iCloud, MobileMe and Lion

You patted yourself on the back. Your iPad and iPhone are now running IOS5. You have a new feature called iCloud. Now what?

In order to use iCloud across all your Apple computers and devices, your Apple Laptop or Workstation must be running the Lion (10.7) version of the operating system.

• Can your Apple Computer be upgraded to Lion? Here are the Lion computer requirements: http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

•  If you are not running Snow Leopard (10.6), you cannot download and install Lion. Lion is only available as a download from Apple via the Apple Application Store. The Apple Application Store access is only available on computers running Snow Leopard or higher. 

• What happens if you are running Leopard (10.5) or an older operating system release? You must buy a copy of the Snow Leopard upgrade disk. Unfortunately, that disk is not available to buy from any retail store in the U.S. including Apple Stores. You must go online to the Apple Store and place your order and wait for the disk to arrive via the postal system.

This seems like much time, trouble and expense. Why not stay with MobileMe? MobileMe goes away June 2012.  Here are the details of the transition from MobileMe to iCloud: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html