Apple May Restore Discountinued MobileMe Features To iCloud

Apple’s new iCloud service, announced at their World-Wide Developer’s Conference in June, promises to add several new features to the company’s previous MobieMe offering, while making the service free (previously $99/year).

Some users, however, are concerned about the features that Apple is discontinuing as they transition from MobileMe to iCloud – services like iDisk, iWeb, and the syncing of your Macs Keychains and System Preferences to the cloud, which allows users to sync settings between Macs, will no longer be offered.

Not to worry, however – a new report from AppleInsider suggests that Apple will consider bringing some of those features back to iCloud if they get enough response from customers.

The story goes that a customer sent an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook complaining about feature removed in the MobileMe to iCloud transition, and was surprised to receive a personal call from the company in response: The tipster reports the following from his phone call:

According to Cook’s people, while there are no plans to add those particular services to iCloud at this time, “Apple is open to it if there’s enough feedback on the subject.”

Once the iCloud transition is complete, the ability to sync system Keychains, Dashboard Widgets, and Dock items between Macs will be lost unless Apple decides to begin supporting those features again. Additionally, services like iWeb and iDisk, which many MobileMe users became accustomed to, seem to have been discontinued.

It’s possible that Apple will introduce updated and enhanced versions of tools such as iWeb and iDisk in the future, but no information has been revealed about such intentions so far.

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.