Apple Introduces iCloud: Contact, Cal, Docs, Photos, and Music Syncing Free of Charge

[macintoshdaddy]

Apple should really let paying MobileMe users beta test iCloud. It could save them a lot of time instead of just letting devs try it out.

 

[MrSmith]

Steve said imported photos get synced to the photostream, too. Does that mean photos imported from iOS devices only? How about photos from my DSLR?

 

[callme]

Yep I'd like to know about this too.

Me to:

What happens to:

iWeb - Websites that I have created and need / want to keep are all stored on MobileMe, do we lose the storage / hosting? If so this will be areal pain to find another location and then somehow move or maybe even recreate all the websites.

MobileMe content - What happens to the photo / video libraries we have published on MobileMe?

Bookmarks - I can only assume iCloud will still keep our Bookmarks in sync across all our devices, otherwise it is a step backwards.

File Sharing - Do we get a replacement for file sharing on MobileMe, it find it very useful when I need to pass large files to people.

Quite a few unanswered questions at the moment.
My biggest worry is that iWeb is going to be defunct as far a MobileMe goes and we will all have to find new hosting solutions.

 

[swedefish]

If I have three Apple IDs (one for each country where I've lived in the past few years), does that mean that I will not be able to upload all my music to the same Cloud store? In other words, will my iCloud only be tied only to one Apple ID? That would be highly annoying.

 

[Lord Flashheart]

What I am really pissed about is that Apple just sent me an email a few weeks ago that I had to renew my .mac/mobile me or lose my account. I renewd at $99, but they new they would discontinue and offer it for free.

 

[mcmlxix]

I have to say that the way Apple rethought the cloud is quite clever. But I also wish that something like a Timecapsule could function as a personal cloud.

 

[johnvr]

Everyone's MobileMe has been automatically renewed till June 2012! You have a year from now to adjust and move data if you want. Or just wait till all the announcements from Apple comes out.

iDisk, Galleries, iWeb etc are all available for another year FREE! We post here because most of us are pretty tech savy. One year to adapt is REALLY long time!

Chill! it'll be fine.

I guess it's because Apple obviously announced this without giving much thought on how to inform the people who are actually paying customers. There are many questions.

In my case, I wonder how Apple is going to deal with my separate iTunes ID and Mobile Me ID plus the fact that I use two iTunes stores, the one in the US as my main one and the one in Austria to get Austria-only apps while I live there.

Apple is generally lousy with providing user manuals and other helpful information, leaving that to blogs and others. It just focuses on the cool stuff.

 

[callme]

I found this

Summary
What's happening to MobileMe?
Effective June 6, 2011, if you had an active MobileMe account, your service has been automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After this, the MobileMe service will no longer be available.


Doesn't say if I we get money back - my account was renewed in January, which means I should get half of it back

JUNE 30 2012 (look at the year).

If you renewed in January 2011, it would run out in Jan 2012, you are getting 6 months extra for free, no refund required.

 

[callme]

I'm concerned about web site hosting going away and with it the iweb application. It is not clear that this part of mobileme will migrate to the icloud.

Apple may be looking at sharing of pictures and video through the icloud and social networking sites to be the only us most people have. They may consider web sites to be unnecessary now. I hope this is not the case.

It looks like web hosting is not going to survive once you convert to iCloud based on the KB article below:

Information about the MobileMe transition
Last Modified: June 06, 2011
Article: HT4597

Summary
What's happening to MobileMe?
Effective June 6, 2011, if you had an active MobileMe account, your service has been automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After this, the MobileMe service will no longer be available.

Products Affected
MobileMe
What will happen to the content I have on MobileMe?
Apple has announced a new service called iCloud which will be available this fall and free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users. When you sign up for iCloud, you'll be able to keep your me.com or mac.com email address and move your MobileMe mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.

When iCloud becomes available this fall, more details and instructions will be provided on how to make the move.

Can I create a new MobileMe account?
You can no longer create a new 60-day trial account or start a new subscription using a code contained in a MobileMe box. However, if you have a Family Pack subscription, you can still create new family member accounts.

Can I upgrade to a Family Pack or purchase additional storage?
Effective June 6, 2011, you can no longer upgrade your Individual account to a Family Pack or purchase additional storage for your MobileMe account.

