Patent blog FOSS Patents says the two actions are unrelated, and that Apple removing some older products comes because Motorola moved to enforce an important patent victory it won back in December. It was then that a judge ruled that Motorola had a patent on a ”method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system.”

The result is that only older devices like the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and 3G iPads were removed. Why not the iPhone 4S? It could be because the iPhone 4S has a chip from Qualcomm. The affected models have Infineon chips. Qualcomm chips could be safe for Apple in this case, according to FOSS Patents, if we assume “that Motorola and Qualcomm have a cross-license agreement in place (just like Samsung and Qualcomm do)” which would mean that “Apple is covered by extension, as a result of what is called patent exhaustion (a patent owner gets paid only once for the same use of a patent in a product).”

Perhaps more worrisome for some Apple customers who own the iPhone 4S in Germany right now is an injunction that affects iCloud users who want push notifications on their phones. The ruling affects any Apple devices that can receive push email notifications from iCloud or the earlier version, MobileMe. While neither service will get shut down as a result of the ruling, Apple will likely have to come up with a workaround for its iCloud/MobileMe customers there.

Apple won’t be letting this one go. As a company representative told PaidContent in a bit of subtle snarkiness on Friday, “Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the court’s decision.”

Update: It looks like the same German court may have suspended the injunction on the older 3G iPhones and iPads and they will be on sale again in “a matter of hours.” Apple told AllThingsD just now: “All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly. Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

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The program has three major components: Calendar Cleaner, Contacts Cleaner and Sync Tune-Up. If you want just one of the components, you can purchase the first two separately at the Mac App Store. However it’s likely you’ll need all three so I recommend the buying the full package.

Contacts Cleaner looks for issues that could cause errors such as invalid characters, malformed phone numbers as well as duplicate information. What I like about this program is that it not only finds the errors, but tells you why it thinks they represent a problem. For example, I’d often put “husband and wife” in the First Name field, but Contacts Cleaner warns me “This contact has a space in the first name. In some cases these names can become transposed after syncing with Google.” Sure enough when I went into Google, I noticed that problem.

Calendar Cleaner does similar checks for errors that can occur with your various sync destinations. My calendar was fraught with malformed recurring events that wouldn’t sync, and a pass by Calendar Cleaner fixed those in no time.

Both programs give you the option of opening the item within Address Book or iCal in order to make sure you know what kind of change is being made before you authorize it. Apple’s Address Book application looks for merged items itself, but doesn’t give you options to control what is merged. iCal users have no built-in options to search for duplicates and merge events.

Finally, Sync Tune-Up (only available as part of the bundle) gives you a front end for more fine-grained control over fixing your sync-related issues, such as de-registering individual devices and software, or the “nuclear” option which rebuilds the entire sync database. If your sync is taking extra long or you’ve made a bunch of changes with your devices or accounts, a nice reset can do you a world of good. A good indication of problems can be found by looking at your console logs and looking for mentions of the “truth” and too much vacuuming.

The more you sync, the more likely it is that problems will occur. To prevent or repair these problems, Spanning Tools is a great option.

Disclosure: Spanning Tools provided a copy of the software for review purposes.

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Find My Mac uses known Wi-Fi tower location databases to pinpoint a Mac’s whereabouts, as it doesn’t have access to cell tower triangulation and GPS technology the way an iPhone or 3G-capable iPad does. Still, it seems to still be fairly accurate, and it also provides users whose Macs have gone missing with the option of locking the screen with a four-digit PIN and erasing the contents of the hard drive remotely. Find My Mac also lets Mac owners play a sound through their Mac’s speakers, and display a message of their own creation on the device’s screen. Even if your Mac is off when you send these commands, they will take effect the next time it’s online.

Once Find My Mac is enabled on a user’s Mac, they can view its location on a map using iCloud.com, and also perform any of the actions listed above from the website. It’s very likely that Macs with the service enabled will also eventually show up in the Find My iPhone apps for iPhone and iPad, too, based on how it works in the browser.

