Apple to disable .Mac website creation in July

[AppleInsider]

MobileMe subscribers using legacy .Mac website tools have been warned by Apple that the .Mac Groups and HomePage features will be discontinued in July, leaving existing pages live but taking away the ability to edit or update them.

The email message, which is partly mirrored on a notification page on Apple's site, tells those customers who transitioned over from .Mac that the HomePage web app will shut down on July 7th and will prevent sites created using the online web editing tool from receiving further updates.

"Any pages you've already published will remain live at their current web address for as long as you like," Apple reassures customers. "[But] if you need to make changes to your existing pages, please do so before July 7."

In its place, customers are asked to instead use MobileMe's photo and video hosting services for simple galleries, and iWeb for creating and posting MobileMe sites. The company in an online FAQ notes that users can migrate content on their iDisks as long as they're active MobileMe users, and sites can still be manually deleted even after the July 7th cutoff.

The .Mac Groups application, intended to allow subscribers to create a shared portal for posting contacts and news for a team or organization, will also be going offline. Both Groups and HomePage were applications built using WebObjects. Their suggested replacements are either the new MobileMe apps built using SproutCore, or the desktop iWeb application.

While making the move in advance, Apple's switchover has already triggered concern by long-time users, many of whom have used HomePage since it was first available through the free iTools service in 2000 or when it was transitioned to .Mac in 2002. The discontinuation won't break links to static content but will force those regularly dependent on Apple's hosting service to migrate if they hope to remain current.

There is no group sharing features in MobileMe equivalent to the former .Mac Groups, but that web-based application did not appear to find much interest. Most of the features in HomePage are eclipsed in iWeb or by the new Gallery app in MobileMe. However, readers have reported some missing features, such as the ability to create multiple websites each with its own password.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Ireland]

.Mac wft?

[bedouin]

As long as you're still able to access your .Mac web-created pages through iDisk or FTP there should be no reason you can't edit them manually or with an editor like Dreamweaver.

Back in 2004 when I got .Mac I only used the web created pages as a template and from that point on would edit the HTML by hand.

Now if you're not able to do that even, that would kind of suck.

[Cubert]

Mehhh.

[tmizerek]

I had a .Mac gallery disappear on me today. I republished it and it came up with a .me URL.

[Tofino]

i guess it's just a matter of time until they wrench the .mac email addresses from those of us that have supported them the longest. not cool.

[nagromme]

Originally Posted by Tofino

i guess it's just a matter of time until they wrench the .mac email addresses from those of us that have supported them the longest. not cool.

I don't think this gives us any info on that matter. This is shutting down an actual service that has systems and back-end software dedicated to. But maintaining a domain name (especially mac.com which Apple is likely to hang onto anyway) is another matter--and very easy to keep on doing. (And in addition, a lot more people use email than host Web pages.)

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by nagromme

I don't think this gives us any info on that matter. This is shutting down an actual service that has systems and back-end software dedicated to. But maintaining a domain name (especially mac.com which Apple is likely to hang onto anyway) is another matter--and very easy to keep on doing. (And in addition, a lot more people use email than host Web pages.)

It would be easier for Apple to maintain just one. It's only a matter of time.

[Bwana_Dik]

Originally Posted by Tofino

i guess it's just a matter of time until they wrench the .mac email addresses from those of us that have supported them the longest. not cool.

Apple has already stated (some time ago) that they would not disable the .mac email addresses. You can use the .mac or the .me, your choice.

[zorinlynx]

Why the heck does Apple want to kill .Mac anyway? That's a wonderful brand and it makes people think of Macs every time they email someone with such an address or look at a web page.

Whereas "MobileMe" doesn't make you think of Macs at all.

How does this boneheaded decision make sense? They should have just kept it called .Mac.

[KingOfSomewhereHot]

I got the email from Apple...

It only say's they're shutting down the "homepage" web-app...
As I read it, the .mac domain will still be functional ... even the "homepage.mac.com" should still work, you'll just have to create your own pages and upload them rather than having the web-app doing all the work.

[jragosta]

Originally Posted by bedouin

As long as you're still able to access your .Mac web-created pages through iDisk or FTP there should be no reason you can't edit them manually or with an editor like Dreamweaver..

Care to walk me through that? I use iWeb and can't find a way to get the site into a format that any other web page editor can handle.

[iBill]

The sky is falling. Not!

[MacDuff]

readers have reported some missing features, such as the ability to create multiple websites each with its own password.

Huh. Must be those readers who don't know what the hell they're doing. My iWeb file has TWENTY-THREE unique websites in it, thirteen of which are password protected.

[Tofino]

Originally Posted by nagromme

I don't think this gives us any info on that matter. This is shutting down an actual service that has systems and back-end software dedicated to. But maintaining a domain name (especially mac.com which Apple is likely to hang onto anyway) is another matter--and very easy to keep on doing. (And in addition, a lot more people use email than host Web pages.)

I hope you're right.

[Tofino]

Originally Posted by Bwana_Dik

Apple has already stated (some time ago) that they would not disable the .mac email addresses. You can use the .mac or the .me, your choice.

yeah, true. but the fact that they stopped giving out mac.com addresses a while ago, when afaik keeping both domains running in parallel would have been trivial, doesn't make me terribly confident that it's going to be like that forever. i've been using the service since it was called itools, and some of the features we had are now gone.

[bedouin]

Originally Posted by jragosta

Care to walk me through that? I use iWeb and can't find a way to get the site into a format that any other web page editor can handle.

It's probably best to just edit the HTML by hand. If you open it up in Dreamweaver you'll have the template and the text, but no images -- not a real big deal though.

If you really want to make it portable to any site then copy all the images locally from your browser and start modifying the image links accordingly.

As for iWeb . . . I know I've made manual changes without iWeb. Whenever I need to make a minute change I usually open the HTML up from iDIsk in TextWrangler or something similar. iWeb (and Homepage before it) don't like when you muck with their templates anyway and will end up rewriting over your work so as a general rule I don't even open them once I've made manual changes to any site.

There's some programs that will let you export an iWeb page to a standard format you can upload to any site. Can't remember the name though. Check MacUpdate.

[Mr. Me]

Chicken Little is full of crap. The sky is not falling. There is not even an acorn. Unfortunately, the email from MobileMe is poorly worded and overly dramatic. This is what is happening:

1. Apple is dropping the HomePage webpage development application. You should migrate your HomePage-created pages to a different editor prior to July 7.
2. Apple is dropping .mac groups. First, I lost my AOL Group. Now, I lose my .mac groups. Why me O God? Is there no end to my suffering!?
3. MobileMe continues to host existing and new websites. After July 7, these sites must be edited using iWeb or some other webpage editor.
4. URLs ending in mac.com now end in me.com.

[ijw]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Both Groups and HomePage were applications built using WebObjects. Their suggested replacements are either the new MobileMe apps built using SproutCore, or the desktop iWeb application.

SproutCore is a client-side only framework, WebObjects is Apple's server-side application server. A cursory examination of the MobileMe javascript files shows that WebObjects still powers the site.

[bloggerblog]

Originally Posted by teckstud

It would be easier for Apple to maintain just one. It's only a matter of time.

There is nothing to be done, Apple will just keep the .mac domain pointing to the same address as the .me domain.