Apple officially killing MobileMe sync for keychains, widgets, accounts, preferences - Page 2

I suspect that Photostream will be like your iPhone's Camera Roll but in the Cloud. It's purpose will be to push your latest pics out to all of your devices. Presumably, Photostream will start deleting photos from the cloud automatically when they're over 30 days old and/or there are more than 1000 of them. The photos should already be synced to your devices by then.

I wonder how this will work as you delete some of your recently shot photos. I hope you aren't expected to delete the photos individually on every device you own.

Re the end of Galleries etc ..

I would like to see a new option added to apps currently able to publish to MobileMe ...i.e. iPhoto, Aperture ... to be as it is in iWeb. Simply add in an alternate FTP option.

I have no problem re uploading all my galleries to my own web hosting just allow it Apple! Please! We don't all want to use FB and Fickr!

I assume most functions would work although some server side functions might be lost but there is no reason why most of it wouldn't relocate just fine.

Nooo ... delete on one and it would be deleted on all. Better be an 'Are you really sure' dialog though

I tried to use Google for calendar and address book syncing for over a year. After several frustrating incidents where my data was either lost or duplicated I swore never to depend on their sync services again. Never had a serious problem with MobileMe sync services.

Right, but how will we control whether to delete an image from all devices (unwanted photo) or only from the current device (to save space on that device)?

Also, aside from syncing the Camera Roll, will iCloud make it any easier to sync events/albums across different devices, or are we stuck with the current, inefficient wired process?

Typical workflow:

1) New photos automatically stored in iPhone's or iPad's Camera Roll

2) When syncing to Mac, open separate photo application to manually import desired images from Camera Roll into newly created Aperture Projects or iPhoto Events. No option available to delete those images from iPhone or iPad.

3) In iTunes, configure which Aperture/iPhoto Events I want synced to which mobile devices. Can only be managed while each device is connected, typically after waiting for each device to sync.

4) Once new images have been imported to desktop application, and mobile devices have finished
syncing, disconnect mobile device and manually delete those images from the each device's Camera Roll.

I am only guessing but I'd think there are two ways deleting across devices would occur. From the temporary and initial import stage and later from a universally shared album. I am sure once in an Aperture Library they would be immune from deletion from another device unless that album was designated as shared rather like a current galley does now. There would be no syncing as we now think of it, it would just happen.

Glad to see I'm not alone in thinking that Photo Stream takes away much more than it offers. I'd gladly pay $100 to keep Web Gallery, web hosting, backup, iDisk, keychain synch and all the rest. Why does iCloud have to remove so much?

This sounds a lot more complicated than our current system. Maybe I just have to see it in action but I'm having a tough time envisioning how managing pictures from the camera roll will work. Adding (taking pictures) and deleting from the camera roll makes sense to me. It's when you want to move something out of the camera roll and into an album that it gets messy for me.

Since the Mac is now demoted to just another device, it would seem that you could just move any picture from the camera roll on your iPhone into an newly created album and have that change reflected on all your devices, but it seems that only the camera roll is synched between devices. Right? Doesn't that mean that I'd still have to physically synch up the iPhone, Mac and other iOS devices to reflect the newly created album and camera tool pictures? Does moving a camera roll picture into an album automatically delete it from the camera roll on all my devices? Is that something I have to do manually? Or maybe adding a picture into an album doesn't remove it from the camera roll at all and instead creates a duplicate. This gets confusing rather quickly.

What about tagging of places and faces? Will that be something that we can do on iOS now that the Mac has been demoted? What about merging of events? Does that still require a hard synch to reflect the changes? It seems Photo Stream is only a part way photo synch solution and will require a substantial amount of thought on the users part to remember which pictures from the camera roll have been added to events, albums and tagged.

This isn't politics. This is business. Different game, different rules.

Jobs spent length explaining this service because it is something different and setting the right expectations is key to keeping the B&M crowd at bay. Also, the audience for Apple products has grown and it's not just Mac users who all know about .mac and mobile me and can just be told "we killed the price and syncing X, Y, Z" and know what the rest of it is.

Also it was WWDC where a key audience is the developers and they need the details. So again, length

Wow, I am really gonna miss Keychain Sync. This has been a lifesaver. If I visit a site on my home computer and create an account with a password, it becomes available in Keychain on my laptop on the road. I don't have to write it down anywhere. I suppose I can send a copy of the keychain data to dropbox to sync between the 2. Does anyone know where this data is stored? and can the location be moved?

Also, this is going to be much more expensive than the Mobile Me plan.
Mobile Me $99.

ICloud - $25 to sync songs
Godaddy - $54 to host website
Drop box. $99 to host large files to share. (since iDrive is no longer avail) no pirated stuff
1Password - $40

So to accomplish the same thing. I would need to spend at least $229.
Bummer.

I only use Gallery and my MobileMe e-mail address. I will continue to use google for calendar and contacts and migrate to full time use of my google e-mail account. My iPad and my iMac seem to work well with google services. Right now, I am thinking that I will not replace Gallery, but post photos I want to share on Facebook. The photo stream seems useless.

