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Apple Discontinuing Legacy .Mac Homepage Viewing

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Apple has announced via an email to MobileMe members that pages created with the legacy .Mac Homepage web application will cease to be viewable online as of November 8, 2010.

Dear MobileMe member,

Over a year ago, we retired the .Mac HomePage application for publishing new pages, but allowed previously published pages to remain viewable on the web. On November 8, 2010, we will discontinue online viewing of photos, movies, and files shared using .Mac HomePage.

Please note that your content will not be deleted. Any photos, movies, or files you have published using HomePage will continue to remain on your MobileMe iDisk in the Movies, Pictures, or Public folders. We recommend MobileMe Gallery as a great way to share photos and movies on the web. Please read these instructions on how to move your HomePage photos and movies to MobileMe Gallery.

MobileMe members who have published web pages using iWeb will not be affected by this change....
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As noted in the email, Apple retired the .Mac Homepage application over a year ago for posting or editing content, though at the time Apple had said the existing content would remain viewable "as long as you wish."

Article Link: Apple Discontinuing Legacy .Mac Homepage Viewing
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/08/apple-discontinuing-legacy-mac-homepage-viewing/
Out with the old.....

Is there anyone that didn't see this , they have only sent me 30+ emails and 5+ phone calls ......


In with the NEW!
 
Although this isn't a big deal AT ALL, it kinda pisses me off that Apple specifically said "as long as you wish", and then just went 100% against that and killed the program.
 
Apple has become 1984

Once again Apple just decides, we are done with that. I just love the way they try to sound so nice about letting us have it for a whole year after they discontinued it. I am paying for it was not a free service they decided didn't work. Next they will be rid of the @mac.com email and force you to use @me.com. I am migrating away from apple web services I can sure use the $100 plus I spend on a .Mac....no wait I guess it is a mobileme family pack. Apple has become the Decider. Don’t even bring up the 2 times I had to pay for Quicktime pro
 
This is INCREDIBLY vague and frustrating. Are they shutting down all web hosting from the iDisk Sites folder, or just ending hosting of the stylesheets and backgrounds needed for proper display of HTML files created by the .Mac HomePage editor? The actual HTML pages are stored in the user's Sites folder. In theory, if they do not interfere with the Sites folder and merely discontinue hosting of background assets, user HomePage pages will stay up but look horrible.

Also, in theory, if the Sites folder continues to function as-is, a user could rip copies of the background assets from Apple, store them in the Sites folder, and manually edit their HomePage HTML to keep the pages intact by removing dependency on external files.
 
Hopefully this means the Sites and Group folders will finally disappear from iDisk. And while we're at it, is anybody really still using Backup? Seeing as it's the only software listed in the Software folder I say it's time the program, the Software folder and the Backup folder disappeared too.
 
SCOTTHORN said:
Once again Apple just decides, we are done with that. I just love the way they try to sound so nice about letting us have it for a whole year after they discontinued it. I am paying for it was not a free service they decided didn't work. Next they will be rid of the @mac.com email and force you to use @me.com. I am migrating away from apple web services I can sure use the $100 plus I spend on a .Mac....no wait I guess it is a mobileme family pack. Apple has become the Decider. Don’t even bring up the 2 times I had to pay for Quicktime pro
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Aren't they hosting it?
 
This defeats part of the charm of the Internet, which is that generally pages are posted forever. I can still look back to pages I posted on tripod and freeservers.com back in the 90s. I can't imagine why Apple needs to do this (except for purity's sake and being a bit OCD), and it will confused a lot of older users who won't know how to cope (I am imagining my grandmother in particular), and it goes against the "it just works" mantra, meaning they should just automatically move them over to Web gallery or give you some easy archive option. I have pictures posted all over homepage.mac.com that I probably don't have on hard drives anymore, and even though Apple says they won't be deleted, I don't exactly trust Apple at the moment.

And seriously could this serve any other purpose than housekeeping? Rabble rabble.
 
SCOTTHORN said:
... Next they will be rid of the @mac.com email and force you to use @me.com...
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If that happens I'm done. Having 'mac' right in my email addy is the one solid thing that keeps me paying. (There are several other reasons, but they're more fluid.) I've been using and depending on it for far too long to bend over and accept the change...
 
I'm not mad, but I'm disappointed. Sure I don't update the pages effected by this, but I'd like for them to stay posted. I'll do a backup tonight of my sites folder. I'll even go through my sites and make a web archive of them... just in case I want to go back to viewing them. I have some fond memories of some of those sites!! :(

pdjudd said:
No. This is a legacy service that probably predates iWeb page design.
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Correct, this is for the Dot Mac web-based photo gallery, video posting, file posting, etc sites you were able to create. iWeb came long after this and the pages created by it are not effected.
 
Ah, this all reminds me of when Apple originally said that having a mac.com email address would be "free for life" and then rescinded that. Haven't ever put a penny toward iTools/.Mac/MobileMe since then. I'll stick with Gmail thank you.
 
dpfenninger said:
Ah, this all reminds me of when Apple originally said that having a mac.com email address would be "free for life" and then rescinded that. Haven't ever put a penny toward iTools/.Mac/MobileMe since then. I'll stick with Gmail thank you.
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"Free for Life" is an urban legend. Neither Jobs or anyone else at Apple ever made that promise.