I purchased a MobileMe box and have not used the activation code inside. Can I get refund for it?
Yes. If you have an unused activation code from a MobileMe box, you can submit a refund request.

 

[btcutter]

Maybe it's the hype that sites like these build up before an Apple announcement, but so far I'm not impressed by what Apple has rolled out.

I have MobileMe, never use it for documents and have never had a problem with synching music and photos in iTunes.

Now, Apple wants to sync it all. Why?

When I travel in Europe (where I live), any cloud-based service becomes way too expensive. So, I'm used to not using the cloud and/or to paring down what I put on there. In the US, online will just get more expensive if we all move to the cloud to put stuff there that we don't really need there, as is Apple default setup.

I'm an avid photographer, but fail to see why on earth I would want 1000 pictures on my devices. It's not that I'm going to browse them for fun. What I want is a low-res file on my iPhone, a high-res on my iPad and the RAW file on my computer and backup hard drives. And I don't want to use iPhoto, because it's too basic and uses a file structure that makes me cry.

I also can't have the model photos that I take show up on my kids' devices, nor do I think my wife would enjoy them very much on her devices.

I also dread getting the music my kids ordered automatically added to my own devices.

So, in the end, Apple is giving me something that I already have, but now it's going to be free (I'm lucky that my MobileMe account is running out around the time they're introducing iCloud). I don't know yet what they do with family accounts or how much storage they're going to allow (is it an alternative to backup storage?) and for what price.

I don't know how much control they're going to give me between not using the service and tweaking it so it makes sense for me.

if you are a avid photographer why are you using an iPhone for photos? Any point and shot is better than a camera phone. You still can still upload your photo from camera to Mac via SD card or cable. Doesn't change that.

Don't turn on the iCloud on your kids devices or have them have different Apple ID.

I don't understand why free 5GB of storage per Apple ID is a bad thing?

 

[btcutter]

I guess it's because Apple obviously announced this without giving much thought on how to inform the people who are actually paying customers. There are many questions.

In my case, I wonder how Apple is going to deal with my separate iTunes ID and Mobile Me ID plus the fact that I use two iTunes stores, the one in the US as my main one and the one in Austria to get Austria-only apps while I live there.

Apple is generally lousy with providing user manuals and other helpful information, leaving that to blogs and others. It just focuses on the cool stuff.

No offense here but you created the problem with multiple ID's not Apple. Doubt Google will help to solve that problem as well. Besides you have two ID's that's give you 10GB of storage space!

Again, Apple gave us FREE year of MobileMe and allow us to adapt. Apple isn't asking you to change by end of the week. How is that bad? Solutions will be out. Just not THIS MINUTE.

 

[thirteen1031]

Just to clarify: the new iOS and Lion will ship with the iCloud share feature turned on. It is easy to shut it off.

Thanks for all the clarifications! Really! I just nabbed a few questions along the way and, for example, in one instance they all seemed to be asking about music rather than books, movies, etc. So that's all I answered. I was quite lax in the details Your additions really crystalize how it's all going to work.

 

[ggibson913]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

Hasn't google. Been doing this browns couple of yeas

 

[ggibson913]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I guess I don't "get" it, what the big deal about this is.

I already have Gmail.

I already have Flickr.

And I already have online storage.

How is this any different?

Agreed

 

[SPBMacintosh]

iclouds a great idea and all, but if you've got a slow internet connection then it's not really worth it IMO

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

It appears that Apple has decided that they cannot compete with Dropbox, et al. Looks like they are abandoning any sort of meaningful "cloud" data storage for it's customers.

Also, given that Apple (and it's customers) is one of the highest users of wireless bandwidth (along with Netflix) why is it that they are not raising hell with the telecoms who want to limit that bandwidth/data transfer rates/even content. It is in everyone's interests (except maybe the telecoms in the short run) for a basically unlimited amount of bandwidth at the highest speeds possible to make these cloud services workable.

 

[johnvr]

if you are a avid photographer why are you using an iPhone for photos? Any point and shot is better than a camera phone. You still can still upload your photo from camera to Mac via SD card or cable. Doesn't change that.

Don't turn on the iCloud on your kids devices or have them have different Apple ID.

I don't understand why free 5GB of storage per Apple ID is a bad thing?

I'm generally not using my iPhone for photography. Did I say I did? I just said I don't need the same kind of images on different devices.

