Developer trying to figure out how to transfer your old MobileMe account to a hot new iCloud account? Luckily Apple has just opened up the transfer procedure and we'll walk you through it, after the break!

To transfer your MobileMe account to iCloud:

1. Go to http://www.me.com/move/.
2. Login using your existing MobileMe email address and password.
3. Verify your login and click Get Started.
4. If you use Shared Calendars, privately shared calendars will need to be re-shared with other users who have also transitioned to iCloud, and publicly shared calendars will be unpublished and will need to be published again. Know it, then tap Next.
5. You'll be able to keep using Gallery, iDisk, and iWeb until June 2012, even after transferring to iCloud. Click Next.
6. And HUGE RED LIGHT. Mac to Mac sync services for Dock, Keychain, Mail accounts, rules, smart mailboxes, and signatures, and Preferences, these will NO LONGER WORK after moving to iCloud. If you rely on these, stop now and either a) hope Apple adds these features and soon, b) hope a 3rd party comes along to fill the gap, and c) make peace with the loss of really important functionality. (Boo!) Click Next.
7. Make sure your iPhone, iPad, and/or iPod touch are all on iOS 5 beta 5 [Dev link], your Mac is on OS X Lion 10.7.2 with iCloud for Lion beta 6 [Dev link], and your Windows PC is on iCloud Control Panel for Windows beta 4 [Dev link]. Confirm via the checkbox and click Next.
8. Check that your Contacts and Bookmarks are up to date on at least one device (iOS, OS X, or Windows), and if you want to be extra safe, back up your personal information -- Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks -- just in case [Apple KB link]. Once you're ready, click that big blue Move to iCloud button and you're underway.

If you take the plunge and make the transfer, let us know how it works for you. Personally, I'm staying away as long as possible -- I need that Mac to Mac sync functionality and can't believe it's not included (yet?!).

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

It looks like MobileMe might be in for some improvements next year, given Steve Jobs' purported response to one frustrated customer.

I love my iPad and iPhone 4 and am a huge fan of yours and all that Apple does. I desperately want to stay inside of Apple'e ecosystem as much as possible. However, MobileMe is making it very difficult for me to do so. Unreliable/unpredictable syncing, creating duplicate entries (sometimes scores of them), etc. It's almost unusable. And I know from forums (including Apple's own support boards) that I am not the only one experiencing these very real and frustrating problems. Please tell me it will get better, and soon?

The Steve Jobs response:

Yes, it will get a lot better in 2011.

Sent from my iPhone

I'm sure we've all had our ups and downs with MobileMe at one point, given the service has had some reliability issues since its re-launch (previously named .Mac) in 2008. With one of its most valuable features (Find My iPhone) recently going free, some wonder if the service is still worth the $99/year cost.

What sort of improvements do you see Apple bringing to the table with MobileMe? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

[MacRumours]

With Apple making Find my iPhone free with iOS 4.2 for iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch 4, will you still pay for the full MobileMe service?

If you just want Find my iPhone, it's an easy answer. Here's your freebie, thanks and bye!

If you want MobileMe email, calendars, contacts, galleries, iDisk, and the whole suite of Mac services like Back to my Mac, dock, preference, keychain, and other sync features, then maybe it's well worth the price?

If you like MobileMe but aren't sure of the value, maybe you're waiting for Apple to add even more and better features, or to lower the price before you renew?

Give us a quick vote in the poll above and give us your reasons in the comments below!

Tomorrow at 10am PT, 1pm ET, Steve Jobs puts sneaker to stage and, along with SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall, gives us a sneak preview of the highly anticipated iPhone 4.0. No one outside Apple knows exactly what new features and paradigms iPhone 4.0 will offer. However, tradition demands we make our best guesses and ask you to do the same.

This isn't what we want, mind you. We told Apple what we want back on December 25, 2009: multitasking, better notifications, widgets for the home screen, instant access to important settings, themes, gestures like pervasive pull-down-to-refresh, system-wide "back" implementation, orientation lock, and resolution independence, along with a ton of great reader suggestions in the comments. We've also asked for a Finder app, like the Photo but to store document files.

