July 1, 2012: Apple shuts down its MobileMe net service. Launched in 2008, the subscription-based suite of on-line companies and software program provided options like push e-mail, information storage, Discover My iPhone, a photograph gallery, chat services and a web-based calendar.
After letting the service limp alongside for 4 years, Apple lastly decides to drag the plug, pushing customers to modify to iCloud. The corporate provides MobileMe customers till the top of July to take away their information from the service.
MobileMe: Apple’s failed iCloud precursor
Apple’s ill-fated iCloud precursor was an early try at working a cloud-based subscription service. Not like in the present day’s month-to-month choices, Apple priced MobileMe at $99 as a one-off cost for a person plan or $149 for a Household Pack. Cupertino additionally provided top-up choices for these wanting so as to add storage.
MobileMe was a part of Apple’s “digital hub” technique, introduced quickly after CEO Steve Jobs returned to the corporate within the late Nineteen Nineties. Apple had experimented with subscription-based web companies for Mac customers because the early 2000s. MobileMe expanded these efforts to cowl iPhone and iPod contact homeowners, whereas overhauling the service for OS X (and including assist for Home windows PCs).
‘Change for the remainder of us’
“Consider MobileMe as ‘Change for the remainder of us,’” stated Jobs in a press launch to mark the launch. “Now customers who will not be a part of an enterprise that runs Change can get the identical push e-mail, push calendars and push contacts that the massive guys get.”
On paper, it sounded nice. In follow, it by no means lived as much as its promise. As early as August 4, 2008 — only a month after delivery — Jobs apologized for the service’s botched rollout.
“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe similtaneously iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software program and the App Retailer,” he wrote in an e-mail to workers.
MobileMe was a uncommon Steve Jobs misfire
Behind the scenes, Jobs was livid in regards to the MobileMe debacle. In accordance to a Fortune article, he gathered the accountable workers collectively within the Apple auditorium and requested them, “Can anybody inform me what MobileMe is meant to do?”
When some individuals started to stammer solutions, Jobs snapped: “So why the f**okay doesn’t it try this?”
In his e-mail to Apple workers, he promised to make MobileMe “a service we’re all happy with,” however this by no means actually occurred. By 2011, Apple stopped promoting the service to new prospects. iCloud changed MobileMe that October. The July demise of MobileMe got here as no shock, however marked the top of one in every of Jobs’ uncommon misfires.
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