Making Find My Mac a part of the free suite of iCloud services is a smart move by Apple. Because of its role as a data security and anti-theft measure, it should help draw even single-device Mac owners who aren’t interested in email and information syncing features to iCloud, and adoption is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of iCloud. Apple is likely hoping that iCloud will not only attract new users to the Mac and iOS platforms, but also keep them there. Having all your data, purchases, email and documents associated with an account designed to work best on Macs and exclusively on iOS devices should provide lots of motivation not to go looking at competitor products.

Business strategy aside, having the ability to remotely track and wipe your Mac, which is a much more expensive loss than an iPhone, and one that is probably more likely to hold sensitive info for most, is a great boon to Apple customers. Look for it to go live alongside the rest of iCloud this September.

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1. Remove icons from Launchpad. Right now, the only icons you can remove from Launchpad are apps installed via the Mac App Store. If you remove the icon, the whole app is removed. In a way, this makes sense: they want to transfer the same ease-of-deletion from iOS to OS X. The problem is, if you have a ton of what Lion sees as apps — in my case, all the old World of Warcraft patches showed up in Launchpad — you’re going to have a mess. I can’t hide the apps completely, so instead I performed the digital equivalent of stuffing them in the closet. I created a single folder, moved any non-app programs into that, and stuck it on the last page in Launchpad.

2. Reveal your Home Library folder. I’m not sure why Apple hid this, but there are two ways you can get to it. The first is to go to the Finder, open the Go menu, and choose “Go to Folder.” Type in ~/Library/ and hit Enter. This will bring you to the folder. If you need to get there more than occasionally, or have an app where the hidden flag is causing problems, you can make it visible by typing in “chflags nohidden ~/Library” in the Terminal.

3. Make an app open in all spaces. This tip only works if you have multiple Desktop spaces. To add a space in Mission Control move your pointer to the upper-right hand corner and click on the large Plus icon. Then, right-click on the apps’s icon in the Dock, choose Options, and “Assign to: All spaces.” As a bonus tip, you can also create an empty space to quickly flip to an empty display if you need to.

4. Remove icons from the Sidebar. I’ve run into a few instances where dragging an icon off the Sidebar doesn’t actually remove it. If this happens, right-click the wayward icon and choose “Remove from Sidebar.” If, like me, you ended up with some Sidebar folders pointing to now nonexistent folders and can’t remove them at all, renaming the com.apple.sidebarlists.plist file in ~\Library\Preferences folder (it doesn’t matter what you rename it to) and rebooting will restore your Sidebar to default icons.

5. MobileMe Calendar syncing is now set in iCal. This one threw me at first. In Snow Leopard, you set MobileMe Calendar syncing within the MobileMe System Preferences pane. Now, it’s under iCal’s preferences under Accounts. I imagine this is because iCloud will render the MobileMe preferences pane obsolete.

These are five quick tips I’ve found to help me ease into Lion. What tips do you folks have?

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As you can see from this checklist, iWeb publishing, Gallery and iDisk are all getting the axe. Apple has said that it will continue to support iWeb publishing, posting and viewing photos in MobileMe Gallery, and reading and writing to iDisk cloud storage through June 30, 2012 if you’re an existing customer, even if you choose to transition to iCloud before that cut-off date. If you’re looking around for a hosting alternative for your site, check out Geoffrey’s rundown of some of the options available.

Services you can’t take with you if you transition early include syncing of dashboard widgets, keychains, Dock items and System Preferences. You’ll have to remain a MobileMe user if you want to continue using these features, but they’ll also be shut off for everyone on June 30, 2012. Apple points out that while the services listed above are ending, iCloud brings new features not available in MobileMe, like iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, automatic downloads for purchased content, and cloud backup and restore.

