In less than 15 minutes at 21:00 EST (18:00 PST), the .Mac (dotmac) servers will go silent. All services will become unavailable. Darkness will cover the Apple internets.

At 03:00 EST (00:00 PST), 10 June, the servers will rise from the dead, ushering forth the era of MobileMe, Apple’s rebranded and enhanced Internet suite.

But much like the CPU transition and the OS transition before it, this is yet another transition for the Apple history books. An online services platform, or Internet suite, called iTools was launched at MacWorld 2000. It provided a slew of typically Mac-only services, the now venerable @mac.com email addresses, and introduced iDisk, all as a free service. I remember getting my iTools account, signing on from a freshly installed copy of OS 9 on the PowerMac 9600 I just purchased from eBay. The webmail interface, even then, rivaled MSN Hotmail. iDisk was pretty cool and became useful later on when WebDAV support was added. iCards were cute and easily the best e-cards on the ‘net.

Then, to much ballyhoo from the Mac public at Macworld New York 2002, Apple announced that iTools was no more and that .Mac was the future, but with some changes. First, the free account became a subscription-based service, costing $99/year. Homepage was added for providing web hosting for personal web pages and .Mac Backup was launched, providing automated backups to hard disk, optical disc or iDisk. I accepted the price change as I was sure Apple was losing money from bandwidth to support iDisk and IMAP-based email. The subscription eventually became known as the “dotmac tax” within circles of friends. Until the release of iLife ‘08 and the last refresh of the service, bringing along Gallery and the much needed storage bump to iDisk, I probably wasn’t using $99/year worth of services. Just my @mac.com email and the iDisk. Now I abuse my iDisk (no thanks to Transmit’s superb support for iDisk/WebDAV), have a blooming Gallery, an iWeb site and a couple gigs of .Mac email. That’s about to change.

If you haven’t seen what is coming with MobileMe, then go dive into the Features page now. We’ve on the verge of a revolution in managing, syncing, and updating data across multiple computing and mobile platforms. Some things are going away: iCards, web access to bookmarks. Some things are staying the same: Back to My Mac, IMAP-enabled @mac.com email, iDisk. And then there is the new stuff: New Web 2.0 AJAX-enhanced portals for MobileMe @me.com email, calendars, address book, and iDisk. Cross-platform access through the web (Safari 3, Firefox 2, or Internet Explorer 7), through Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007, or through the Apple PIM trio of Mail, iCal, and Address Book. I welcome the web-access changes to iDisk as you can now set limitations and expirations on downloads!

TUAW bids .Mac farewell and I can’t help but echo the sentiment of their crew:

While some scoff at the name, TUAW can’t help but see the other side of the picture: look how far iTools has evolved over the past 8 years. So, join us in saying, “So long old friend, we hardly knew ye.” 

They also highly recommend backing up your iCal calendars and Address Book contacts before the server downage.

Also, keep an eye out for iTunes 7.7 to be released, most likely during the downtime. Apple was quoted, saying that it should be available “in a few hours”.

UPDATE: As of 20:47, I can confirm that my .Mac email addresses have been migrated to the @me.com addresses.

UPDATE 2: Downtime pushed back by 2 hours. We should see MobileMe launch at 05:00 EST now.

MobileMe Preference Pane

UPDATE 3: It’s 10:17 EST and there is still no MobileMe. Hope everything is going smoothly.