MobileMe, however, has had difficulty competing against free services such as Dropbox in online storage and cross-computer synchronization. It also has a troubled history.

Launched in mid-2008, MobileMe stumbled even before it got off the ground.

The transition from the earlier .Mac service, which was supposed to take only a few hours, instead dragged on for a full day, raising the ire of users locked out of their accounts.

Days later, customers complained about slower-than-expected synchronization, which Apple answered with an apology and a 30-day service extension to all users. Shortly after that, an Apple server went south, taking down the e-mail accounts of about 1% of MobileMe's subscribers.

The before service was fully restored.