Services that you can take with you — including Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Find My iPhone — will still be accessible via web apps after the transition to iCloud, Apple says, which is a nice plus for users who want to be able to access their info, email and contacts on devices they don’t own.

As someone who’s been using MobileMe since the service was first introduced, I can honestly say that I’ve only ever used a couple of the services being discontinued (Gallery and iDisk), including the sync options. Even the ones I did use, I used only sparingly, and not recently. I think Apple’s making the smart move here, by cutting the fat as it shifts the focus to the much more generally useful services coming with iCloud.

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The usual suspects. By simply searching for the term “Top 10 Web Hosting,” you will find several lists, all vying for the honor of the definitive top 10 list of web hosts. I’ll save you a lot of trouble, and point you to hostmonster.com, justhost.com, fatcow.com, bluehost.com and hostgator.com, all of which appear ranked highly in most of these lists. Be sure the package you select supports hosting domain names on the account, and be aware of page limits and bandwidth caps on entry-level accounts. You should be able to find decent virtual accommodations for personal use for less than $5/mo.

Domain registrar. Apple doesn’t provide a domain service of their own. You can point your registered domain to your MobileMe account, but Apple is not a registrar themselves. Many, if not all, domain registrars also offer web hosting solutions, too. I happen to use GoDaddy as my domain registrar, and have been looking at what they have to offer.  I was able to find a plan that suited my needs for less than $10/mo.

Squarespace. This is where things start to get interesting. Squarespace has lots of nice features to offer its customers. It is featured on many of the podcasts I listen to and watch. Squarespace’s strength lies in its easy-to-use, prefab template-based site development that is highly customizable supports multiple authors. But if you’re handling your web design and development elsewhere, this may be more than you need, and in order to avoid a ten page limit you have to start looking at plans that costs as much as $20/mo.

Apple may be getting out of the web game in favor of moving to the cloud, but it’s a feature that’s well-represented by many providers already, so it really isn’t a great loss. Nor is the demise of iWeb, which, truth be told, wasn’t a stellar web page creation tool to begin with. If anything, this may be the shot in the arm needed to get users to make some timely improvements to their personal websites.

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Crazy as it sounds, Google, Apple’s chief rival in the smartphone market, will be the one saving iOS users stuck in this donut hole. Moving to Google syncing requires only minor modifications to your iOS gadgets and your Mac, and you’ll be able to keep your contacts, calendars and email in step across devices. You’ll need to sync your iOS device to Google as well as sync your Mac to Google, and you should always backup the data on both before doing so. Note that doings so requires at least Leopard for Mac users.

Google has excellent instructions on how to set up your iOS device with a Google account. You’ll need to set up the Google account first of course, but most people already have that. Note that other email addresses you happen to be using on your devices that aren’t tied to your Google account won’t have their data backed up.

Setting up your Mac to sync with Google is also quite easy again due to excellent instructions, in particular on how to sync your calendars and how to sync your contacts.

While you’re at it, you might consider moving from iCal to BusyCal, as BusyCal syncs simply with Google using only your login credentials, while syncing with iCal is a multi-step process.

Google has a great opportunity to get users signed up in this window between Apple’s announcement and when its service goes live. Both Google and Apple will soon be battling for the right to store users’ data, a much different fight than that going on between operating systems. Any advantage in that coming fight could be a significant one.

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Anyone having an active MobileMe account as of today will have their service extended at no charge through June 30, 2012. If you let your account expire recently (as I did), you’re out of luck, since if you try to log into the old MobileMe website at me.com, you are told that your account has expired and that it cannot be renewed.

Apple says that the new iCloud service:

will be available this fall and free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users. When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your me.com or mac.com email address and move your MobileMe mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.

It is no longer possible to create new MobileMe 60-day trial accounts, use codes from unused MobileMe boxes, upgrade from an individual account to a Family Pack, or purchase additional storage. You can, however, create accounts if you have an existing Family Pack membership.

