Apple has officially unveiled the launch date of its MobileMe service, announced last month at WWDC 2008. The users of www.mac.com were notified that the site will be taken offline on Wednesday, July 9th, as part of MobileMe launch.

MobileMe provides a suite of ad-free web applications that deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser. The service which will be accesibile at www.me.com offers also Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online.

“Think of MobileMe as ‘Exchange for the rest of us,’” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO during his speech at WWDC. “Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get.”

MobileMe is a subscription-based service with 20GB of storage for $99 (US) per year for individuals and $149 (US) for a Family Pack, which includes one master account with 20GB of storage and four Family Member accounts with 5GB of storage each.

Apple has made sure that the transition from its older .Mac to MobileMe will be as smoothly as possible. User accounts will be transferred to me.com automatically, although the old mac.com gateway will remain online and the user@mac.com email addresses will still work.