There’s been some anxiety in the last week regarding MobileMe’s forthcoming transition to iCloud and what it will mean for some of the former service’s features -- such as hosting for iWeb-created websites. Short story even shorter, you’d better start looking for another place to host your websites if you rely on it.
MacRumors is reporting that the latest episode of the hit show “Who’s Emailing Steve Jobs Now?” is now available (that’s a joke, folks), with the latest topic of (brief) conversation as the fate of iWeb, or more specifically, the web hosting component of MobileMe, which appears to be following its namesake into wherever cloud-based services go when they die.
Such was the dilemma of one concerned user of iWeb and MobileMe’s hosting services for same. Nothing was said about the pairing at last week’s WWDC 2011 keynote, and unfortunately, the old adage “no news is good news” does not appear to apply in this case. The concerned citizen did what anyone in his situation would do: fire off a missive to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
“Will I need to find an alternative website builder and someone to host my sites?” the concerned citizen asks. “I have invested a lot of time and effort and the thought of re-training sucks more than MobileMe ever did.”
Jobs’ reply was straight to the point: “Yep,” with his default “Sent from my iPhone” signature actually four times longer than the reply itself. MacRumors examined the email and believes it’s legit, which appears to sound the death knell for iWeb and likely for other MobileMe services currently in limbo.
MacRumors is quick to note that iWeb has mostly been ignored by Apple in recent years anyway, with the last new version appearing in iLife ’09 two and a half years ago. Apple has continued to offer occasional bug fixes for iWeb (most recently this past February), but it appears the application may have finally worn out its welcome.
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William R Grubaugh
June 14, 2011 at 4:26pm
ME TOO!! I feel ripped off!! I purchased Apple products at their exorbitant prices because of all of the lies on Mac centric sites like Mac Life and MacWorld and the truth is, their just another greedy self serving corporation, who only gives a damn about their profits, but Apple takes their abusive dictatorial control to the extreme. What I find shocking is Apples fanbois bend over and then justify the perverse behavior as being for our own good because Apple knows what I do and don't need and at what inflated price. Then they attack or degrade me for not being thankful and appreciative of Apples thoughtless abuse! Apples behavior over the last few years has been contemptuous and reprehensible. What happened to truth and objectivity as being acceptably prudent discipline?
saxsation
June 13, 2011 at 11:26am
Yes it is sad anytime something is discontinued but Apple is giving extensions till June of next year to allow people some transition time. For me that is an extra 6 months for free. 6 months is plenty of time to find alternatives!
Geoduck
June 13, 2011 at 8:40am
I am really P****d about this!
OK I understand that iWeb was long in the tooth. There are much better tools out there. I've used GoLive and Dreamweaver and they're good, albeit a lot more complex than I need. But I understand that iWeb might not be worth the effort. (Of course this will make like the 5th time I've changed web authoring tools. That itself might not have been so bad but each time I've had to rebuild my site from scratch because each tool uses custom code that the others can't deal with.)But, I've had my site on Apple's servers since iTools. At least a decade of loyal support. Even when free services came along I stayed with iTools/.Mac/MobileMe for my hosting at $99 per year. My trips, my writing, my photos, my essays, my Xmas cards all hoisted there with good reliability and free of pushy ads or obvious data-mining. Now they just drop me without so much as a 'by your leave'. I'm really angry about this. And no I won't move it all over to FaceBook, or such social-disease services. Pages scattered between YouTube-FaceBook-Flicr and others is not the same as having MY web site that I manage.
I might have to set up a web server of my own.
hypersapien
June 13, 2011 at 8:38am
me too. I used iWeb because I didn't need the complexity of other web-builders, and I liked its one-button approach to publishing.
jgreer3000
June 13, 2011 at 8:05am
This is sad. I used iWeb a lot. What a way to treat the loyal customers who shelled out so much money for a average mobileme service. I am very disappointed.