If you have a MobileMe activation code that is unused or was used for 45 days or less, you can get a full refund. If your activation code has been used for 46 days or more, you will get a pro-rated refund based on the date of your request.

Unopened boxes can be returned to Apple Stores or to authorized dealers if they were purchased within the last 14 days; otherwise, you’ll need to go through the refund procedure, which can take 4-6 weeks. If you wish to cancel your current MobileMe service and get a refund, you may do so by going to the Cancellation Request Form.

There is no mention of getting credit for the new iTunes Match service, so if you aren’t using MobileMe, you should probably cancel as soon as possible to get the maximum refund, and wait a few months to sign up for Apple’s new services.

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Reese is a fan of Apple’s products and software, but he isn’t impressed with Apple’s track record when it comes to the cloud specifically. “Historically,” Reese told me in a phone interview, “Apple has gotten the cloud wrong time and time again,” because the company views “the Mac as the center of your device-driven life.” Even though they are more independent than they once were, the iPod, iPhone and iPad are all still essentially satellite devices that depend on the Mac in a few key ways.

In order to make a cloud computing experience work really well, the cloud has to be the center of the universe, according to Reese, and this isn’t the case with MobileMe. As an illustrative example, consider Bookmark syncing through MobileMe. I’m a MobileMe user myself, and I sync bookmarks across my Apple hardware so that if I find an interesting link on my iPhone that doesn’t read well on the small screen, I can bookmark it and check it out on my Mac. Unfortunately, something went wrong with bookmark syncing a while ago, and now my Mac computers regularly ask me to replace the information with that found on the computer. If I do, I’ll lose my iPhone bookmarks, and I can’t treat those as the master copy, because MobileMe requires that I use one of my Macs as the primary source. The Mac is “home,” so to speak, and everything else, including the cloud, is “away.”

Apple has made smart hires recently, bringing on staff with “good, cloudy experience and expertise,” according to Reese, but no matter whom you hire, Reese says, it’s hard to get away from what’s in your DNA as a company. Apple’s Mac-centric approach seems to be one key element of its corporate DNA.

A change in DNA is what Apple has to accomplish to make cloud computing work, says Reese. But big changes are something Apple is particularly good at. Reese cites the example of the iPod touch as a classic example. The iPod touch is a product that obviously threatened to eat into Apple’s existing successful iPod business, but Apple saw that it provided greater future potential down the road, by bringing more customers into the iOS fold. The MacBook Air is another good example, since with its new $999 starting price point, it could easily sway buyers away from the strong-selling MacBook, but the Air is a product designed with the future in mind, thanks to solid state storage and the dropped optical drive.

But in this case, Apple would have to shift the center of its universe away from the Mac and to the cloud, which is arguably a bigger and more daunting change than any other it has made so far, despite declarations that it is now a “mobile device company,” and more recently that we are living in the “post-PC” era (subscription required).

That’s not all it has to do, either. Reese says Apple also “has to reinvent what it is to be cloud.” It can’t just replicate Google’s success with Google Apps, or provide its own similar take on existing models. Apple has to “redefine the space of consumer cloud,” as it has done with previous products (the iPhone for mobile, and the iPod for media players, for example). And if Apple can do that, “they’ll be wildly successful,” Reese asserts.

This won’t be a surprise to Apple, according to Reese. It’s the same challenge it faced when it entered the mobile market with the iPhone, he points out, but this time around, the challengers it is facing are more nimble and less entrenched. Netflix, Amazon and Google are smart enough to be able to match what Apple does quickly, says Reese, whereas iPhone competitors were slow to realize and respond to the shift in landscape.

“One thing I’ve learned is never to bet against Apple,” Reese says, “But if I were to, this is where I’d bet against them.” Despite that, he’s really open to the possibility that Apple will succeed in making iCloud something consumers will get excited about. The prospect of a truly seamless computing experience across Apple devices is indeed a very sexy one. He and I are hoping Apple does for cloud computing Monday what it has already done for mobile devices and personal computing in the past. What do you think about Apple’s chances when it comes to achieving that goal?

