When Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off MobileMe’s successor, iCloud, at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference last week, website hosting seemed to be conspicuously missing from the feature list. Apparently one MobileMe customer emailed Mr. Jobs asking if the web hosting feature would be dropped, to which he replied that it would — and implied that iWeb would be discontinued, too, according to Mac Rumors.
iWeb is Apple’s web site design application for the Mac. It’s part of the iLife creativity suite that also includes iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iDVD.
“Will I need to find an alternative website builder and someone to host my sites,” Mr. Jobs was asked. “I have invested a lot of time and effort and the thought of re-training sucks more than mobileme ever did.”
To which Mr. Jobs replied “Yep.”
iWeb may be on its deathbed
Assuming the email exchange is legit, Mr. Jobs seems to be confirming that MobileMe web hosting won’t be transitioning into iCloud. On iWeb, however, his response seems less clear since the email exchange refers to a “website builder,” and not iWeb specifically — although it’s easy to assume that’s the app in question since Apple built MobileMe support into iWeb.
Apple’s coming transition to iCloud will include MobileMe’s calendar, contact and bookmark syncing features, along with wireless data backup support for iOS devices, online storages for iTunes music, and photo storage from the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch camera.
iCloud will launch this fall along with iOS 5. MobileMe will continue to run alongside iCloud until June 30, 2012, when Apple finally pulls the plug.
Apple has not yet responded to The Mac Observer’s request to verify that iWeb is being discontinued, so for now reports of Mr. Jobs’s confirmation should be taken with a grain of salt.