Mobile Me

Mobile Me

MobileMe (formerly .Mac and iTools), was a subscription-based collection of online services and software offered by Apple Inc. All services were being gradually transitioned and replaced by iCloud and the service ceased as of June 30, 2012, with transfers to iCloud available until July 31, 2012. Afterwards, all data was deleted, and the email addresses of accounts not transferred to iCloud were marked as unused.

An early attempt by Apple with online services was eWorld, which ran from June 1994 until March 1996.

Originally launched on January 5, 2000, as iTools, a free collection of Internet-based services for users of Mac OS 9, Apple relaunched it as .Mac on July 17, 2002, when it became a paid subscription service primarily designed for users of Mac OS X. Apple relaunched the service again as MobileMe on July 9, 2008 at WWDC 2008, now targeting Mac OS X, Windows, iPhone, iPod Touch users, and following its April 2010 release, also iPad users.

On February 24, 2011, Apple discontinued offering MobileMe at its retail stores, with MobileMe retail boxes eventually removed from resellers as well. Additionally, Apple no longer accepted new subscribers for MobileMe. On June 6, 2011, Apple announced that a new service called iCloud was to replace MobileMe, sometime in the fall. At the iPhone special event on October 4, 2011, Apple announced it would finally launch iCloud on October 12, 2011, to replace MobileMe for new users, with current users having access until June 30, 2012, when the service would cease. MobileMe was shut down on June 30, 2012, but data was still able to be retrieved for an advertised "limited time", until July 31, 2012, when the site finally closed completely.