For those really interested in the expertise required to build out real computing clouds, check out our Structure 2011 conference this month in San Francisco.

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The prospective iCloud service has managed to steal a lot of the spotlight away from iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion, the other two products being shown off by Apple at WWDC. That may be because we know less about iCloud than we do the other two, or because all things cloud seem to be capturing the tech media’s attention lately. Whatever the reason, the past few days have seen a bevy of reports describing what a shipping iCloud could potentially look like.

Everything That’s Fit to Stream

In addition to music streaming — a feature widely reported on as music licensing negotiations are said to have reached a successful conclusion – Cnet also reports Apple is also in talks with film studios to allow for cloud movie storage and streaming, too. Presumably, this service would be similar to the one being discussed for music, but there’s a barrier according to Cnet’s sources: the so-called HBO blackout, which allows HBO exclusive broadcast rights of films from three of the top six movie studios when it’s actively airing their content.

Apple could still negotiate deals with the other three in time for launch, but even if the reports are accurate, don’t count on seeing movies and TV show streaming and storage announced this time around.

A Data Center That Means Business

Apple’s North Carolina Data Center is a serious beast. According to Envisioneering Group  Analyst Richard Doherty in an interview with USA Today , it “may be the most powerful data center ever, outside of government,” and “will be able to handle millions of streams per minute without any network hiccups.”

Apple clearly wants to make sure that when it unveils the future of consumer cloud technology, it’s more than able to meet demand and scale rapidly.

MobileMe Upgraded

Apple will most likely use the iCloud brand to take over the duties of its current cloud syncing and storage offering, MobileMe. That means it should provide email, notes, calendar and bookmarks syncing, along with the Find My iPhone and Find My iPad services. There have also been reports that a Find My Mac service could make its way into OS X Lion, but the service might fall under the iCloud suite of offerings, too. It would allow Mac owners to register their device, so that they can later be tracked easily via a web-based interface, and be locked or wiped remotely to prevent unauthorized use.

Free or Fee?

The MobileMe service iCloud will reportedly replace costs users $99 per year, but AppleInsider reports that some of iCloud’s services will be offered free to users who upgrade to OS X Lion, the next generation of Apple’s desktop operating system. But other features, such as music streaming, will cost extra based on the fees associated with Apple’s licensing agreements with content providers, reports say. One early report pegged Apple’s streaming music fees at around $20 per year, but little else has been forthcoming on the subject since.

People who want to use iCloud services without upgrading to Lion will reportedly have to pay the $99 annual fee currently associated with MobileMe.

We won’t have to wait long before we see what Apple has in store for iCloud, but in my opinion, it’s the unknown variables that make it the product to watch for during Monday’s keynote. Can Apple do for consumer streaming what it has done for PCs and mobile devices? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Consider the hype machine up and running for WWDC 2011. thanks to an official announcement highlighting Steve Jobs as the keynote speaker on June 7 at 10:00 AM PDT. WWDC 2011 will cover five key technology tracks: Application Frameworks, Internet & Web, Graphics & Media, Developer Tools, and Core OS. However, it’s Steve’s appearance that is the real news.

Jobs, who has been on medical leave since January but remains involved in strategic decisions at Apple, last made a public appearance at the iPad 2 launch event in March. That makes for an interesting comparison of  event importance, especially considering that Jobs has skipped WWDC in the past. Last year, Jobs gave the keynote and launched the iPhone 4, as well as the iOS platform, which was previously named iPhone iOS. However, in 2009 Apple’s Phil Schiller did the keynote, introducing the iPhone 3GS, iPhone OS 3, demoing OS X 10.7, and showing off new MacBooks. Considering that this year’s WWDC will reportedly not have new hardware as the next generation iPhone is widely expected in the fall, what non-hardware announcement could be so important as to bring Steve Jobs to the keynote?

