The minimum requirement for iCloud is Lion 10.7.5 (Mountain Lion preferred): the iCloud Preference Pane does not appear on earlier systems - the MobileMe pane appears on Lion and earlier but is non non-functional - you cannot now open or access a MobileMe account.
To make use of iCloud you will have to upgrade your Mac to Lion or Mountain Lion, provided it meets the requirements.
The requirements for Lion are:
- Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
- 2GB of memory
- OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
- 7GB of available space
To purchase it you will have to ring Apple at the number given at the bottom left of this page.
The requirements for Mountain Lion are:
- OS X v10.6.8 or later
- 2GB of memory
- 8GB of available space
and the supported models are:
- iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
- MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
- Xserve (Early 2009)
- MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
- Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
It is available from the Mac App Store (in Applications).
You should be aware that PPC programs (such as AppleWorks) will not run on Lion or above; and some other applications may not be compatible - there is a useful compatibility checklist at http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
