Apple Giving MobileMe Users Snow Leopard for Free

Apple has started offering at least some MobileMe users that haven’t moved to Snow Leopard yet free copies of the operating system to cut down on their upgrade costs to Lion ahead of their transition to iCloud. Lion is required for iCloud, so by giving Leopard users a free upgrade to Snow Leopard, Apple is saving customers US$30 off the cost of migrating to Lion.

Apple gives Leopard users an incentive to use iCloudApple gives Leopard users an incentive to use iCloud

The $29.99 upgrade to Lion, or OS X 10.7, requires a Mac running Snow Leopard, or OS X 10.6, which also costs $29.99. MobileMe users running older versions of OS X that don’t move to Lion will find they’re out in the cold come June when Apple shuts down the service and supports only iCloud.

Apple’s iCloud service is already up and running, and the company claims it has over 100 million users on board already. In addition to email, iCloud offers file sync support, Photo Streaming, online data backups, calendar and contact syncing, iTunes in the Cloud, and more for the Mac as well as the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

iCloud is free, and Apple has done what it can to make the transition to the new service from MobileMe as painless as possible.

Leopard users interested in upgrading to Lion can go to Apple’s special upgrade page for MobileMe users to request their free copy of Snow Leopard.

[Thanks to Macgasm for the heads up.]