Mike

Who says they don't already. Facebook was originally via a plug in. Any company that wanted could likely still go that route if they wished. Apple would probably love it and help them do it.

In the end, this is the nature of a lot of "missing" features. Folks put it on Apple to add them when in fact there's another party involved. You want direct access to your web host from iPhoto talk to your web host about why they haven't created a plug in that will do it. You want to be able to re-download/stream your movies that you buy from iTunes, talk to the studios. And so on. Even some of the features missing in the new Final Cut could be due to being patented tech that doesn't belong to Apple and either the feature is so rarely used compared to the whole that they don't want to make everyone pay for it versus those that need it getting the plug in or the patent holder doesn't want it put in the app so that folks will come directly to them.

I'm going to miss Keychain sync as well, but I don't think this is a showstopper considering the new features. iCloud is restructuring how data is stored, for security purposes. Adapting Keychain and other data types probably adds significant complexity to the effort and might have delayed the iCloud launch for another year. I wouldn't be surprised to see them add more features, like Keychain sync, in the future.


"ICloud - $25 to sync songs"
Actually, this will be FREE for any songs purchased on iTunes. For $25, they'll also provide cloud sync for songs NOT purchased on iTunes, at a higher quality, automatically (that includes your pirated music). What sort of music syncing can you do now with MobileMe? Also, this is SYNCING not STREAMING, unlike Amazon and others. Your music is accessible whether or not you have an internet connection, and if iCloud ever goes away, you still have your music, unlike streaming services.


"Godaddy - $54 to host website"
Most of us were not using MobileMe to host websites. Bummer for those who were, but I suspect this affects a very small number of people.

"Drop box. $99 to host large files to share. (since iDrive is no longer avail)
iCloud will provide 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup, Any storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream does NOT count towards the 5GB limit.

Price comparison:

2GB 5GB 50GB
iCloud Free Free $100
Dropbox Free N/A $100


"1Password - $40"
This is a one-time purchase cost, not a recurring fee.


"Also, this is going to be much more expensive than the Mobile Me plan. Mobile Me $99. I would need to spend at least $229. "

iCloud will provide a good chunk of what MobileME provided, plus more, for FREE.
Some things will cost extra, and some things will not be offered at all. iCloud will not cost most people $229 vs $99. For most people it will provide some great services for free. For those who depended on the now gone services, you've got a year to make your transition.

Oh please, come on... How can photo stream replace gallery?? Why would I wish ALL my pics being streamed?
And the bad port is... I just can't find a third party to replace that.. I can find replacement for iDisk and web hosting, but just can't find something to stream straight from iPhoto seamlessly...
I just hate they are doing this...

Agree. I fervently hope Apple has some alternate solution to this need going forward. It is a basic itch that iWeb allowed us to scratch. I think Apple is being very shortsighted and mean spirited in taking this easy solution away from its users.

Read my sig and promulgate it. If iWeb users responded with anything near to the passion of Final Cut users, we might get relief.

So 30 days from the day it's shot a photo disappears from the cloud? I hope that they include a paid way to extend this time somehow.

"Well there's your problem"! There isn't a master computer - MobileMe was the master. But yeah, Apple's sync code was very buggy. Which is odd because synchronization logic, while very complex, is not difficult to implement.

The 30 days is to give all your devices enough time to connect and get a copy of the photo. You can keep your photos forever by simply dragging them to a album they will be stored forever.

Now your Photo Stream doesn't count toward your 5GB limit but I would expect that once a file is move to an album to store indefinitely that would no longer be considered your Photo Steam and therefore use your 5GB of storage and will give you plenty of time to move them out of your iCloud photo albums if you wish to regain your iCloud storage.

Mean? Give me a break. Discontinuing a product is not mean. Perhaps you've never made a product to sell, but I can guarantee you that you don't discontinue a product to be mean - you do it because it no longer makes business sense.

Besides, there's Sandvox and RapidWeaver. Honestly, what is the problem here?

don't be so sure it is gone. The syncing is documents AND DATA. Keychains, widgets etc could be viewed as app data and thus still syncing. Just not as its own named line item



As someone else pointed out, this is a business decision to remove something they have data showing wasn't really that used. Also iWeb actually sucks. The code is disgustingly clunky and not very well done. It was actually better to kill it and either give up that world to other spots like wordpress etc or perhaps in the future buy out a better program like rapid weaver or macflux



Or not given that Apple doesn't listen to such things when their own data tells them a much different story. If they did then we'd have FCP7 to X importing added in despite the huge work it would allegedly take. We'd have all the missing features like export to tape put back in. ANd they would go back to the old interface and not this "iMovie looking bull shit"

Also, the bitching FC users are a small group compared to those of us pro users that actually understand the game and didn't walk into FCPX expecting it to be perfect on day one. Many of us actually like the new version and are enjoying out time learning it so that in a few months when we have it all figured out and all of our current projects are done, we can start using it.

Clearly Apple hasn't been as successful with Gallery as, say, Facebook has been with photo sharing. I think Apple realizes this and really just wants to get your photos onto your mobile devices so that you can share them on Facebook (or somewhere else) with others.

