Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/06/13/the_demise_of_iweb/

Jobs confirms iCloud's murder of iWeb

'Hey! You! Get onto my cloud'

By Rik Myslewski

Posted in SaaS, 13th June 2011 18:07 GMT

With the introduction of iCloud, Apple's MobileMe service is about to go the way of the buggy whip. One of its soon-to-be-obsolesced components will be the web-hosting service for sites built using Jobs & Co.'s iWeb app.

Or so says none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs, if a purported email interaction between one fanboi and The Great Steve Himself™ is to be believed.

When asked about the end of MobileMe's one-click hosting of websites created by iLife's quick 'n' easy iWeb app, MacRumors reports, Jobs replied thusly:

Steve Jobs email regarding iWeb

'Concise' may be understated (source: MacRumors)

Of course, there's no way to verify the veracity of this Jobsian correspondence, but its three-character content – 2.14 per cent of a Tweet – is characteristically terse, landing as it does neatly between the four-character "Nope" that Jobs reportedly sent in answer to a question about whether all Mac apps would need to be sourced from the Mac App Store, and his two-character "No" when asked whether a Wi-Fi iPad would be able to internet-tether using an iPhone's 3G connection.

We're betting that the missive was actually "Sent from [Jobs'] iPhone", as alleged. After all, although Apple is famously tight-lipped about, well, about everything, Jobs does occasionally use his iPhone to tap a few words to the world outside One Infinite Loop.

Remember, if you will, his previous alleged emails clarifying App Store subscription rules, telling a pesky student to leave Apple alone, pointing to a VP8 video-codec analysis, promising iPad printing, discussing a patent pool to "go after" Theora, and calling an analyst "nuts" for saying that the iPad's Euro-launch was intentionally delayed.

Perhaps the most famous of Jobs' iPhoneian pronoucements was his response to a developer who had eloquently argued to be allowed to keep the name of his app, iPodRip: "Change your apps name," Jobs tapped. "Not that big of a deal."

If Jobs' latest missive is authentic – and MacRumors contends that its email headers appear to be the real deal – the end of MobileMe' web-hosting service is no surprise.

As we've mentioned before, iCloud is ending the life of multiple MobileMe services and, in the process, subtly shifting your use of online files and data towards Apple's applications ecosystem. Also to be deep-sixed by iCloud, apparently, are the browser-based iDisk store-whatever-the-hell-you-want cloudy file-syncing and online-storage service, and MobileMe's browser-accessible Gallery for photos and videos.

When a certain Reg reporter dubbed the twenty-teens as the "Out of Control Decade", not a few readers suggested that a tinfoil hat might be an appropriate fashion statement. Now, as Jobs & Co.'s iCloud moves access to files and other content from the open web to iOS and Mac OS apps only, that Reynolds Wrap chapeau may not be quite so ludicrous, eh? ®