iCloud for Snow Leopard

This is what I have been looking for, Gigi1701. I've just spent the best part of an hour in an Apple Support Chat in which it became abundantly clear that the official line is that you can't use iCloud on a Core Duo Mac because you can't upgrade it to Lion.

However, he had first told me how to go to Preferences/Accounts in Calendar and set up an iCloud account manually; when I asked him how to find the settings, he went away and came back with his unhelpful head on and said he was wrong, you can't do that. I think you probably can as long as you can find the server settings on another of your computers (if like me you have others which will run Lion). He said that it was the same in Mail and Address book but neither of these has the same server settings dialogue so these would be more of a problem.

Then I asked him if it would work if my wife (whose Macbook is the one in question) accessed mail, contacts and calendars through Safari on icloud.com. He did his level best not exactly to say yes and parroted the official statement about minimum requirements, but I got the impression that he knew it would work and had been told not to say so. You have just confirmed that for me.

I'm not going on to iCloud from MobileMe just yet anyway because it took ten hours, only two of which were for the download, before I could upgrade my iPad because of recurring 'unknown error' when verifying with Apple. Maybe I should just wait and see if the rumour of Apple supporting Snow Leopard eventually turns out to be true.

Hi Ian, I know it is confusing, I spent most of my day and didn't sleep much last night trying to figure out what has changed and how to get back to how I was doing things before I updated to iCloud. I tend to rush into things full boar and then have to figure it all out right away, since the upgrade of course messed things up. I looked at the iCal preferences in Snow Leopard, there is a configuration for CalDev, but I don't have the iCloud calendar server address, it isn't shown in the Lion version of Calendar. A some point yesterday I did see a page with some of the account settings for manually setting up iCloud, but don't know where it was, would have to find it again. I think if I need to use my laptop to post events to the rest of my devices, I will use the iCloud.com site. I can't do that on my iPod, it won't load that site on the version of Safari it runs and I can't upgrade to iOS5. So if I put appointments in that device I will have to retype them in when I get home. I really liked that I could set up an appointment, come home and the info was automatically transfered to my computers and ipad when I got online. I still can do that with my iPad, so just need to carry it and not depend on my old iPod Touch.

But you are wise to wait. There are many cool things about iCloud, but there are sacrifices too. I am not sad I upgraded, but for some people having to fiqure it all out as Apple is still troubleshooting is too frustrating and it is best to wait until the dust settles.

-Gigi (still coughing from all of the dust!!)

**PS - wanted to add that I could get on iCloud using OMNI web as well

Message was edited by: Gigi1701

Still, suporting PC by default, even Vista and no iCloud for Snow Leopard? And it is not even old system like Leopard or Tiger.. ccc

Since when can't you put Lion on a Duo Core Mac?

You can put Lion on a Core 2 Duo, but if your computer uses a Core Duo, it isn't officially supported. There are a few good articles on Macworld.com about it.

Oh okay, I didn't realize there was a difference between the Core 2 Duo and Core Duo. I thought they were the same thing. My mistake.

Yes, they are as far as what the can run, the Core 2Duo can run 64 bit, and I believe the core Duo is only 32 bit. There were rumblings that someone could come up with hacks for the Core Duos to run Lion, but the speed and memory could be an issue too. My MacBook Pro is from 2007 and it is at the edge of being able to run Lion and preferrably with a memory upgrade from 4GB to 6GB. A friend of mine insisted on getting the first Intell MacBookPro on eBay for such a good deal, I held out with my then ten year old Pismo for the next version. I rarely buy the first incarnation of any computers, the one time I did was the iMac G5 and it was a disaster. One month out of the extended warrenty the capacitors fried out and Apple wouldn't cover the repair so it was basically toast. Too expensive to repair. But, yes the first generation of Core Duo chips would be very hard pressed to run Lion.

I would think that there are so many MobileMe customers in the same position, on older Macs that can't upgrade. It would be complete business folly to not have something that will replace MobileMe on older computers. But it will come later, this is like the second day with iCloud in place and no one has to switch over from MobileMe until about eight months from now!! I am sure that Apple anticipated the migration could take time as issues are worked out and why MobileMe users were given a long time before being forced to do something else. Even though I upgraded to iCloud, I still have my iDisk and my Galleries and they will be there for quite some time.

Let's all give Apple a chance to get it sorted and if it looks like there will be issues then best to not change your MobileMe to iCloud just yet. I could have waited too, but I am an upgrade junkie. And I found workarounds for most everything and other than missing auto syncing on my iPod Touch 2, I am actually quite happy with iCloud and especially happy with iOS5. Pretty cool upgrade for my iPad!

Nobody knows that for certain, and speculation is strictly forbidden on this forum.

HAVE NO FEAR, the good news robot is here.

yes, like you and the majority of folk who have abstained from the gash ill thought out affair that is lion, have been super stressed bordering on rage at the lack of icloud support and ditched mobileme venture.

looks like its all well and good. read on

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/29/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-10-6-9-to-bring-icloud -support/

That article was dated August 29th. No 10.6.9 in sight. As such that constitutes a rumor. Last I looked we can't speculate on this forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/___sbsstatic___/apple/tutorial/tou.html

Until such time a 10.6.9 or iCloud solution for Snow Leopard is offered, post http://www.apple.com/feedback/ your request. You may be the tipping point to get Apple to release it. You can partition or add a second hard drive with 10.6.8 or earlier if PowerPC application support is needed on a pre-Lion Mac that supports Lion, and Lion support is needed at the same time. Chronosync offers similar solutions to iCloud for other web servers than Apple's own Mobileme. You may want to look into that.