Conventional rumor wisdom suggests the event will feature a relaunch of MobileMe (possibly named iCloud) and that service may be free, or at least include free services. A paid service for online storage and streaming of music is also expected. Of course, OS X Lion will be shown, and almost certainly at least a preview of iOS 5. While these are all important products, do they warrant the presence of Steve Jobs? I’d argue that they don’t, and that could mean some other mysterious product will be announced, or perhaps Jobs is returning to Apple full-time. No matter the outcome, TAB will be reporting the event as it happens.

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Although many of us may have Google Chat, AOL, or Jabber accounts, the only way to get an encrypted channel is for both parties to have MobileMe/.Mac accounts.  If you aren’t already using your MobileMe account in iChat, you’ll have to first add it.  Go to Preferences and then under Accounts click the + icon.  Put in the name and password for your MobileMe account and click “Done.”

Next you’ll be presented with a dialog box confirming you want to enable encryption.

By default it’s enabled so you’ll click continue.  If all goes well,  you’ll get a confirmation the encryption certificate was requested and within a few minutes you’ll be good to go.  I recommend quitting iChat and then opening it back up.  Check your account preferences and make sure that it says encryption is enabled.  If you use multiple accounts via iChat, make sure you begin your chat via your MobileMe account rather than one of the other services you use.  I log out of all other chat accounts just so I don’t accidentally respond to the wrong chat with private info.

If you already have your MobileMe account configured in iChat, simply be sure that you go to preferences and enable encryption.  If you haven’t used encryption in a while, it may take MobileMe’s servers a few minutes to enable it.

Once all set up, if you want to tell someone the secrets of the universe, just be sure to look for the lock during your conversation to make sure encryption is enabled.  If it’s not, Apple has some good troubleshooting tips, the obvious one being to make sure the person on the other end also has encryption enabled.

Some caveats with secure iChat is the fact that it only works with Leopard and above, and no encryption system is foolproof, but I’d certainly feel more comfortable giving confidential secure info via encrypted iChat than over any unsecured channel.

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Use just a MobileMe name to add an account to the Apple TV

For Apple TV owners that also subscribe to MobileMe, Gallery is an underrated feature. By uploading pictures and video on the go, there’s no need to sync an iPhone or camera with iPhoto at home before enjoying content on a television. MobileMe Gallery and the Apple TV just work, at least most of the time.

After upgrading my broadband service, I had to reset the Apple TV to get it on the network, after which I logged on to MobileMe without issue. After looking at some pictures from a day trip, I tried viewing some video. Instead of a home movie, I saw a dialog box that said, “an error occurred loading this content. Try again later.” I did, many times, always getting the same error. While it’s important to remember that video for the Apple TV must be H.264 or MPEG-4, this was video recorded with an iPhone and uploaded to MobileMe.

At first, I thought the problem might be with MobileMe, but it turned out to be user error, though I think Apple shares a little blame. When adding the MobileMe account to the Apple TV, I inadvertently used my MobileMe e-mail address, not just the user name. Nonetheless, it was accepted, and Gallery photos worked fine, but not video. Removing and re-adding the account with just the user name solved this odd problem, and should work for anyone else experiencing the same curious issue.

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Consomac was looking for references to Find My Mac and iCloud when it came across something called “Castle,” which was referred to in phrases like “Complete your Castle upgrade,” and “Click OK to open System Preferences and complete your upgrade from MobileMe to Castle.” The discovery of what definitely appears to be revamped cloud services coincides with the revelation that Apple most likely purchased the iCloud.com domain name, so it isn’t a stretch to conclude that these new references are Apple’s internal name for any iCloud offering.

The discovery didn’t reveal anything more about what Castle might include, but it does suggest it will be an evolutionary product that builds off of MobileMe’s existing line of web services. Last week, we asked what other services you expect or want to see as a part of an iCloud offering, and some interesting suggestions included full online backup solutions (the backup product that ships with MobileMe is extremely limited) and much tighter iDevice and desktop integration.