Here is a discussion thread from 2002 on the subject.
 
swingerofbirch said:
But Apple did say on the boxes that Macs came in "Comes with iTools." And then iTools disappeared. So they took away a feature from a product people had already paid for.
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No, people did not pay for iTools. That was a free service. People paid for a Mac and got a free program - that changed and probably changed the boxes once that happened.

Not to mention that iTools as a services whose terms probably included language that said (legitmatly) that the services could be terminated at any time.

The change in cost came as a re-launch.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
"Free for Life" is an urban legend. Neither Jobs or anyone else at Apple ever made that promise.

Here is a discussion thread from 2002 on the subject.
Click to expand...

Ok, I stand corrected. I still would have liked to have seen a reduced-feature/email-only version of MobileMe that doesn't require a $100 subscription. That's all.
 
Nem Wan said:
This is INCREDIBLY vague and frustrating.
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It seems pretty obvious to me that Apple is preparing to phase out the Mac entirely over the next several years (I'd estimate 5-6 at most) and replace it with mobile devices (i.e. iOS). The Mac is the past. The iPad is the future. The ONLY future for Apple. This is only partially due to some crazy vision of Steve that mobile devices are the only thing that will be used in the future. It is simply far too lucrative to get 30% of ALL software profits for your entire operating system and that is what Apple wants for all software made for its platform. Call it the iTax.
 
SCOTTHORN said:
Once again Apple just decides, we are done with that. I just love the way they try to sound so nice about letting us have it for a whole year after they discontinued it. I am paying for it was not a free service they decided didn't work. Next they will be rid of the @mac.com email and force you to use @me.com. I am migrating away from apple web services I can sure use the $100 plus I spend on a .Mac....no wait I guess it is a mobileme family pack. Apple has become the Decider. Don’t even bring up the 2 times I had to pay for Quicktime pro
Click to expand...

Yeah, is it so hard for a big company like Apple to keep a web server running? I'm fed up with their long-running "jump on our latest bandwagon or get left out" policy.

Here's a tip for those who may not know: Mobile Me memberships are prorated when they're cancelled. So if you're done with Apple web services, as I was, you don't have to wait for it to expire. There is no cancel account button. You have to contact them through their online chat thing.
 
swingerofbirch said:
But Apple did say on the boxes that Macs came in "Comes with iTools." And then iTools disappeared. So they took away a feature from a product people had already paid for.
Click to expand...

But you didn't have to buy a new Mac to get iTools, you only had to use OS 9, so hard to claim it was a feature of a new Mac or that people paid for it.

dpfenninger said:
Ok, I stand corrected. I still would have liked to have seen a reduced-feature/email-only version of MobileMe that doesn't require a $100 subscription. That's all.
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Agree Apple should have let legacy iTools users keep their .Mac address w/o subscribing to .Mac. but that ship has sailed. As with any web/Internet based service the user is always at the mercy of the provider. That is why I only use "the cloud" as backup. People that use "the cloud" as an alternative to local storage or traditional apps are asking for trouble since the plug can be pulled at any moment.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
It seems pretty obvious to me that Apple is preparing to phase out the Mac entirely over the next several years (I'd estimate 5-6 at most) and replace it with mobile devices (i.e. iOS). The Mac is the past. The iPad is the future. The ONLY future for Apple. This is only partially due to some crazy vision of Steve that mobile devices are the only thing that will be used in the future. It is simply far too lucrative to get 30% of ALL software profits for your entire operating system and that is what Apple wants for all software made for its platform. Call it the iTax.
Click to expand...

And the justification for a locked-down iOS with baby software (can't even search a web page in Safari) and all kinds of usage restrictions? Why, it's mobile. It needs all this "security."

I was impressed with Apple beginning in the late 90s, when Jobs took the company down a new path and created some innovative products. Everything since the iPhone has taken a much darker path. If his vision succeeds, there will be no wild west in computers, where you can buy your hardware and do what you please with it. You'll do it Jobs' way or not at all. Even when I agree with some of his design principles, I do not agree with having them forced on me. And while nobody forces me to buy Apple mobile products, just think about this: they will not allow me to install whatever software or OS I choose. Yes, you can hack it, but it's not exactly easy for most users, and Apple is always defeating those loopholes. They're too busy trying to perfect their "experience" to consider that maybe a few of us just don't care for it, and want an "advanced mode" switch to let us access the hardware. It's too lucrative for them, because most users are too stupid to notice that their freedoms are being taken away... look, multi-touch! Apps! Other companies are going to follow Apple's lead, and I don't think it will be confined to mobile devices. We face a future where all hardware is locked down and restricted, where there is no freedom in computing like we're used to. Where all the makers of computer hardware will sell it to you only with restrictions -- you use it with our software, our way, or not at all. This is why after years on the Mac, I switched to Linux. I am fed up with the direction that mainstream computing is taking.
 
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