iCloud – could it be the replacement for MobileMe?

Rumours that MobileMe is about to be replaced by a free ‘in the cloud’ service have been around for a while now and I have reported these in several previous posts, along with my thoughts on the whole topic.

The latest rumours widely reported are that something called ‘Castle’ (possibly a code name – bets are open on ‘iCloud’ as the actual name) showing up in the latest developer preview for Lion, the next generation of the OS X operating system for the Mac. Apparently, references to ”Complete your Castle upgrade,”  and ”Click OK to open System Preferences and complete your upgrade from MobileMe to Castle.” have been discovered by the French blog Consomac.

If this all proves to be correct then we may at last see Apple move into the Cloud in a big way. Hopefully, those of us who have supported Apple with our not insignificant subscription revenue for, frankly, what has been a somewhat mediocre service, over the years, will see an improved service, hopefully for free.

Related Articles

• “Apple iCloud could be an upgrade from MobileMe?” and related posts (stuff.techwhack.com)
• Yes, There’s An Apple “Castle” In The Cloud (techcrunch.com)
• Rumor: Evidence for a Castle in the ‘iCloud’ for Lion (tuaw.com)
• Lion exploration shows iCloud codenamed as Castle (electronista.com)
• iCloud To Not Only Stream Music But Take Over For MobileMe (cultofmac.com)
• MobileMe rumours heating up again (macficionado.wordpress.com)
• Apple floats iCloud for ‘email, music, and beyond’ (go.theregister.com)
• Apple iCloud May Serve More Than Music (slashgear.com)
• [UPDATE: GAME CENTER TOO] Wide spread MobileMe outage causing user frustrations (benzinga.com)
• Report: Apple To Relaunch MobileMe Next Month (cultofmac.com)