling point for Lion then I wish apple well; it is worse than MM ever was and a huge black mark for Apple.

I decided to look at the difference between how much RAM Lion 10.7.3 uses and Snow Leopard 10.6.8 uses. I used Activity Monitor to see how much RAM is being used.

All my Mac computers are left up and running 24-hours a day and when they are not in use they are asleep.

The RAM being used by Lion 10.7.3 on the Mac-Mini (4GB total RAM):

Free: 1.02GB
Wired: 783MB
Active: 1.90GB
Inactive: 320MB
Used: 2.98GB
Page-ins: 753MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 464KB (0 bytes/sec)

The RAM being used by Lion 10.7.3 on my iMac (16GB total RAM):

Free: 13.84GB
Wired: 1.22GB
Active: 780MB
Inactive: 167.8MB
Used: 2.14GB
Page-ins: 323.6MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 0 bytes (0 bytes/sec)

The RAM being used by Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on my iMac (16GB total RAM):

Free: 14.54GB
Wired: 1.08GB
Active: 290.3MB
Inactive: 96.4MB
Used: 1.45GB
Page-ins: 86.5MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 0 bytes (0 bytes/sec)

Of course this is just a snapshot and does not reflect what memory is used by individual programs that are running on each of my Macs.

"You are missing out on some incredible Apple technologies by insisting on living in the Rosetta Stone Age. "

But they are not technologies useful to me. So skipping them is entirely acceptable. I have no iphones nor an ipad, so the new features in Lion or Mountain Lion are unneeded.

On the otherhand, there is S-video; I need it, the new Macs don't support it, so I keep the mini with the 950 video. And that won't run even Lion, (not a core 2 cpu).

beowulf70 said:

I still have only two very old PowerBook G4s at home for email and the odd small job. I can't move to iCloud!

So, Apple is now forcing me to either purchase a new Mac before the end of June or lose my MobileMe account.

Click to expand...

In other news: microsoft is phasing out support for IE6, and Firefox 1.0 is no longer supported.

Your powerbook is what... 7 years old now? More? Eventually hardware (and software) expires and becomes unsupportable.

You can still use icloud through a web browser.

Simplicated said:

I guess you have no clue what I was talking about. In the picture it says Mac OSX. They might want to double check before letting everyone see it.

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I've seen them make that typo before, so I guess I wasn't too shocked. It's better then what I've seen others refer to it as. "Mac OS TEN 10.7" or "Mac OS 10.7"

Radio said:

U guys may hate to agree with me but icloud sucks.

Yes it's still "new" by some people but it has a lot of catching up tO do to products like google.

I want to use iCloud but have u been on icloud.com?! It's garbage! It's like a college kid didn't finish his senior project and left things half done!

Please fix iCloud and make it appealing apple !!!

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Hmmm... I've used mobile me for years and that's all iCloud is really. Works fine here, must be a user error... oh well. I don't know what you want it to do, maybe your laundry? All it does is sync your contacts and such... not rocket science here. I use Google too, and have has similar results with BOTH!

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Taz Mangus said:

I decided to look at the difference between how much RAM Lion 10.7.3 uses and Snow Leopard 10.6.8 uses. I used Activity Monitor to see how much RAM is being used.

All my Mac computers are left up and running 24-hours a day and when they are not in use they are asleep.

The RAM being used by Lion 10.7.3 on the Mac-Mini (4GB total RAM):

Free: 1.02GB
Wired: 783MB
Active: 1.90GB
Inactive: 320MB
Used: 2.98GB
Page-ins: 753MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 464KB (0 bytes/sec)

The RAM being used by Lion 10.7.3 on my iMac (16GB total RAM):

Free: 13.84GB
Wired: 1.22GB
Active: 780MB
Inactive: 167.8MB
Used: 2.14GB
Page-ins: 323.6MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 0 bytes (0 bytes/sec)

The RAM being used by Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on my iMac (16GB total RAM):

Free: 14.54GB
Wired: 1.08GB
Active: 290.3MB
Inactive: 96.4MB
Used: 1.45GB
Page-ins: 86.5MB (0 bytes/sec)
Page-outs: 0 bytes (0 bytes/sec)

Of course this is just a snapshot and does not reflect what memory is used by individual programs that are running on each of my Macs.

Click to expand...

You have MORE than enough RAM...

Not free to "everyone"

ScottishCaptain said:

Woohoo!

Free SL disks!

Sign me up. I've always wanted a backup incase my restore disks got scratched or damaged somehow. Anything to keep my system running the way it is on 10.6.8 is awesome, especially when it's free.

**** Lion (and probably ML too) and iCloud (which is incidentally hosted on US servers... Privacy? What privacy?). But thanks anyways for the restore disks to the most awesome version of Mac OS X to date!

-SC

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I went to the apple store today to see how to obtain a free copy of snow leopard and was told first " I THINK THAT'S JUST A RUMOR " then after asking him to find out he came back and said you have to have a valid and active mobile me account, which I don't so! No dice!

throAU said:

In other news: microsoft is phasing out support for IE6, and Firefox 1.0 is no longer supported.

Your powerbook is what... 7 years old now? More? Eventually hardware (and software) expires and becomes unsupportable.

You can still use icloud through a web browser.

Click to expand...

Obviously hardware and software becomes obsolete over time, more so with computers. I'm not denying that fact.

I guess I've been lucky to have the very latest Mac on my desk at work for over 22 years now and kind of got used to bringing my MacBook Pro home when needed. I've just not needed to purchase one personally. But as times change I now find myself in a freelance position with no New Mac to call my own.

Yes, my PowerBook G4 is 8 years old. (It still runs CS4 fine and just about copes with everything I'm now throwing at it.) But its not as old as my MobileMe account. This is my private and my business email account.

I just have to buy the new MacBook Pro when it's released. I don't feel comfortable not having my contacts, emails, etc. on a physical object in front of me just yet. Call me old fashioned....

So I have a MobileMe Family Account and of course that results in me having the ability to make five accounts. Apple's sending my sister and I a free copy of Snow Leopard though now I'm left wondering what to do with them. I wonder if I could just fill up the rest of my unassigned accounts and order another free copy - anyone want to try it out and see if they can get a free disk?

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throAU said:

In other news: microsoft is phasing out support for IE6, and Firefox 1.0 is no longer supported.

Your powerbook is what... 7 years old now? More? Eventually hardware (and software) expires and becomes unsupportable.

You can still use icloud through a web browser.

Click to expand...

Don't be a snob. The guy's perfectly content with his G4's so there's really no imperative reason for him to replace them other than Apple's restrictions.

Goldinboy17 said:

Don't be a snob. The guy's perfectly content with his G4's so there's really no imperative reason for him to replace them other than Apple's restrictions.

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Then there's no need to upgrade it?

Look... apple have said MobileMe is discontinued (by the time it happens) nearly a year ago. iCloud is free because it is funded by hardware / software... don't buy hardware/software, and essentially you are not funding it.

Not trying to be a dick about it, but there is no such thing as a free lunch - just stating the facts.


My point with IE6 and Firefox 1 is that no one else is providing support for obsolete hardware or software from 7+ years ago either. Its the way the computing industry has always been: it used to be a 5 year cycle (roughly), getting 7 out of hardware is already more than you can reasonably expect. It had a very good run, but eventually you need to move on.

If you need to access icloud without the software support, you can do so via a web browser (edit: or an ipod touch, if you want a physical device, for cheap).