Jobs confirms iCloud's murder of iWeb With the introduction of iCloud, Apple's MobileMe service is about to go the way of the buggy whip. One of its soon-to-be-obsolesced components will be the web-hosting service for sites built using Jobs & Co.'s iWeb app. Or so says none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs, if a purported email interaction between one fanboi and …
Thanks for your past support. Your buying a poorly supported and ineptly thought out iProduct allowed us to take your money (plus a few hundred thousand others), string you along with promises to fix the inherent problems before dropping it completely and trying a second time. We don't actually promise we will get it right this time, but hey, I am the Jobs and past Apple product failures were the fault of flawed employees unable to comprehend the elegant and wonderful plan of mine.
Hope your soon to be moved web sites have many Apple links to the new iCloud service.
Hugs and kisses.
- Sent from my iPhone
It seems as if they don't even give a shit that a service they provided that users paid for is now discontinued thereby causing, in some cases, a shitload of woe. This sort of attitude to your customers may well earn short term record profits but long term will come back to bite you on the arse. The company went tits up before and may well do again.
In your happy world of unicorn tear waterfalls and fluffy fields of marshmallow, any business that offers a service must offer it perfectly and indefinitely for free, or at least at no profit? It's not as if Apple have given a years notice and given a FoC extention to current MobileMe users, or that there are similar services that are available for less, or indeed free, elsewhere is it? I mean it's not as if there are a plethora of cheap web host out there, is it? Oh...
Look, by all means have a go at Apple when they are really being douchy, but they just simply aren't here. They've given reasonable notice to all subscribers and this individual is only really losing a frankly poor site host. In real terms they can get all the other cloudy stuff for free, either with Apple, Microsoft, Google or someone else, so there will be extra cash for hosting and there are some really good hosting deals to be had for under £60/year. There really is no need for the melodrama or histrionics.
"In your happy world of unicorn tear waterfalls and fluffy fields of marshmallow, any business that offers a service must offer it perfectly and indefinitely for free, or at least at no profit?"
No, and there's no need to be a patronising prick either. The point is you don't setup services and encourage users (or sheeplike followers with little real IT knowledge) to base their whole IT universe around them and then whip the carpet out from under their feet. It will bite you on the arse eventually and let's not forget this is a company that went tits up in the past.
"It's not as if Apple have given a years notice and given a FoC extention to current MobileMe users, or that there are similar services that are available for less, or indeed free, elsewhere is it?"
The point is that Apple make sure they tie you in to using their services and theirs alone. They know their user-base isn't the most IT literate which is why the people bought the kit in the first place as it is a damn site easier to use for the novice. Do you really think someone who uses iWeb and its hosting is going to configure a web server on a third-party host or know how to reconfigure the deployment? Is there any real reason they couldn't have kept things like the iWeb hosting part going? Really? Charge a little more maybe? No, they just couldn't give a toss.
I don't use any of their services, never have and never will, for just this reason but I at least acknowledge that there are less IT literate types that do and I don't have to belittle or patronise to get my point across.
"No, and there's no need to be a patronising prick either." Why not? The OP managed to get away with it and it looks like fun.
"The point is you don't setup services and encourage users (or sheeplike followers with little real IT knowledge) to base their whole IT universe around them and then whip the carpet out from under their feet." Not so much hyperbole, but hyperbollocks, frankly. Apple are *replacing* the service *for free* in the coming weeks. Irrespective of how long you have remaining on your MobileMe subscription, they have given you until June 2012 (that's a whole year) for free so that you can make the switch to their new *free* service. They are only dropping support for iWeb. They are not the first IT business to drop support of a product, and they certainly will not be the last. To address the "sheep like followers" bullshit; 90% of the people that I know that use Apple kit are developers all of them very competent *and* successful. Now you can dismiss this a purely anecdotal nonsense if you wish (and let's face it, you will) but it is no less sweeping that your moronic and patronising statement about "sheeplike followers with little real IT knowledge...". Who's being patronising now?
"...let's not forget this is a company that went tits up in the past." Revisionism at it's best! They didn't go "tits up" at all. "Tits up" is a colloquialism for going out of business. Apple never went out of business, Microsoft apparently made sure of that. That's not to say that they weren't in trouble though. They were in a similar position that Sun found themselves in a couple of years ago, and unlike Sun they got themselves out of it. Dropping support for iWeb will not bring about the collapse of Apple, principally because not enough people use it.
"Do you really think someone who uses iWeb and its hosting is going to configure a web server on a third-party host or know how to reconfigure the deployment?" Some won't. They'll ask people like you and me. I'll offer my help of course, I guess you'll throw in a lecture on the evils of Apple. Some will be savvy enough to use Google to find the solution (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=iweb+without+mobileme) too. Again, you have the chutzpah to call me a "patronising prick"? Right back atcha!