This is what we think we'll actually get, given the rumors and the direction Apple looks to be going. This is us, TiPb staff and TiPb readers reading the tea leaves...

iPhone 3.2 (aka iPad) features

This is the most obvious, really (and we've written about it before). All the little tweaks and enhancements Apple has made to the underlying OS, like adding "replace" to cut, copy, and paste, adding spell check to auto-correct, adding dictionary lookup to text select, etc. Wallpaper for the Home Screen, week view in Calendar and the other, sometimes small but still important, chance to the built-in apps, should be there as well. So should Bluetooth keyboard support. Oh, and iBooks.

Better Mail handling

Steve Jobs himself reportedly responded to an email saying a "universal inbox" was coming. That means, like Mac Mail but unlike current iPhone Mail, users with multiple accounts would have the option of seeing all their new messages in one place and not have to tap into and out of multiple folders every time they wanted to check every new message in every account. (Yes that sentence was crafted to feel as laborious as the current process!). Whether we'll see more than that -- IMAP IDLE, multiple exchange accounts, "synergy"-like messaging integration, etc. is unknown.

Multitasking (of a sort)

We've been hearing this for a while now -- that Apple will offer some level of multitasking in iPhone 4.0. We've even seen it in the shadows. The three use-cases that it could cover are background tasks (listening to streaming internet radio while you browse Safari, keeping navigation running while you check Mail), fast task switching (going from Notes to Contacts and back), and multi-window workflow (dragging data from one application space into another).

While the "Pandora" model could easily be handled by allowing streaming accounts to be entered inside iPod (which already has background access going back to iPhone 1.0), the navigation model won't be solved unless there's a more universal background implementation. However, Apple has always put stability and mainstream user friendliness ahead of power-user functionality. A compromise seems most like -- full background access for a highly limited number of applications.

Fast task switching was accomplished in large part by the speed of iPhone 3GS. What remains missing is the consistent saving of state by apps on exit (if you leave a twitter client or a race game and then go back it should be at exactly the place you left it), and a more elegant way to quickly move between apps -- swiping between two apps 11 screens apart isn't very Apple. The rumor here is for a Mac OS X-style Exposé implementation where a double-click of the Home Button would cause the current screen to fly out and a grid of active (background) apps to fly in. That sounds much more Apple.

Multi-window drag-and-drop may not be obvious given the small size of the iPhone, but given how Palm's webOS Cards view presents apps -- and how the iPhone Safari Pages view does likewise -- is remains a tease. Still, we don't expect it. Not yet.

New home screen (SpringBoard)

SpringBoard is the internal name of Apple's Home Screen UI, which right now consists of an 11 page-wide application launcher grid with SpotLight search bolted on to the right. Rumors have persisted since before iPhone 3.0 that Apple has a new SpringBoard experience waiting in the wings. Again, there are several elements that could be at play: better organization, glance-able information, themes.

We're not wishing here, so no grandiose "Apple will re-invent the metaphor for home screens with some ingenious new approach". We're looking at what Apple has already done for clues as to where they're going. Stacks, then, where groups of similar apps are combined together until a tap expands them into a grid-launcher would be reasonable. Likewise, Dashboard where useful, glance-able information is always just a tap (or swipe) away. Dashboard could even integrate SpotLight, allowing it to replace a singletasker with a multitasker (how fitting). It could function similarly on the Lock Screen, for ultimate glance-ability.

We don't see themes, however. Though they'd be a boon to users and designers/developers alike, they don't seem very Apple (beyond the home screen wallpaper already mentioned).

