Andy Thorton UK, thanks for your perspective. I have less of a problem with Apple releasing a new product with new functionality without necessarily offering backward support to Pre-existing products. In fact I have no problem with that. Dissapointment, yes. but that's e nature of technology.
What I do take exception with is taking away functionality the device was sold with, indeed marketed and promoted with. Again, it's one thing if a company discontinues a service, like iDisc, or Gallery, or personal websites. These are all products that are easily duplicated by third parties, and indeed perks, like any amount of free data storage. But synchronization services between apps designed to utilize that service is another matter.
If Apple had said, you know what, sync services aren't profitable for us, so we're discontinuing MobileMe, and getting out of that business. There are plenty of third party developers who have good soultions with whom we are supporting their efforts to seemlessly integrate with our OS. But they didn't. They said, we're changing the way Mobile Me works, and continuing to offer the service as iCloud. But for all those customers who paid a premium for Mobile Me, which Apple admitted was a flawed product, and purchased products as recently as two years ago specifically to harness the power of that technology as marketed and promoted by Apple (the 3G was sold retail until June 7, 2010 with no notice that MobileMe would be discontinued 6 months later), they said, sorry you should have read the fine print, your two year old purchase is obsolete, and in order to continue using the services you bought the product for, you'll need to buy a new product -- even though your iPhone is still perfectly functional and there is no good reason why we aren't supporting your product as sold to you, except we don't want to. Moreover, we would prefer you use our services, so we're not going to make it easy for any third party solutions to seamlessly integrate with our walled-garden products.
Sure they're offering you an incentive to upgrade by giving you iCloud for free. But considering those who paid $600 (subsidized!!) for the original iPhone, and over $400 for flawed MobileMe service, being forced to upgrade a phone and computer to get a free synchronization service for maybe 2 years if you're lucky is not much incentive.
In the end, if I had bought a new 3G retail less than two years ago specifically to use it with Apple's integrated Mobile Me, and that service was discontinued 6 months later with no alternative other than to upgrade my equipment in 18 months, I would be very upset. as I have said, we're it not for my substantial investment in Apple products, solutions and compatible software, I would seriously consider going Droid or Google when forced to upgrade an otherwise perfectly functional phone.
