Your solution does make sense. But I was just disappointed that my iPhone didn’t just revert to the same state it was in before I tried Mobile Me. I never actually synced anything to Mobile Me, though it did automatically copy my contacts to the “cloud.” Still, once I deleted Mobile Me, contacts that I had created on my phone well before I ever used the service were wiped of their informational data, e.g., my favorites folder listed a bunch of phone numbers stripped of their identifying contact names.

It just seems like this is an Apple problem because my contacts should stay as they were instead of being wiped of their data. It is a little confusing for those of us who are not Mac Geniuses.

Melanie

So tell my how it is that I need MobileMe to maintain my contacts when they were there before I even used MobileMe? I never utilized Apple’s servers before. In fact, the only time their servers came into play was when they took my contacts after canceling service.

Stop being a Fanboy and man up. Admit that Apple has no reason to delete your contact list after leaving MobileMe – especially when your contact list was there first.

Thank you,

However, when you turn off MobileMe on the phone it will wipe the phone and it’s up to you to sync from your computer. The original writer “Ed” had reformatted his computer’s drive thus loosing his contacts and calendars THEN also let his MobileMe account expire. The guy then wiped his older original iPhone by doing something wrong with sync again, although he didn’t document that part very well so it’s hard to tell.

However, I think the larger issue here, and perhaps what Ed was trying to get at, is that your average user (not the kind who obsess over Apple and technology and read blogs like we do) is not as savvy as you all assume they are. You assume everyone realizes that MobileMe is where they’re contacts are exclusively, and that if they get rid of MobileMe, they get rid of their information unless they take measures to preserve it. The average user sees their data on their iPhone, in Address Book, in Outlook, and thinks, “ah, my data is all there in that program.”

So when they cancel their account, yes, they will be surprised to find their data missing. It may not be Apple’s responsibility to keep this data for the consumer, but for the sake of preventing data loss and the headaches on the part of both the consumer and them when they complain, perhaps a simple solution would be to issue a warning when you attempt to cancel an account warning the consumer to make sure to take measures to back up their data locally.

There is a way to re-import mailboxes and address book data from Library, I dont remember exactly but I lost 1 hour doing that after “MobileMe” joke

If the account existed and there were no longer any contacts there, i wouldn’t be surprised to see a blank/wiped phone. In that case it actually sync’d the existence of an empty address book. If it was unable to contact the service, and/or the account was no longer in existence then I don’t see much reason at all for the phone or itunes or any part of the system to react on that as a reason to wipe the phone.

With that said, it is a poor man’s remote wipe. If someone steals your phone you could cancel MobileMe or simply unregister the device

Important: Your account will be terminated immediately after you confirm the cancellation. Before canceling your MobileMe account, you should back up any information that you wish to keep.

And they even post a link to an article on how to do that, and if I recall correct, when you cancel your account, you get referred to this article.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1813

So, whoever does not read and does not keep a local backup is on his own. And regarding the comment that even Steve Jobs knows that nobody keeps a backup: They offered a solution with Time Machine, now every Mac user who does not backup is a total moron.

Isn’t that what’s being discussed? Doesn’t matter whether it’s a trial or not. Yes, address book would be empty; I just killed the account it was based on.

Avoiding this is trivial before the account expires. Export the contacts, swap from MMe to local sync, and then Import the contacts.

Let me put this another way. My daughter has an account, and I decide she’s spending too much time on this whole Internet thing. Or maybe she’s abused the privilege, so I decide to kill her account. Do I expect the data to remain? No. It’s not Apple’s job to determine if the data should remain. That’s my job. Apple’s job is to wipe the data at my request. If I want to preserve it, it’s trivially easy to do so before I have the account killed.

First off, thanks for taking the time to comment here.

When a MMe account is killed I believe the user data is gone because the SOURCE of the data (i.e., the Cloud) is gone. To me, it’s confirmation the data was in fact removed from the server.

When MMe first rolled out (bugs and all), one issue I had was getting the colors of calendars to sync correctly on the iPhone. Some trouble-shooting was to turn syncing off on the iPhone (the calendars “disappeared”), and then turn it back on (they came back). Same thing happens for contacts or email. ActiveSync for Exchange on the iPhone works the same way. Turn it off for email (or calendar or contacts), and watch them disappear from the device. Turn ‘em on, they come back. This seems right to me.

In the examples above the data is still on the server (MMe or Exchange) since the account wasn’t killed. But seeing the behavior on one device, my expectation is that killing the SOURCE account would kill it all. Maybe that’s the corporate side of my brain thinking.

Clearly, we have different expectations. I believe that blowing away an account resulting in blowing away the corresponding data is expected behavior. Like with Exchange, if I blow away a MMe account I don’t want that data left behind; it’s not the service provider’s job to determine if it should remain. If any access is necessary after the fact, preparations are easily made before the account is killed (by the one authorized to kill it).

Maybe you believe other services are doing you a favor by not wiping the data. That’s certainly one viewpoint, but I’m not sure I can agree with it. I think they’re being a bit lazy; and at the very least playing fast and loose with my data by leaving it behind.