I don't think we'll be deleting pictures from Photostream. It just... is. You can put photos into albums from it if you want, or just leave it be. It's only the last 1k pics, so no major storage hog.

My take is that Photostream is really just meant to facilitate having all your pics handy to post and share on other social sites.

I just wish I could add pics directly from my digital camera into Photostream without an iPhoto download first. Now THAT would be awesome.

Just wanted to throw in my vote for keeping Gallery intact. I use it all the time!! There are no other services out there that are as pretty or easy to use. Photo Stream sounds like it will be nice, but it should not be thought of as a replacement for Gallery. Totally different concepts.

Clearly this issue seems to be getting little press, almost no push back and very little discussion in these forums... This effects MILLIONS of Macs users that can't move to LION and are stuck with NO SOLUTIONS! This seems more like a trick from Redmond than Cupertino... This truly sux...

Any surprise here???
Apple's MO

Man, I was so happy running 10.5.8 with my Mac.com account. I created TONS of great websites and published them soooo easily. I could uber sync my five Macs, no problems. Calendars, bookmarks, you name it. I had docs on my iDisk. The whole system was pro.

Now I'm like, holy cr*p I can't do any of the above. No more website publishing. No more Calendar syncing unless I upgrade first to Snow Leopard and then to Lion. And even then I won't get my websites back. Bummer.

I'm sad as an Apple user but glad as an Apple stockholder.

This stuff is becoming extinct like dodo birds:

Logic
FCP
iWeb creation
Website publishing
Mac OS
Pro Apps of any kind
Content creation
Niche "pro" market
Audio for audiophiles

Here's what seems to be Apple's future:

iOS only
Content consumption only
Mass market only

Maybe I'm just doing a grumpy rant. If so, my apologies to the great members of this forum.

I hope I'm wrong... but for now, Google syncing is my new best friend. Bummer.

Lot of people seem to be second-guessing Steve here. But don't they remember that when Apple makes changes, we always learn eventually that they did the right thing?

It's not hard to backup manually or automatically to a location of your choice. The login.keychain file is located in ~/Library/Keychains.

One simple method is to use Lingon to do a backup of the login.keychain file to Dropbox everytime there is a change made to the file.

What happens to "find my iPad/iPhone?" This was sold as being one of the great free features of MobileMe when you had an iPad or iPhone?

For those who enjoyed the features of MobileMe that seem to be on the chopping block: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html.

It's still a feature. It also now includes Find My Mac for those with 10.7.2 and iCloud.

If DropBox was a publicly traded company I would definitely be a buyer. iCloud is an utter disaster and I'm sure DropBox is anxious fill the void.

I use iDisk but I can easily switch over to DropBox where I already have an account. I also use Back to my Mac a lot but it is not too difficult to just vnc:// to get to the other machines as long as they are on a known IP.

Hmmm, are you sure? Why would the photo stream care or know whether Aperture is using it? Where does the photo stream even show up on the Mac, for that matter? In iPhoto? But no longer understanding galleries???

The whole 'it just works' doesn't sound like it just works in this case. I'd rather have a indicator on the photo thumbnails on each device indicating whether it's been 'shared' or not. But really, so what does it mean when you want to delete a shared photo? It's very counter-intuitive - what is a 'this device' semantic, what is global, can you control what you share (screen grab I just email to someone that doesn't need to be in my global library, or 3 versions of the same shot - I'll pick the good one to keep later, etc.).

I'm just not feeling the love on this one - oh, it's simple all right, but putting 'iPhoto' or 'iGallery' into the cloud with unlimited photo storage, galleries, controlled sharing, incoming box, and using that as a sync mechanism, etc., would have been nicer as far as I'm concerned. I'd pay for the damned storage - I mean, I already was!

Can you explain that position?

If no calendar syncing I am goingbto be very upset. As is my wife. Especially after so much aggravation over these years.

I could but it would be rather long winded and involve my dislike with many things in Lion as well as iCloud. Suffice it to say I do agree with almost every complaint already stated in threads of both topics.

Before I started really using 1Password, I would have really missed the keychain syncing. The rest - meh - I never did see the value in dock or system preferences - especially since my main two Mac's are a laptop and desktop where preferences for one often make no sense with the other.

But Keychain syncing was very useful.

Thank goodness they have kept bookmark syncing! That would be impossible to duplicate on iOS devices with the current SDK.

Less than those who aren't using 1Password!

Not only that but 1Password does so much more than simple password syncing that it should be a tool in every Mac or Windows users tool belt! How many people have one password on multiple sites?

With all the recent high profile compromises of sites, I would hope it's obvious now - more than ever before - that you MUST have a different password on each web site. 1Password makes that trivial.

I wish Apple would provide better paths for them to integrate with Safari and other developers on the iPhone, but it's still light years ahead of just having one or a few similar passwords on all of your accounts.

this f.ing sucks, come on how hard or complex is it to sync this? I think this it top to bottom from Steve by virtue of him not trusting the mm guys to do a good job, otherwise, and for such simple things there's no real rationale to discontinue them.