I also said I want to be able to fine tune what goes where, while at the moment Apple makes it sound as if it's a yes or no decision to use iCloud. I want to be able to decide what I put in the cloud and what I don't.

Simple, isn't it?

 

[johnvr]

No offense here but you created the problem with multiple ID's not Apple. Doubt Google will help to solve that problem as well. Besides you have two ID's that's give you 10GB of storage space!

Again, Apple gave us FREE year of MobileMe and allow us to adapt. Apple isn't asking you to change by end of the week. How is that bad? Solutions will be out. Just not THIS MINUTE.

How did I create the problem? I used iTunes way before I signed up for MobileMe. MobileMe forces you to create a new ID, so there was never a chance to link the two. Before that, I had trouble enough converting from an AOL ID to a regular ID on iTunes.

No, Apple didn't give me free MobileMe. MobileMe is going to be iCloud, so they're giving you an extra period for free of something that's going to be free anyway.

I happen to have my account run out this fall, so my account period coincides with them introducing iCloud. But for all the others, unless Apple comes up with a clear refund policy, they're going to be slapped with a class action suit.

And one reason I point out the questions I have here is that I just have a sliver of hope that Apple at some point cares about his paying customers, instead of just about Jobs's 10-year-old dream of not having a file management system.

 

[btcutter]

No, Apple didn't give me free MobileMe. MobileMe is going to be iCloud, so they're giving you an extra period for free of something that's going to be free anyway.

.

My interpretation of free MobileMe till June 2012 is that all the services such as iDisk, iWeb (hosting), 20gb of storage etc that's not standard to iCloud will still be available only to MobileMe users not iCloud users. That's the difference.

 

[andiwm2003]

"......................

And one reason I point out the questions I have here is that I just have a sliver of hope that Apple at some point cares about his paying customers, instead of just about Jobs's 10-year-old dream of not having a file management system.

the lack of a file system is what bothers me most. I'm looking forward to all the threads starting with 'I can't find my file....'. No filesystem is ok for a toy like an iPhone but not for serious project work.

Apple is very annoying with their constantly taking away features and pretending this is then an improvement.

 

[curtisinoc]

(sorry if this has been answered . . )

How about multiple users on same Apple ID/account?? My wife and I both have iPhones and sync/share the same account on iTunes on one Apple ID. Where will photos, docs etc go if both of our iPhones are on same account???

Maybe an option to have separate iCloud folders for each user??

 

[johnvr]

My interpretation of free MobileMe till June 2012 is that all the services such as iDisk, iWeb (hosting), 20gb of storage etc that's not standard to iCloud will still be available only to MobileMe users not iCloud users. That's the difference.

You might be right. In that case, the people using those should be worried about what's going to happen.

I don't use any of those, as I prefer Dropbox for storage and my own hosting solutions for web sites.

 

[tigress666]

No, Apple didn't give me free MobileMe. MobileMe is going to be iCloud, so they're giving you an extra period for free of something that's going to be free anyway.

No, there are differences.

1. 20 GB of space on mobileme
2. You can have Mobileme on Leopard/snow leopard (maybe tiger, don't know if that is still supported or not). If you want icloud, you'll have to upgrade systems to Lion.
3. You are still going to have to go through some sort of transfer process to move over to iCloud I believe (like when they upgraded the calendar on Mobileme).

So, for me, reason #2 is a big reason I'm glad my mobileme got expanded (gives me a year to decide if I want to upgrade to Lion or if keeping Snow Leopard is worth giving up mobileme/icloud synching.

And also #3 (no hurry to try to transfer stuff. Can take time to back up stuff if stuff gets erased. It happened to many people when they changed the calendars on mobileme).

 

[btcutter]

You might be right. In that case, the people using those should be worried about what's going to happen.

I don't use any of those, as I prefer Dropbox for storage and my own hosting solutions for web sites.

Got a whole year to deal with transition.

I bet Apple with come out with tier services for additional storage because that's already one of the biggest complaints (don't know why because you need to pay to have online storage everywhere).

 

[SandynJosh]

So does all this integration with 10.7 and iOS 5 mean that those of use still using our perfectly serviceable PowerMac G5 and a 2nd gen iPod touch are going to be out of luck when June of 2012 rolls around?

Your computer and iPod Touch will still be useful as independent devices. You will not have any automatic syncing and other new features. The time to give it up is nigh...