For you MobileMe subscribers who haven’t yet made the jump to iCloud, Apple is simplifying things a bit. As Macgasm initially reported, you can now get a free copy of Snow Leopard to ease your transition to Lion.
To snap up the deal, just go to Apple’s free Snow Leopard page and log in with your MobileMe credentials. You can even take advantage of the deal after you’ve already migrated your account to iCloud: Just log in again, click your way through the migration instructions, and then re-enter the URL above. You’ll just have to enter your mailing address so Apple knows where to send your Snow Leopard DVD. (Physical media! How quaint!)
Since MobileMe is going the way of the great auk, meeting the reaper on June 30, it’s getting close to the time when all good MobileMe citizens should make their way to iCloud. While some features will get lost in the transition, such as Keychain and Dashboard syncing, there are a couple upsides: For one, iCloud is free; for another, MobileMe users even find themselves grandfathered into a little extra storage space.
But in order to take advantage of iCloud, you need to be running Apple’s latest big cat: Lion. And, to complicate matters further, upgrading from any non-Snow Leopard version of OS X to Lion requires a pit stop in Snow Leopard. Which, of course, Apple no longer sells, because, you know, Lion.
Hence that free version of Snow Leopard. And the circle of life continues.
Updated at 7:27 a.m. PT: An eagle-eyed Twitter follower points out that Apple does indeed still sell Snow Leopard for the low, low price of $29.