It looks like former Endgadget editor Joshua Topolsky’s rant yesterday about iCloud killing off MobileMe’s web apps was a bit overzealous. It seems iCloud will have a web interface after all.
An iCloud Calendar error page was discovered yesterday by a reader of MacRumors. Topolsky concluded that since Steve Jobs announced the death of MobileMe last week that it was the end of the line for Apple-branded web-based email, calendars and contacts. It would appear that iCloud still has a few tricks up its sleeve for functionality on the web. Apple certainly wouldn’t have spent $4.5 million for the domain name without having a solution in the works for accessing important communications features of iCloud from a browser.
Just because Apple hasn’t announced a replacement for MobileMe, doesn’t mean a solution doesn’t exist. Apple is famous for not speaking about unannounced products, and Topolsky should have known better when he “confirmed with Apple PR” that “the web suite will cease to exist.”
To give Topolsky a bit of credit, Apple raised plenty of unanswered questions about the future of iCloud’s web functionality. However, the error page uncovered is pretty convincing evidence that the MobileMe web apps to be killed off by next year will be reincarnated in some form. One thing that is certain, however, is that Apple is indeed killing off iWeb. Will there also be a solution for those users soon to be orphaned by the MobileMe web hosting service?