"Is there any real reason they couldn't have kept things like the iWeb hosting part going? Really? Charge a little more maybe? No, they just couldn't give a toss." More histrionics. Contrary to your belief, Jobs hasn't sat in his office and said "You know what'll piss the nerds off? I'll cancel iWeb in iCloud and fuck all those sheeple I've conned in to using it along the way!" with his management minions around him, cackling away. They, as a business, made a strategic business decision based on information that none of us are party too. I'm willing to bet £10 to the charity of your choosing that the usage stats for iWeb are very low indeed. Yes it will affect a small number of people, but Apple have taken *reasonable* measures to mitigate this. The legions of imaginary "sheep" that won't be able to configure a simple web host now have a year to figure out how to do so if they so wish. My point is that your and the OP's decrying them as the great satan of IT is wholly unreasonable in this instance.
"I don't use any of their services, never have and never will, for just this reason but I at least acknowledge that there are less IT literate types that do and I don't have to belittle or patronise to get my point across." No, you just resort to hyperbole and histrionics with a smattering of hubris here and there. The odd strawman and ad hominem doesn't seem to hurt either. Oh, you do patronise by the way.
Jobs has a utopian dream of having all your data wrapped up snug and warm in his little fluffy iCloud. He will most likely kill the desktops one day, he killed the servers didn't he? Anyway, why would you need a powerful desktop? All you need is a net-connect tablet/phone device to get to all your data. You don't need a load of nasty home storage and a big clunky machine, we have all the storage you'll ever need at ( $5/GB of course ).
Once you join the cult...you will never leave!
iWeb isn't tied into mobile me. It is a very rudimentary site builder that can publish to mobile me or be FTP'd to any other provider.
There are lots of service providers out there who can provide the space (and probably for a lot cheaper).
I'm sure everyone who uses iWeb on Mobile me can do the 5 minutes work required sometime before the end of June next year.
I'm sure this'll annoy the usual suspects...
The other day I thought I'd try iWeb again (after a couple of years not even touching it) just to see what I was missing. The first thing I found out was that it will publish to any host and, by heck, the settings page for this couldn't be easier. I then created a site using 2 albums from iPhoto, a quick bit of editing for titles etc and published to my personal domain. Less than 30 minutes later I was emailing the fine result to my family and friends.
You see, for a lot of people this opens the door to self-publishing and sharing pictures and what have you. They're not in the least bit interested in CSS, PHP or whatever and don't even know what they are.
For what it is and what it achieves (for free - other than my cheap domain), it's very very hard to beat.
Just my 2 bobs worth (that should also give you a clue).
But seriously?
We have an article based on an alleged one word response from St Jobs? FFS write something interesting, or if you cant manage that there is a world of pron out there on the internets which is much more interesting than worshipping/demonising our nab in apple.
Yes both internets have pron.
Simple devious brilliance. We must develop countermeasures immediately! There is no time to whine so off to the wine cellar Aubin! We have to get to the Baixo Corgo before the dastardly Pignolo can complete his plan of total Dolcetto. We must give it our Sancerre best, for if we fail, every Carménère and Chablis may be lost!
3 glasses of tawny port later... Meh, Gaagle, Opple, Ornage, Bobble clooud... who cares, it works right?
Seriously, get real people!!!
EVERY large company I've worked for does not have their Execs in the GAL under their real name.
So "steve.jobs@apple.com" would go to the public relations department, and the man himself would be unlikely to see any of the emails sent to that mailbox, let alone respond.
Leaving that aside, it is more likely these one line responses are not from apple at all (like it's hard to spoof smtp headers, NOT!)
People who put up with Apple's shit have a problem; I can tell, I once did.
Back in 2006 I bought my one and only iStuff, a black MacBook. I was put off almost immediately by Apple's decision to deliberately lag behind in Java updates (back then I was very much into Java, both on- and off-duty). Having been bitten by the fanboi bug, tough, I persevered for two years, resorting to the likes of MacPorts and half-baked Mac OS X ports for software I could much simpler and more efficiently run on Linux, if only I'd let go of my Apple obsession. Alas, I just couldn't.
Then in 2009 I bought a Lenovo netbook in Taiwan and, not willing to bog it down with Windows XP, installed Ubuntu's Netbook Remix; long story short, I soon dumped the MacBook for a Dell PC with Ubuntu. And now, every time Apple screws their consumers with sudden portfolio letdowns, I just point and laugh.
has a very nice commerce site built with iweb (not by me) and hosted on MobileMe.
She can make alterations with one click and the site changes in seconds.
iWeb itself will still work as a site creation tool but the one click update will not if this email is true.
She is going to have to find a new host and learn learn how to FTP stuff etc. And that I think is going to be a big issue for lots of folks who use the mobileme hosting system.
Most of these people (like my client) are non-techies and are going to find it rather difficult to do.
I wonder what the logic of ending the hosting is.
Without a doubt that are many thousands of sites out there created with iWeb. Ok, not as many as those created with other tools - but still, a very significant number (and no, they are not all hosted at mobileMe).
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