Who can give the right information to receive my email via iCloud on a iMac with Snow Leopard? It can't be upgraded to Lion.

Question

I still have problems since migrating to iCloud with receiving email through my Mail app on my iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (and it can't be upgraded to Lion). Like I found on different places on internet, in Mail Preferences I made a new account, once with imap.mail.me.com and once with p02-imap.mail.me.com, like differently advised. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, untill I fill in again and again the advised changes in the Preferences.
Is there a good advise arround to have my settings once and for all running well, as I expect from Apple stuff? Is Apple listening to the many complaints on this iCloud matter, or is my Apple Micro becoming too Soft to be heard?
Thank you beforehand for helping me (and many others). Best regards,
Jerome from Belgium

Answer 1

Dear Roger and all interested,
Right you are with stating you can't have MobileMe and iCloud at the same time. To explain the history of my problem:
I have a small network of 3 computers: 1) MacBook Air 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 2) iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 - 3) iMac 2 GHz Intel Core Duo
For the first time hesitating to upgrade as soon as a new system is available, a friend nevertheless could convince me of the usefullness of Lion and iCloud. During upgrading process I found out that my - 3) iMac just was narrowly to "old" for Lion.
And indeed the migration from MobileMe to iCloud went almost automatically. But quite soon I established that my "old" iMac was no more receiving @mac.com mail. Having a look to the preferences of Mail, I couldn't change anything as I had no more MobileMe access, being migrated to iCloud. Apple information told me to select "Mail, Contacts & Calendars" in the System Preferences, but Snow Leopard has no such thing.
Search on internet told me more or less how to set up an IMAP account in Snow Leopard in Mail preferences with as server address "imap.mail.me.com" with SSL on and use of port 993. This shortly worked. After restart no more. Setting up the account again and again, sometimes working, sometimes not. This is not exactly an almost automatically migration. Some other information told me to use "p02-imap.mail.me.com".
Current situation: after start up, a window from Mail asks me to give my password for the account on the MobileMe IMAP-server "mail.me.com" (which I expected to be "p02-imap.mail.me.com"). Password not accepted, retry and retry, then just click on Cancel. Result: iCloud account has a kind of lightning symbol next to it (= not working). I click on the symbol, one time it disappears and the account works, one time it asks for the password again, and again not accepted. Repeating this procedure untill it works. So for 3 days I realized to make it finally working up to now, but all this does not look to be the right way and doesn't sound a too reassuring situation to me.
When I look at Mail preferences in Snow Leopard now:
Account Type: MobileMe IMAP
Incoming Mail Server: mail.me.com (expected here p02-imap.mail.me.com)
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): p02-imap.mail.me.com
(Advanced) Authentication: Apple Token
What I find in preferences (automatically established) on my Lion computers:
Account Type: iCloud IMAP
Incoming Mail Server: p99-imap.mail.me.com (shows grey)
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.me.com
(Advanced) Authentication: Password (no Apple Token option)
So I tried to make Snow Leopard Mail similar based on the Lion preferences:
Account Type: MobileMe IMAP (found no way to change to iCloud IMAP)
Incoming Mail Server: mail.me.com (shows grey, found no way to change to "p99-imap.mail.me.com")
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.me.com
(Advanced) Authentication: Password (no Apple Token option)
Same result as before: asks for password, which I have to cancel, then click away the lightning symbol, after which it works (but perhaps not tomorrow).
Best regards,
Jerome from Belgium