Improved notification handling

We've beaten this one to death -- if you get a constant stream of SMS, IM, game challenges, or any heavy amount of notifications each new one obliterates the one before meaning all but the most recent functionally never existed and hence never notified you of anything. Both Android and Palm webOS do this more functionally, though developers have complained to us that it may be too complex for the mainstream market Apple is targeting (too much management for mom). Could Apple create a more robust yet still drop-dead-simple notification system for the iPhone? Sure, and given how fast and far push notification has been adopted, we think it's likely they will.

The simplest solution would be a Notification app (please, no smiley face logo) that listed all new notifications. When you've received multiple notifications, the dialog would show the most recent but also inform you of how many others you've missed, and an option to "see all" would be presented.

But that would likely make no one happy. This more than multitasking might be the most difficult nut to crack, and may end up being part of that new Home Screen mentioned above. That's closer to guess work than we're comfortable with for this post, however, so we'll just leave it there for now.

iAd platform

"iAd" was rumored to be shown off on April 7, and April 8 is just a day later. Apple's mobile advertising platform could certainly be part of the iPhone 4.0 SDK feature set unveiled for developers. Gossip says Steve Jobs wants to do for mobile advertising what iTunes did for digital music -- make it not suck. We certainly hope so. Punch-the-monkey with push notifications is certainly not the new Home Screen experience we want.

iTunes.com

It's fairly certain iTunes is moving to the cloud and becoming something akin to iTunes.com. We'd love to see streaming video from Apple, MobileMe "whispersync" to keep our place between iPhone and iPad, and other great, media-centric features. But Apple typically saves those for September to coincide with the new iPod touch and lately, new iTunes releases.

###Mobile iChat

We put this here just for Chad. We still think Mobile iChat (text and audio/video) is coming but not until the 4th generation iPhone is revealed at WWDC 2010. Apple usually holds a few new OS features back to show off the new hardware (like Compass, VoiceControl, etc. last year). Patience, Chad!

MobileMe 2.0

Beyond "whispersync" MobileMe has fallen so far behind Google services, DropBox and others that Apple really has to up its game here. Photo sync, cloud backup, and other features have gone from nice-to-have to must-have. Again, however, that feels more like a WWDC 2010 Phil Schiller announcement to us.

One more thing...?

That's what we think is most likely to come with iPhone 4.0 tomorrow, but Apple has shown they can always surprise us (who expected the long, long list of previously missing features rattled off at the iPhone 3.0 event?). What are you expecting to see?

A minor tweak in iPhone 3.0 Beta 4 changes the language for the -- still-unannounced by Apple -- "Find My iPhone" feature from simply saying it uses your MobileMe account at me.com, to saying it uses a MobileMe Web application.

The assumption has always been that this feature would let you track a lost iPhone (or perhaps the child for whom you bought it), web application sounds -- at least to us -- a tad more substantial in terms of implementation.

Since Apple will have to build out MobileMe to support this, and since we're speculating anyway, we're also still hoping a revamped MobileMe in general might make a guest appearance at WWDC (where Phil Schiller introduced it last year). With note sync finally available, adding it to MobileMe seems an obvious move. Tasks/Todo sync, as well as Photo Sync (currently photos can be shared and stored, but sync only to iPhoto web albums, not to the iPhone) and perhaps -- some of the other improvements we've dreamt of?

/Tangent

(Thanks to Cody for the tip!)

What is MobileMe?

MobileMe, Apple, Inc.'s answer to the consumer-based "push" concept has launched today. MobileMe comprises of web-based applications that not only synchronize with their desktop counterparts, but also "pushes" updates to other computers including calendar appointments, address book entries and Safari bookmarks. Windows-based PC's and Apple's OS X can be used to synchronize this information between platforms. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch (using Wi-Fi) you can receive these updates instantly on your device without having to synchronize with your desktop.

MobileMe Setup

After unboxing and setting up my iPhone 3G, I got straight to work on configuring MobileMe. One of my initial concerns was how the information will sync to my new iPhone from iCal, Address book and my Safari Bookmarks without duplicating information. iTunes handles the synchronization process, and I figured that between synchronizing iTunes and sending the same updates out, there was bound to be a duplicate somewhere. As it turns out, MobileMe disables synchronizing this information from iTunes. Instead, it gets "sent to the cloud" and is then pushed to the appropriate devices. 