Whatever the resulting service is named or brings to the table, it’s becoming quite clear Apple has big plans in store for its cloud service offerings. The company also is set to open a massive new data center in North Carolina, and its cloud strategy is in major need of new direction. But whether we see just another evolutionary development of the .Mac and MobileMe line of products, or a revolutionary offering that brings a number of basic free services to the entire iOS user base remains to be seen.

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Apple’s massive data center in North Carolina has been in the news of late, prompting more wide-eyed speculation among some analysts about its ultimate purpose. Possibilities include a music subscription service like Rhapsody, a video subscription service like Netflix, and free MobileMe. However, the most likely service, at least initially, is a digital locker for iTunes. Music storage for a fee would be the latest online service for Apple, the first of which was launched more than a decade ago:

• 2000: iTools offered email, web pages, and online storage.
• 2002: .Mac adds more features, including online backup for $99 a year.
• 2006: Apple launches blogging app iWeb, closely tied to .Mac service.
• 2008: MobileMe introduces “Exchange for the rest of us:” push services for mail, contacts, appointments.
• 2009: iWork.com beta ties online services to Apple’s office suite.
• 2010: Ping social networking and music recommendation service added to iTunes.
• 2011: iTunes storage locker expected for a yearly fee.

While that history looks impressive, the reality for Apple’s online efforts has been markedly different. Apple’s problems started in 2002, when the company began charging $99 a year for online services, going from more than two million iTool users to 100,000 .Mac subscribers in about two months. That was the last we heard about paid subscriber numbers from Apple. In sharp contrast, Google’s Gmail, which launched in 2004 with email and storage for free, now has about 200 million users.

Even more successful than Gmail is Facebook, which now has more than 600 million users for its social networking service. Apple launched Ping, the music-focused social networking service in iTunes, last year. Although there are more than 200 million iTunes Store accounts, Ping’s user experience leaves much to be desired and has done little for Apple or Ping’s users. Hardly worth mentioning is iWeb, Apple’s apparently short-lived blogging application which wasn’t updated in iLife ’11, and one can presume is on its way to becoming obsolete.

As for MobileMe itself, it remains a highly limited service centered around email and personal information management. It works well enough, at least in 2011. When MobileMe launched in 2008, push services failed so badly Steve Jobs apologized, and MobileMe users were given a 60-day extension on their subscriptions. Sadly, iDisk, Apple’s online storage, never received similar corrective attention and remains a tortuously slow service to use, unlike the marvelous non-Apple Dropbox. MobileMe also offers photo sharing via Gallery, and it works well enough, but it’s nothing special. Whatever happened to the iWork.com “beta” launched in 2009? Still in beta. Apple’s online services are, at best, uneven; at worst, missing.

What would a comprehensive strategy to turn Apple’s online services around include? The first step is to fix what doesn’t work well; the second might be to generate interest and usage by offering limited free services. Besides current offerings, MobileMe badly needs document and data syncing. How frustrating is it to sync iWork documents on a Mac and iPad? Somehow, iBooks manages to synchronize across devices wirelessly. Wouldn’t it be great if Game Center synced your progress across games played on iOS devices, too? These are the kind of free services that cost little and generate interest, and interest is platform lock-in.

The next step is to add expanded services, such as an iTunes storage locker, though arguably that may not be that desirable. Video streaming certainly is more so, as Netflix has demonstrated. How about shared photo libraries in the form of an iPhoto Cloud? Cloud-based Time Machine certainly would seem to be another obvious choice. There are many possibilities, but they need to be offered as part of a package built upon a free set of limited but relevant services. To summarize, a cloud strategy for Apple in 2011 will hopefully look something like this:

1. Fix what doesn’t work, like iDisk.
2. Include free services, including data and document synchronization, as well as basic email.
3. Offer expanded services like music storage, individually and as a part of a package.

