All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
MobileMe, Apple's subscription-based online storage suite, has officially closed its doors. Users who want an Apple-flavored cloud storage option will have to turn to iCloud now.
Apple announced it would eventually be shuttering MobileMe and rolling some of its services into iCloud last summer. iCloud contains many of the same features as MobileMe (like mail, contacts and calendar syncing), but eliminates some of the less popular features like iDisk, MobileMe Gallery and iWeb publishing. If you haven't yet transitioned data stored on MobileMe to another service, you can still download Gallery and iDisk files from me.com for a limited time.
Apple put up an informational website to help ease the pain of MobileMe's shutdown, including links to longer articles for people looking to transition from iDisk. And for people who aren't interested in any type of Apple cloud storage solution, there's a host of alternatives available.
MobileMe has been one of Apple's least successful product endeavors. The 2008 launch of the service was marked by numerous bugs, as well as an e-mail blackout for thousands of subscribers. The release went so poorly, in fact, that critics started calling it "MobileMess." Perhaps the worst criticism came from former CEO Steve Jobs himself. According to Fortune, Jobs reportedly gathered the MobileMe team together shortly after the product launch, asking "Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" When he got a reply, he said, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”
The transition from MobileMe to iCloud has also been rough for many users. iCloud, whose purpose is largely to unify and sync storage across iOS and Mac devices, is actually the fourth incarnation of web-based storage clients for Apple. In 2000, iTools was a free option for Mac users, which was replaced by subscription-only .Mac in mid 2002. .Mac gave way to MobileMe in 2008, which has since been replaced by iCloud.
