Linking iCloud to pre-Lion and/or pre-iOS5

Not everyone has Lion and/or iOS5 running on all their devices, but does want to link to their iCloud hosted mail, calendars and address books with all of them. Goggling for a way to accomplish this will result in a large number of article, however, most of them are only addressing one of the services or fail to explain in detail how to do it correctly. Therefore I decided to give it a try by writing this article outlining for all three services how to connect to the iCloud from those older OSs.

Identifying the iCal and Contacts Server

For starters it is important to get the correct iCal and Address book servers used for your iCloud account, there are a number of servers used because the user base is rather large.

For iCal the easiest way to find the server address is to login to iCloud account via your web browser, and select the Calendar for viewing. The next step is to select one of your Calendars for public sharing, don’t worry about it, we will not really do it. To select a calendar, click on the round circle to the right of the Calendar name, under the Edit column. A window will open, titled Share Calendar. You will be presented with two options, Private or public Calendar, select public and click on the Share button. The window will now display

In it you will see text like this one:

Your calendar has been shared.

Your Calendar is now available at:
webcal://p02-calendarws.icloud.com/ca/subscribe/1/JKeYPpvMth7Fx2…

Ignore the long string of numbers and characters at the end, all we need is what is between the webcal:// and -calendarws string, in this example p02.

Press OK. Click again on the circle, which is now green, in the window that opened, click on the Stop Sharing button. Exit iCloud.

Setting Up iCal on Snow Leopard

It is important to start with iCal if you also want to switch the Address Book, believe me, it is!

1. Backup (Export) all calendars as an iCal archive.
2. Open iCal Preferences and select the Accounts tap
3. [Optional if you have a MobileMe account] Click the “-” sign to delete the ME account..
4. Click the “+” sign to add a new account.
5. Now enter:
   Account Type => CalDAV
   User Name => Your MobileMe/iCloud email address
   Password => Your password for above
   Server Address => XXX-caldav.icloud.com (where the XXX is the string we found above which in this case it is p02)
6. Click the Create button

If you get a a message window informing you that it found multiple calendars, select the one with the address we used to setup the new account, ignore the me.com account.

Setting Up iCal on iOS4/3

1. Goto Preference => Mail, Contacts, Calendar
2. [Optional if you have a MobileMe account], select your ME account and delete it.
3. Select Add Account => Other => Add CalDAV Account
4. Enter:
   Server => XXX-caldav.icloud.com (where the XXX is the string we found above which in this case it is p02)
   User Name => Your MobileMe/iCloud email address
   Password => Your password for above
   Description => iCloud

   Advanced setting:
   Use SSL => ON
   Port => 443
   Account URL => https://XXX-caldav.icloud.com:443/[unique ID}/principal
   NOTE: I didn’t have to enter anything in the advanced section, this is just in case you need to do so

Setting Up Address Book in Snow Leopard

This one is a bit tricky and took me a few tries, at one point I had tons of triplicates in my iCloud Address Book, which took an hour to remove.

We now need to find your unique iCloud ID Apple has assigned to your account. Lucky for us, since we did the iCal switch first, this will be very simple:

1. Open iCal’s Preferences window
2. Select the Server Settings tab
3. Write down the set of numbers in the Server path field, this is your unique iCloud ID
4. Close down the Preferences window

Now we can start with Address Book setup:

1. Backup (Export) your Address Book
2. [Optional if you have a MobileMe account] Open System Preferences and Sign out of you account
3. Open the Finder and goto the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder
4. Delete the AddressBook folder by dragging it into the Trash
5. Restart your system
6. Empty the Trash
7. Open the Address Book application, open the Preference window and select the Accounts tap
8. Create an Account in with the CardDav Setting
9. Enter your user data
   User Name => Your MobileMe/iCloud email address
   Password => Your password for above
   Server Address => XXX-contacts.icloud.com (where the XXX is the string we found above which in this case it is p02)
   NOTE:It doesn’t really matter what you entered, we are going to make changes to the Configuration.plist

10. Close Address (Apple Key + Q)
11. Open Terminal
12. cd Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/Sources
13. ls -l (search for the directory that has a huge long name of numbers and letters, there will only be one)
14. cd into that directory
15. nano Configuration.plist
16. Ctrl + W (Search) servername
17. Change the servername by entering this format:

    https://XXX-contacts.icloud.com:443/xxxx your unique icloud id xxxxxx/principal
    Where the XXX is the string we found above which in this case it is p02)

18. Change username using your full MobileMe/iCloud email address and password to:

    username%40xxxx.com:password

    NOTE: Replacing the ’@’ with ’%40’ and placing a ’:’ between the address and password

19. Ctrl + X and Save
20. Open Address Book, iCloud should be Syncing!

Setting Up Address Book in iOS4/3

1. Goto Preference => Mail, Contacts, Calendar
2. Select Add Account => Other => Add CardDAV Account
3. Enter:
   Server => XXX-contacts.icloud.com (where the XXX is the string we found above which in this case it is p02)
   User Name => Your MobileMe/iCloud email address
   Password => Your password for above
   Description => iCloud

   Advanced setting:
   Use SSL => ON
   Port => 443
   NOTE: I didn’t have to enter anything in the advanced section, this is just in case you need to do so

Setting UP Mail in Snow Leopard and iOS4/3

Interesting enough, if you have currently a MobileMe account setup on Mail, you don’t have to do anything, it continues to work even after having switched over to iCloud.

As to those who never had a MobileMe account, use the following information from Apple to setup an IMAP account on any Mail Client, including SL Mail app.

IMAP (Incoming Mail Server) information:

• Server name: imap.mail.me.com
• SSL Required: Yes
• Port: 993
• Username: example@me.com (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
• Password: Your iCloud password

SMTP (outgoing mail server) information:

• Server name: smtp.mail.me.com
• SSL Required: Yes
• Port: 587
• SMTP Authentication Required: Yes
• Username: example@me.com (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
• Password: Your iCloud password

Additional Information
SSL is required for both IMAP and SMTP connection with iCloud. POP is not supported by iCloud.