I've finally managed this: when setting up iCloud on your Mac you'll come to a page which tells you what software you need to be running on your devices. Pretend you have Lion and move to next instruction, worked for me. Maybe Lion will be better in the long run, I probably need to upgrade anyway. Good luck.

This page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4929 "iCloud: What if my device or computer doesn't meet iCloud system requirements?" had obviously not been read by my support agent, though it is dated 12 October.

It says this: If you created an iCloud account from an iOS 5 device or Mac running OS X Lion, but have other devices or computers that don't meet the system requirements, you may be able to use some features of iCloud with limited functionality. Please note that devices which do not meet the system requirements for iCloud are not supported by Apple or AppleCare for use with iCloud.

(my bold text)

In other words, as an Apple support agent he is not allowed to give me any advice relating to a Mac running Snow Leopard, which was certainly the impression I got.

It then goes on to say: If you want to check your iCloud Mail [Calendars/Contacts], you can do so by visiting icloud.com from a Mac or PC (as long as it meets the browser requirements for icloud.com).

The browser requirements took a little finding but they include Safari 5 and the latest versions of Firefox and Google Chrome, as well as IE8. There is no word about whether iOS 4 Safari will work - can someone who has set up iCloud and who has an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad running iOS4 try accessing their iCloud account and looking at calendars, contacts and mail? [re-reading your original post, Gigi1701, I think you say you can't do this but please confirm]

For Mail, it also says: Alternatively, you can configure a mail application that supports IMAP via SSL for use with iCloud Mail. More information is available here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864.

That page gives precise server information which would allow you to set up Mail.app in Snow Leopard and Mail on iOS 4 devices to work with iCloud mail. It seems acceptable to be able to access the iCloud calendar via the iCloud website but not so handy for contacts as they would then not be automatically synced to Address Book on the Mac or contacts on your mobile device.

There is information out there about how to access iCloud server settings: one page gives the following settings:

Calendar p03-caldav.icloud.com, Contacts p03-contacts.icloud.com

These may be experimental or temporary settings used for the beta testing phase and I have also seen p04 and p06 prefixes.

Maybe significant: HT4929 above gives the incoming and smtp server addresses as imap.mail.me.com and smtp.mail.me.com while the page with the p03 settings prefixes these with p03- in each case. I hazard an educated guess that you could set up the iCloud calendar as a CalDAV account on your iDevice by entering caldav.icloud.com as the server address. I also suspect that you can do the same with the iCloud contacts by entering contacts.icloud.com as the CardDAV server address. The other information you need to put in is the username (I've seen somewhere that you don't include '@ me.com') and password. Gigi1701, how about trying that and reporting back? Then you wouldn't have to carry your iPad all the time in case you need to add a new contact.

Hi Ian, I did some testing with the info you provided. My iPod Touch is quite old, it can't run the newer versions of iOS4 even. I can't get past the "set up this device" screen and any link I click just takes me to a support page at Apple about setting up devices. So for now I would say that the iPod Touch 2 does not have a compatible browser to use iCloud online. I can sync my calander and contacts to the iPod by plugging in and syncing via iTunes, however, it doesn't put any calendar updates I put into the iPod on my calenders on computers and iPad. Most likely Contacts won't update on the iPod, but my Mail for me.com is still coming in even though I got a message when I looked at my settigns saying that my MobileMe account is closed. But it does still work.

However, using the server info you posted above, I could connect to the iCloud calendar server on my laptop running Snow Leopard. (there is no place to put server info on the iPod in the settings) I used the p03- prefix and Calendar on my laptop found the servers and the calendars are automatically synced, so that is working. I tried the address for Contacts, but haven't gotten it to connect to the icloud server yet.

You can add Omni web to the list of browsers that can work with iCloud through a browser.

I will keep working on the Contacts and let you know.

Turns out I can see my events that I put into my iPod, I didn't have the On My Mac calendar turned on. Once I did I saw events I put in my iPod that was synced through iTunes, I can live with that, it isn't automatic, but better than retyping by hand.

For Contacts I put in server settings I found on another thread here, I got connected, but it isn't syncing. At this point it is easier to sync through my Yahoo account!

The calendar is most important to me anyway and it is working now so I am happy. I will upgrade my laptop to Lion soon anyway once I get more memory for it.

Apple, we understand that you want us to buy as many copies of Lion as possible. However, for the power users that are using various high end design applications, well, we stick with what works and that's why we stay on Snow Leopard. Do you think for a second that I'm going to rifle through a list of all my applications to ensure they work with Lion before I upgrade just to have my photos and music sync to all my devices over iCloud? It's things like this and, oh yeah, things like your New Final Cut X software, that make me believe that you are not really focused on designing powerful software and operating systems for professional power users anymore, but instead, you are focused on Grandma's ability to use a desktop!!! Also, please do us all a favor and stop with the cloak and dagger! If there are rumors going around about an upgrade for SL that is compatable with iCloud, then just come out and confirm it or, here's an idea, just tell us upfront! It's not an iPhone event...