Apple Developers Handed Stepping Stone To iCloud
August 12, 2011
Grazed from Dr. Dobbs. Author: Adrian Bridgwater.
The natural extension of this product to the cloud computing model of IT service delivery is perhaps no surprise; its occurrence is perhaps only masked by the arguably over-hyped publicity wagon that has pushed iCloud itself — even by Apple’s standards.
Developers hungry for the opportunity to switch to the Apple-flavored cloud can open their Safari browsers (we’re kidding — any browser is fine) and visit me.com/move to initiate the migration…
The transition will reportedly port a user’s Mail contacts and Calendar data in a fairly seamless manner. The disparity or hardship (if it can described as such) is the fact that Apple is saying that fairly fundamental elements including password keychains, signatures, mail account rules, mail smart boxes, and mail preferences will not only be ported over — they appear in fact to no longer be offered after a move to iCloud.
It’s not all bad news though; Apple’s Gallery, iDisk, and iWeb publishing functions will all still be operational until the end of June 2012 even after an iCloud migration. Apple is currently tight-lipped as to whether any of these "expiring" services will be replaced after that time.
While this option is open to Apple Developer Program members, the public at large can not avail itself of the same option at this current time. The public release is expected to drop this autumn with a range of storage pricing options upward from the initial free 5GB.
As MobileMe now becomes iCloud, Apple clearly expects to see the same levels of interest and demand from users that own and operate a number of iOS and OS X based devices.