This is just a quick note, nothing extraordinary, but perhaps it can be useful to anyone who still has an iPhone or iPod touch that cannot be updated anymore, is stuck with iOS 4.2.1, and wants to keep handling their @mac.com/@me.com MobileMe email. As you know, the MobileMe service was discontinued yesterday, and iCloud requires iOS 5 and at least an iPhone 3GS to work.
This morning I was updating some apps on my old iPhone 3G, and when I launched Mail it obviously failed to check my @mac.com account. So I went to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, selected my MobileMe account and deleted it. Then, back to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen, I tapped Add Account and chose Other, then Add Mail Account. In the next screen I entered all my (iCloud-enabled) @mac.com account settings, copying them from Mail.app on my Mac. The iPhone verified the settings and proceeded to create a new “Mac” account.
Naturally, you can’t have all the features of a full iCloud account (so no automatic syncing of Contacts, Calendars, Notes, etc.)[1], but at least you can still handle your @mac.com/@me.com email account. Apologies if this is so obvious, but maybe some users just went and deleted their MobileMe account on their older devices and didn’t think they could retain the email functionality.
- 1. Some readers have chimed in, reminding me that Contacts and Calendars can be synced as well, by configuring them manually (go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, then tap on Add Account, then Other and finally on Add CardDAV Account or Add CalDAV Account) using your iCloud credentials. I was only pointing out that you won’t have a single full-featured account where you can easily select the items you want to synchronise like you did before with MobileMe. Apologies if that wasn’t clear enough. ↩
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