First, you have to turn on MobileMe from System Preferences in OS X. The options are identical to Apple's precious synchronization effort, .Mac. After choosing what you want to sync, the fun begins!

Adding Information

After turning on MobileMe and synchronizing in iTunes, I noticed that all of my information was missing on my iPhone. Calendar, gone. Contacts, gone. Nothing. I immediately opened those respective applications on my Mac. Thankfully, they were there and intact. I procrastinated a second and began to look at the web experience of MobileMe. Just as I started to type the URL into the address bar, I looked at my iPhone (I kept the Calendar application up when I left it on the table after freaking out) and noticed my appointments showed up. What? I then looked at Address Book. What again? That is right, within about a minute; my calendar, contacts and bookmarks were synced to my iPhone. I could not believe it. 

This was very impressive. I then proceeded to the obvious: I added and appointment on the iPhone. No sooner than launching iCal on my Mac desktop, the new appointment appeared. Next I proceeded to add a whole new calendar to MobileMe on the web. I clicked the “+”, picked a color and I was off to the races. I added and appointment for fun, and again without fail, a few moments later, the new calendar WITH appointment showed up on my iPhone and iCal. This service behaves as advertised.

One of the nice new features that I am enjoying on the iPhone is that the calendars that are synchronized also keep their colors. For example, I assign green to my personal calendar, blue to my work calendar and red to my wife’s work calendar. These colors and calendars all get synchronized across platforms. When creating an appointment on the iPhone, you can now designate which calendar you would like the appointment to belong to.

Synchronizing with Microsoft Exchange

My next question I asked my self was, “If I used Microsoft Exchange at work, could I also use MobileMe with that too?”. The answer is yes. MobileMe and your Exchange information can live on the same device, but only if you are a paid subscriber of the MobileMe service. If you are not and try to synchronize your personal iCal data and Address Book information, Exchange will win that rock-paper-scissors battle and wipe them out, leaving the Exchange information only.

Summary

I can’t be happier with MobileMe so far. There is more to this service including online photos and a web-based version of iDisk, but I will discuss this further in a full review at a later date. In the meantime, enjoy MobileMe and enjoy the freedom that it offers.

Here at TiPb, we've all had bugs with the leaked 2.0 update and, like the rest of the interw00ts, we're also not getting Mobile Me working reliably since it went live yesterday. Thankfully, Apple has fessed up and admitted that the transition from .Mac has "taken longer than expected" (per Engadget).

The Mobile Me desktop login just worked for me for the first time just now, this morning. I'm successfully pushing data out, but I'm not about to start depending on it for real work. Is it working for you?

Good morning iPhone lovers! Remember when you were a child and you discovered your parents' secret hiding place for your Chrismas presents? You spend a few agonizing minutes (ok, seconds) debating whether or not to peek at what you'd get and then, yes, you peeked. Today's going to be like that. If you haven't yet, it's time to fire up iTunes and check for an update because, yes, 7.7 is here with the App store and ready for download. More on that in a bit.

First up, though, GearLive [via gizmodo] managed to figure out that Mobile Me is basically up and ready to rock, although the service itself may not quite be live yet. It's not going to show up in any software updaters just yet, but here is a direct download of the installer for Macs.

Update: My computer just let me know that ".Mac is now Mobile Me" and sent me to the software update, which, verily, has the Mobile Me Update available officially!

We've gone over just how bad the Mobile Me brand sounds to us a couple of times already (almost as bad as this week's service!), but now reports surface that there may just be something better hidden beneath the bad label:

MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe -- calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we've heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that's a technical term).

Delivery estimate? Late June/July timeframe, hooking into the iPhone 2.0 and not only the newly released OS X 10.5.3, but potentially Windows as well.