If, instead, Apple launches yet another isolated online service for profit, this time music storage, well, it will no doubt make another great bullet point in Apple’s list of less-than-scintillating online services.

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Backup, Backup and Backup

No matter what backup solution you use (Time Machine, online, manual), now is the time to run a full backup just in case. Additionally be sure you’ve synced all your iOS devices to your Mac. If you do “over the air” syncing you should be fine.

Just to be extra safe, I ran two additional backups within iCal. Under the File Menu in iCal is the Export Function. First, create a full iCal Archive under the Export Menu. That backs up your entire iCal calendar list en mass. However, I alo backed up each and every calendar to an .ics file by choosing each one and then going to File, Export, and then Export. This backs up each calendar manually.

Log Into MobileMe and Begin the Process

Now that you have triple redundancy on your calendars, you can begin the process. Log into your MobileMe account via Safari (just to play it safe don’t use alternate browsers) and then click the icon in the upper left for iCal, which is the familiar spiral day-at-a-time calendar icon. You should be presented with a window reminding you to “Upgrade to the new MobileMe Calendar.” Click “next” and you’ll be presented with the system requirements. Since CalDAV only works with Leopard or Snow Leopard, Tiger’s been fully de-clawed for iOS. If you fail to move to CalDAV your MobileMe calendar sync won’t work unless you move to 10.5 or 10.6 and if you do, Tiger will no longer sync without a third party helper like BusySync.

After confirming your devices meet the requirements, click “Upgrade Now” and the process begins. You’ll see a series of conformations that the calendars are being prepared and upgraded.

What’s happening in the background is your existing calendars that were synced with your computer and MobileMe are making their move off your computer and into the cloud. When complete, your calendars exist on MobileMe servers and your iCal merely provides another way of accessing them. Your iOS device should be smart enough to notice the change and modify itself as well. Now your calendars will exist on MobileMe’s servers and your other devices merely access the data, similar to the way IMAP works for email. Syncing is virtually instant since modifications are transferred directly to the cloud.

Trust, but Verify

Just to play it safe, I had some preset test routines ready to make sure everything when smoothly. I waited about 20 minutes to do the following to make sure all the changes propagated:

1. Add an item via iCal and verify it shows up on my iOS and Mac OS devices and MobileMe’s website
2. Add an item via each iOS device and verify it shows up on all other devices
3. Modify an event on each device and make sure that change shows up
4. If you have any calendars shared with someone, make sure they follow steps 1-3 for your calendar and you do the same for theirs, after they’ve also performed the upgrade

Snags, Errors, and General Weirdness

If all goes well, you are done! However with computers, everything doesn’t run so smoothly all of the time. In my particular instance one of my calendars was somehow corrupt enough to not make the move to the cloud, but I could still access it on my desktop. I kept getting errors in the upgrade process until I deleted the calendar from my desktop. After the upgrade was complete, I then imported the .ics file I backed up earlier manually. It work, but if it hadn’t, I was going to use Time Machine to restore a version that wasn’t corrupt and then I’d again move it to MobileMe manually.

I was a big user of BusySync and BusySync has specific instructions and caveats on how to make the move with their software. As for other secondary services, I’m disappointed that syncing with Google became more complex after the upgrade. I had to manually add my Google shared calendars.

Once the upgrade is complete, the way others subscribe to your calendar has changed. They now can have both read as well as write access to your calendars and most likely you’ll manually have to invite them to your calendar by using the Share command under the Calendar Menu within iCal. I had to manually re-invite people.

Another snag I personally ran into was on my MacBook, when I first launched iCal, it kept all the old calendars and then MobileMe created the proper CalDAV settings automatically but kept those old local calendars so everything was duplicated.

Two great websites to help ease the transition are here and here. If you ran into any snags or have any suggestions about upgrading your MobileMe calander, be sure to let us know in the comments.

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