As expected Apple has today closed down its MobileMe service, allowing it to focus on providing services by MobileMe"s successor, iCloud.
The company announced last year it would close its MobileMe service that provided Apple subscribers with amongst other services email, file storage and calendar facilities. However, it remained open for existing subscribers until today providing them with the option to export their information to iCloud, or download a local backup if they prefer.
From today though, users are now met with a "Closed" page when attempting to login to the MobileMe website. However, it appears that the service isn"t yet being completely removed - while access to the MobileMe services is now unavailable, for a "limited time" Apple will still allow users who haven"t yet migrated to iCloud the option to move. Find my iPhone - while also available in iCloud - will remain accessible for limited time through the MobileMe portal.
With iCloud not offering feature parity to MobileMe, users can also download their images and files still, while iWeb Sites are no longer on offer with iCloud.
Those switching from MobileMe to iCloud will benefit from Apple"s introductory offer of 20GB of free storage until September on iCloud (the normal service comes with just 5GB of data free). However, after the 30th of September it will drop back to the standard 5GB of storage.
iCloud offers a whole host of new features over MobileMe, including iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream that syncs all images between iOS, Mac and Windows devices, Documents in the Cloud, Automatic downloads when apps and books and music is purchased and backup and restore of iOS devices. Find My Friends, a tool that allows users to locate those they know on a map, is also a new feature of iCloud.