A Farewell to iCards.
One of the casualties of Apple’s recent decision to rebrand .mac as MobileMe was their venerable iCard service. Apple’s iCards was a strange addition to .mac and a hold over from the iTools days. It was listed as part of .mac and yet it didn’t require the sender to be a .mac subscriber. In recent years it had become a forgotten link on the .mac website, a distant stepchild of a changing Apple. Even the design of the iCards site seems dated. I suspect many new .mac users don’t even know it is there. Yet despite its relative obscurity it’s the .mac feature I will miss the most. In fact it’s probably the only .mac feature I’ll miss. Why, you ask, in a crowded e-card market would a fairly obscure offering from Apple be missed? Because, like everything Apple does, it is a simple, minimalist and elegant offering in a world of clutter and feature bloat.
Most e-card sites and services offer either advertising riddled flash cards or ridiculous website hoop jumping for the recipient to receive their card. Many offer poor quality animation and annoying sound in something that looks more like spam than a greeting card. Apple’s solution on the other hand was incredibly simple. They licensed some high quality artwork and photography and made it super simple to both send and receive. For the sender, you simply select an image, add your message, select the recipient and click send. On the receiver’s end they simply got an email with a jpeg of the card and message attached to the email. No jumping through hoops, no clicking through websites, no barrage of advertising. Simple, effective, elegant, and unfortunately, soon to be gone.
Of course, I don’t think for a second that Apple is somehow screwing users or doing anything wrong by ditching iCards. I am not giving out. If I was in charge of .mac or MobileMe, I would probably ditch it too. It simply does not fit with the new service. It would be great if they kept it on or just left it running but I understand why they won’t. It’s a shame but also an opportunity for some other company to take up the mantle of de-gimmicking electronic greeting cards and offering something as simple and effective as Apple’s service. In the mean time, I suggest anyone who has never tried iCards pay it a visit before its demise in a few weeks time. To Apple I say thank you for providing such a great service for all these years. Farewell old friend, you will be missed.
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I think it’s a great shame that Apple are dropping this aspect of their service. One of the really nice features for .Mac members was the ability to use your own artwork for cards, rather than the stock artwork offered. I use iCards all the time and I think it’s very remiss for Apple to remove this feature from MobileMe.
Perhaps if enough people complained to Apple, they would change their mind.
Tom,
I see no reason why an iPhone user wouldn’t be surprised and delighted to send Apple’s elegantly funny or loving iCard to friends and loved ones on the spur of the moment, do you??!!
Why just say good-bye without a whimper!??
Have your say about the termination of Apple “.Mac” iCards at
Apple Feedback.
You can also try making a dent here,
Save the .mac iCards Petition
I sent my feelings straight to Steve Jobs, as well, in one final iCard:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsmiley/2652541101/
You’ll find the email addresses I used in the comments thread.
Last but not least, there are a few workarounds being tossed back and forth in the Apple Support Forums:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=977&start=0
Thanks for your time,
Melanie
Apple is not making it easy for people to complain about the loss of iCards are any other .Mac services that have been lost (or are going to be). For example, the feedback form for .Mac I mentioned above was understandably removed, however, it was not replaced with a MobileMe feedback form. Heavy censoring is the norm in the Apple Discussions forums.
Apple’s Discussion moderators deleted this comment from an iCards thread, so I’m plastering it all over the Web:
Meanwhile, there are two petitions, not just one, clamoring for Apple to bring back iCards. Feel free to join the chorus!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ic110608/petition.html
and
http://www.petitiononline.com/06291970/petition.html
As far as alternatives go, I have been using Steve Dekorte’s shareware app PostCard with positive reactions from recipients.
http://www.dekorte.com/projects/shareware/Postcard/
I found this:
http://www.ithiepcards.com