Read

Yesterday came word that the name Apple might be using to rebrand .Mac was "Mobile Me", and amid the pitchforks, torches, and angry villagers storming the internet pipes to Cupertino, we figured our readers could easily come up with a better name, and sweetened the pot with $50 worth of gift card incentive to prove it.

Daring Fireball's John Gruber had previously mentioned that iMobile might be an alternative, though his readers felt it could too easily be mistaken for immobile, probably not the poetry Steve Jobs is shooting for.

Now Gruber, and his handy crowd-source at Twitter bring word that just plain old "Me", surfaced as me.com, could be a candidate as well, and had mysteriously changed ownership just today.

Make of that what you will (and I will continue to make fun, for the same reasons mentioned in the first post). And don't forget to enter our contest. Pick a better name than "Mobile Me", and if the blog staff likes your name best, the $50 gift certificate is yours! [We'll compile the guesses from this and from our previous post. The Gift Card is for the Phone different Accessory store. Deadline: 4EST on Monday June 2nd].

[From Dieter: I dislike this whole "me" thing for several reasons. First, it smacks of a 1990's, by-committee branding that sounds hip and clever but is actually staid and out-of-touch. Very Un-Apple. Second: If Apple somehow manages to make this brand hip and the "Me" does make people feel like they have ownership and identity with the brand ("Me.com really is about ME. Gosh, it's like it's my very own internet service,") then they'll be faced with an impossible task: not screwing that up. Think about how unhappy you are with .Mac's reliability and speed. Now imagine if that service weren't called ".Mac" but instead "Me." People will become disenamoured very quickly. Now we can obviously assume that this whole Me.com thing will have better reliability -- but if Apple really is looking for a straight-out, bald-faced "this is Me on the internet" branding, then even the tiniest failure in the system is going to make people super pissed -- it would go from "Aw crap, .Mac sucks again" to "Me.com is down again. Apple broke ME". Not good.

Thirdly: Windows ME. 'nuff said.]

[Note: Official $50 Phone Different Store gift card says our readers can pick a better name than "Mobile Me". See below for details!]

If you hear the steady sound of thumping, as though something were continuously bumping, that's not the GPS industry going into cardiac arrest at the mere thought of the iPhone 3G's specs, that's tiPb's collective heads as we knock them against our glass screened, glossy facaded, aluminum cased displays in abject terror of what Apple may be choosing to rename our loved-to-hated old .Mac service:

Mobile Me

Sadly, no. (And we thought Back-to-My-Mac was awkward...)

Dear Apple,

We, your loyal iPhone users, realize .Mac was fine for a label pre-.com bubble burst, and has desperately needed a fresh coat of paint ever since. We understand that you need to provide not only ActiveSync for business users, but similar email, contacts, and events "push"-style for consumers as well. We get that the service (perhaps) formerly-known as .Mac is an ideal launching pad for these features. And Jobs-knows that Windows users, your largest install base for iTunes, iPods, and iPhones, would be confused to the point of BSOD by something called .Mac.

But "Mobile Me". Seriously?

Sure, iSync is taken by local sync features, and Microsoft using ActiveSync for both local and Exchange services is confusing to say the least, but what about Apple Sync? Worked for Apple TV, didn't it? Okay, Gruber doesn't like iMobile, but I'd humbly suggest it kicks the sync out of the horribly precious "Mobile Me".

Please tell Steve that "Mobile Me" just isn't Zen enough. Tell him it's already something planned for the "Zune Social". Or Nokia's "Comes With Muzak". Whatever. Anything. Because let's face it, the line of better names than "Mobile Me" stretches around an Apple Flagship Store sized block a few times.

P.S. I bet the iPhone Blog readers could pick a better name (if not a couple hundred dozen better names). In fact, Dieter's so sure he'll pony up a $50 Phone Different Store gift card to the reader who picks the best alternative to "Mobile Me" (to be judged by the blog's staff).

Readers, have at it,

Apple, warmest namastes,

"Concerned Me"