Apple themselves have been telling the world iOS5 and Lion are the minimum requirements, so I'm not complaining for the sake of it.

I don't have an iPhone, iPad, or currently any requirement for any of the "features" in 10.7, so all I want to know is whether I will be able to retain my @mac.com email address after the Big Switch Off.

I am playing devil's advocate to a degree. I'm having a discussion about this very thing on the Apple Support Communities, and the general feeling is that while everyone using Lion and an iDevice will be fine, the rest of us will have to wait and see what Apple suggest before they turn off our access in June next year.

I accept I'm getting the service free anyway, but I would like to know if I have to start considering alternatives. I use my mac.com email as my main account, so it's not going to be trivial setting everything up elsewhere.

I was on iTools.

I think a lot of us here were.

Mark

I was when it was free. I dropped it when they began to charge for it.

Right, here's what I know so far…

1. iCloud really prefers you to have an iDevice on iOS5 and OS X 10.7.2.

2. Most of the MobileMe services will disappear at the end of June 2012. (This much we knew anyway.)

3. You should be able to retain your @mac.com/@me.com email address without migrating to Lion and iCloud by changing some Mail.app settings.

This last bit is where it gets complicated. In theory, you can only sign up for iCloud from a Lion Mac or iOS5 device. In lieu of either of those, there doesn't seem to be a way to activate an iCloud account.

As an aside, I note there is an update to Aperture, as well as some other system updates. The latter are available for Snow Leopard, but Aperture 3.2 - which may fix quite a few issues I encounter - is only available for OS X 10.7.2. Lovely.

LOL, sounds fun

I found a fix to your problem though...

Something to add to your xmas list

When I win the lottery I'll get you one Then you can run both

Hmm... just had a thought. Does VM Snow Leopard do everything you need for your old software?

If so could you install Lion and run VM to SL? Or poss even buy a Mini Lion Server and do it that way? [/idea for when I win the lottery]

I believe you can run SL in a VM in Lion. Either way, that's more expense.

I'm not, sadly, awash with cash. Much of what's left in my account - pending a new job or some decent clients for the freelance work - is earmarked for food and heating.

I got the upgrade notice after my iMac restarted (took nearly 8 minutes to log in after the reboot!). I went through all the stages of the update, then it told me that all of the really useful bits of MobileMe would be disabled, if I upgraded, then it told me that the servers were busy anyway and I should try another time...

iOS 5 is now downloading.

Accessing an iCloud email account using Mail in Snow Leopard

Is it s some sort of freudian slip I keep typing 'iCloud' as 'iCould'?

Jon

Neat.

However:



So it doesn't help anyone without iOS5 or Lion. Like me. The bottom line is you can't set up iCloud without iOS5, Lion, Vista or Windows 7.

(It looks like Apple are forcing my hand anyway. While there's apparently nothing in Lion for curmudgeons like me, especially as I don't have an iDevice or the need to dumb down my user experience, it looks increasingly likely updates to Aperture will require Lion. The latest certainly does, although it's chiefly aimed at bring iCloud features into the app. If I want to continue to remain within hailing distance of the herd, I'm going to have to sidegrade to Lion eventually.)

You can't set up an iCloud account in Win7 at icloud.com

It says you need iOS5 or Lion.

From the FAQ sections, buried deep:

Just installed that. You still need iOS5 or Lion to acutally create the account

[/quote]

Ah, missed that. Still leaves me out of the loop.