Apple's .Mac to transition to MobileMe on Wednesday

Two days ahead of the release of the iPhone 2.0 software, Apple said it would debut the new online service for sychronized e-mail, calendars, and resource sharing.

.Mac subscribers began receiving e-mails over the past few days alerting them to the company's transition plans. Most of the service would become unavailable save for mail for a six-hour time frame Wednesday evening.

From 6:00 pm to 12:00 am Pacific, Apple will apparently be working on transitioning users over to the new online service. Based on previous information released by Apple, some features would disappear, while others would see upgrades.

The iDisk would be expanded from 10 to 20 GB of storage, and me.com would replace mac.com as the service's primary e-mail suffix. However, Apple says it will allow users to continue to use their mac.com addresses. Personal Web site addresses would change in a similar fashion.

Features to be axed include web bookmarks, as well as iCards, .Mac Slides, and syncing compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3.

Current subscribers are able to upgrade at no charge, while new customers may subscribe at a rate of $99 per year.

Apple is likely transitioning early to allow for early adopters to use the new push functionality of the iPhone 3G and the software upgrade to hit the ground running, as well as spur better adoption of Apple's service offerings.

While Apple has never specified the number of subscribers to the service, it is believed to be no more than in the the tens of thousands.