Have got some dead links to web pages on http://homepage.mac.com/, including Joe McKay's old site and his joke movie review page I used to submit to, "preReview." Was wondering when Apple's attempt at hosting went down, exactly, and found this announcement:
With all the discussion of the Yahoo Tumblr takeover let's pause a moment and think how fleeting web content is. Someone at Apple, in the late '90s, decides the company needs to host Web content to be cool. Thousands of innocent civilians create web pages, and even use the service as their main portfolio location. A few years later another executive decides the site is no longer useful and all those URLs, those investments of energy, go dark. As the above screenshotted post states:
Of course, Apple recommends that customers consider MobileMe Galleries and iWeb as an alternative. You can get the full run-down here [dead Apple link].
The dumb-sounding "MobileMe" (a la Slate's "Me Zines" - the name they were pushing before "blog" took hold) also met an ignominious end. Per Wikipedia:
On February 24, 2011, Apple discontinued offering MobileMe at its retail stores, with MobileMe retail boxes eventually removed from resellers as well. Additionally, Apple no longer accepted new subscribers for MobileMe. On June 6, 2011, Apple announced that a new service called iCloud was to replace MobileMe, sometime in the fall. At the iPhone special event on October 4, 2011, Apple announced it would finally launch iCloud on October 12, 2011, to replace MobileMe for new users, with current users having access until June 30, 2012, when the service would cease. MobileMe was shut down on June 30, 2012, but data was still able to be retrieved for an advertised "limited time", until July 31, 2012, when the site finally closed completely.
And iWeb, home of iCarly? Wikipedia again:
iWeb allow[ed] users to create websites and blogs and customize them with their own text, photos and movies. Users could then publish their websites to MobileMe or another hosting service. In addition to its ability to publish to MobileMe, iWeb integrate[d] with other services, including Facebook, YouTube, Google AdSense and Google Maps. Apple ceased development in 2011.
iCloud is sure to be a winner. But let's concede that Apple makes nice-looking hardware.