MacRumors has posted what they believe to be a legitimate email from Steve Jobs to a customer, in which Apple CEO sort of confirms that iWeb, the website creation tool bundled in the iLife suite and connected to MobileMe’s hosting service, will be discontinued come the official end of MobileMe services next year. Following the announcements at WWDC that saw the introduction of iCloud and the support document that detailed how existing MobileMe subscribers will be given instructions to migrate to iCloud this Fall, many wondered what would happen to old offerings like the aforementioned iWeb and the me.com web apps, which didn’t see any announcement or confirmation at the developers event. iWeb allowed users to design and update websites on a Mac, then host them through MobileMe. Steve Jobs suggests users will have to find an alternative design tool and provider to host the websites.
The email:
Q: Dear Mr. Jobs,
Will I need to find an alternative website builder and someone to host my sites?
I have invested a lot of time and effort and the thought of re-training sucks more than mobileme ever did.
A: Yep.
Sent from my iPhone
MobileMe subscriptions were automatically renewed to June 30, 2012, free of charge for all existing free (trial) and paid customers. It’s not clear at this point which other MobileMe services won’t make the transition to iCloud as Apple hasn’t confirmed anything but the information from the support document so far, but several tech pundits started believing that iWeb was headed towards discontinuation when it didn’t receive a substantial update with the iLife ‘11 suite last year.
