Apple offers Snow Leopard for free to MobileMe subscribers

According to an email from Apple sent to MobileMe subscribers, the company has begun giving away free copies of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). Although a seemingly charitable move on the surface, this may actually be a necessary action to keep customers happy. The giveaway appears to be an attempt to convert MobileMe users over to iCloud before the service is laid to rest on June 30, after which time the deal expires.

Currently, only Lion (OS X 10.7) provides official support for iCloud. With the imminent death of MobileMe closing in and Apple's reluctance to integrate iCloud into older versions of Mac OS X, the company has decided upon this convoluted fix -- issue free Snow Leopard DVDs to all MobileMe customers and let them upgrade to Lion from the Mac App Store for $30.

In 2008, MobileMe was rolled out as a replacement for its six year old predecessor, .Mac. The service offers a number of cloud-centric features such as online storage space, data synchronization across multiple devices, online calendar, contacts, email and GPS-based device location services.

Several months ago, Apple unveiled their new iCloud service and announced it would be replacing MobileMe. Subscribers of MobileMe have been able to migrate their accounts to iCloud since the launch of iOS 5 in November. Users who have not upgraded yet will need to do so before June 30 or may run the risk of losing their data.

If you're a MobileMe subscriber and are interested in the Snow Leopard upgrade, visit this link to apply (requires a MobileMe account).