Demise of HomePage may rankle some long-time MobileMe subscribers
Though not a complete surprise, Apple’s email to MobileMe subscribers Thursday announcing that HomePage -- the old .Mac Web page creation utility -- would be shut down for good as of July 7 nevertheless has caused some consternation.
Anyone who made extensive use of HomePage faces a fair amount of work to transfer their files to MobileMe pages. For most people, that will mean photos and videos, although you could use HomePage to create any kind of personal Web site.
Subscribers can continue to edit pages made with HomePage until the July 7 cutoff. After that existing Web pages will exist in perpetuity, but users won’t be able to change or even delete them.
Thankfully, files won’t disappear because they’re stored on the user’s iDisk. Users who stored their media on their iDisk only (and did not have copies on their Mac’s hard drive) will need to download each file and reconstruct new pages on MobileMe from scratch.
Apple has posted instructions on its Web site on how to do this, but how about automating the conversion process somehow? Perhaps that posed to many technical hurdles, but Apple could have made an effort.
After all, people shell out $99 a year for MobileMe. Many have subscribed since it converted from the free iTools to a paid service in 2002. Is it too much to ask for a bit more consideration of your most loyal customers?
Then again, this is business as usual for Apple. Whenever it leaves a technology behind for something new and better, veteran users clinging to older technology feel the pain.
For instance, another feature that goes away July 7 -- .Mac Groups – has no equivalent in MobileMe whatsoever. If you relied on .Mac groups for anything, tough luck.
This doesn’t mean MobileMe stinks. Overall, it’s a significant improvement over .Mac.
But Apple’s transitions often seem to inconvenience the most steadfast Mac users – those who have stuck by Apple for many years but don’t necessarily have the means to keep up with the company’s latest and greatest.
Anyway, enough grousing. What does the end of HomePage mean to you?
In the case of converting HomePage pages to MobileMe pages, folks who own iLife ‘08 or iLife ’09 should have the least trouble. The newest versions of iPhoto and iMovie automatically integrate with MobileMe.
People using iLife ’06 – and I’m sure there are still quite a few, as iLife ’06 was preinstalled on Macs through mid-2007 – will need to use iWeb to re-create their pages. Fortunately, both iMovie ’06 and iPhoto ’06 include an option to send files to iWeb, which can publish to MobileMe.
Anyone using iLife ’05 or earlier, however, will need to upgrade if they wish to continue creating and editing Web pages on their MobileMe space. That would include anyone who’s still using a Mac purchased in 2005 or earlier and never bothered to upgrade iLife.
Although I’m not a fan of “forced upgrades,” clearly anyone still using iLife ’05 is missing out on some terrific improvements in the suite. You do what you gotta do, I guess.
Here are the links to the relevant Apple KnowledgeBase pages, for convenience:
Migrating photos from HomePage to MobileMe
in MobileMe
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Comments
Dave, you know I'm feeling the pain here. I think I am going to have to go out and buy a new Mac. Dang.
Is Macmail going to be the next to go? I hate MobileMe and don't want to use it at al if I can avoid it.
Posted by: Dahlink | April 11, 2009 11:51 AM
Dave, I bought a macbook for my then-fiance Christmas 2007. At the time they pitched to me the .mac web page service. I added that on, thinking my wife might like it. She wound up never using it. We were never billed anything. Lo and behold just recently I was billed $99 for MobileMe. I tried to log into mobile me to no avail. As a computer programmer I have plenty of knowledge in how to log into a site and finding out my login id and password if I can't. MobileMe's logid and password retrieval tools were useless. After several attempts, I called up Apple tech support. The automated service referred me to the web site and hung up on me. I called the credit card company, told them I was charged for something I didn't order. They canceled the charge and said they would let me know if the vendor protests the charge cancelation. Something tells me Apple is going to be swamped with those cancelations...!
Posted by: Tyldak | April 13, 2009 12:15 PM
Although there is no supported way to edit your webpage on an earlier version of iLife or a pc. There is an option, (this makes mobile me full featured for pc users as well) :
download a webdav client, ie skunkdav available on sourceforge, then connect to your idisk and open the "web" folder, iweb creates a "welcome.html" page that your index page is linked to. just replace this with new site made by any utility you like. Thanks
Posted by: Jacob | April 23, 2009 12:47 AM