If Apple can come up with some really compelling services and make them free to all iOS users, I think it will take advantage of the strengths of their business model and keep them competitive.
Apple is good at hardware and software, but in terms of their competitors, they have Google that is good at software but not hardware, and companies like HTC and Motorola that are fine with the hardware but not software (and certainly not web services). For every new Android user, the hardware manufacturers make money, but Google doesn't. However, I believe that the only company in a position to provide good web-based services to users of the Android platform is Google, for a number of reasons (they are the only company that all Android phones have in common, and they are good at web services). With the current model, if Apple decided to spend $20/year per iOS user to provide amazing free services, they can afford it regardless of how many phones they sell. If Google needed to do the same thing to keep up, the more successful the platform, the more money they would lose. So, in that case, would Google have to start charging for Android? Just a thought.
When the iPhone first came out I'd agree but these days gmail syncs contacts, calendar and email. Apple now offers find my phone is now free. I cannot see what MobileMe currently offers to justify its price.
First and foremost MobileMe is an ad-free web service that doesn't trade in your personal information. That is reason enough on it's own for me. Google's so-called "free" solution isn't free at all. I'd much rather pay a nominal fee and keep my personal information private.
Other advantages of MobileMe:
- Ad-free email easily synced between multiple devices
- Instant syncing of contacts, calendars, bookmarks via Push service
- Web access to email, contacts and calendar
- One button hosting of your personal website with iWeb
- 20GB iDisk for storage, backup and file sharing
- Elegant photo sharing which allows full quality downloads
All to be had for as little as $5 a month.
Could it be improved? Of course. Few things can't. But it's far from being a pointless offering like some claim. Personally, not a day goes by where I'm not using my MobileMe account in some way.
iDisk is in need of the most work. It is miles behind Dropbox and similar services. The lack of block-level sync makes it almost unusable. The current sync method is too slow, and editing directly on the server is even slower.
The rest of the services are fine. Allowing shared calendars to be edited online is a big improvement.
The pricing would be reasonable if they increase the storage (50GB on a single, 150GB on a Family).
iDisk is infinitely better if you access with a program like Cyberduck. WebDAV support in Finder just seems to be garbage in general.
Someone above mentioned what happened a couple weeks ago with the old .Mac homepages. Basically everyone with a http://homepage.mac.com/username type page got screwed over unnecessarily. I host a ton of my own music on my page and have used the same links for ages; now they're all broken.
MobileMe is in fact, rather awesome for the apple-centric user. MobileMe works perfectly for me so I'm not sure why some are having problems but it's certainly not a universal problem with the service.
I agree MobileMe is a great service with a lot to offer, particularly for the Apple-centric. It seems to work flawlessly for the vast majority of users, which makes it all the more frustrating for those of us who are affected by the mysterious ghosts in the cloud.
Comments
Apple is good at hardware and software, but in terms of their competitors, they have Google that is good at software but not hardware, and companies like HTC and Motorola that are fine with the hardware but not software (and certainly not web services). For every new Android user, the hardware manufacturers make money, but Google doesn't. However, I believe that the only company in a position to provide good web-based services to users of the Android platform is Google, for a number of reasons (they are the only company that all Android phones have in common, and they are good at web services). With the current model, if Apple decided to spend $20/year per iOS user to provide amazing free services, they can afford it regardless of how many phones they sell. If Google needed to do the same thing to keep up, the more successful the platform, the more money they would lose. So, in that case, would Google have to start charging for Android? Just a thought.
When the iPhone first came out I'd agree but these days gmail syncs contacts, calendar and email. Apple now offers find my phone is now free. I cannot see what MobileMe currently offers to justify its price.
First and foremost MobileMe is an ad-free web service that doesn't trade in your personal information. That is reason enough on it's own for me. Google's so-called "free" solution isn't free at all. I'd much rather pay a nominal fee and keep my personal information private.
Other advantages of MobileMe:
- Ad-free email easily synced between multiple devices
- Instant syncing of contacts, calendars, bookmarks via Push service
- Web access to email, contacts and calendar
- One button hosting of your personal website with iWeb
- 20GB iDisk for storage, backup and file sharing
- Elegant photo sharing which allows full quality downloads
All to be had for as little as $5 a month.
Could it be improved? Of course. Few things can't. But it's far from being a pointless offering like some claim. Personally, not a day goes by where I'm not using my MobileMe account in some way.
The rest of the services are fine. Allowing shared calendars to be edited online is a big improvement.
The pricing would be reasonable if they increase the storage (50GB on a single, 150GB on a Family).
iDisk is in need of the most work.
iDisk is infinitely better if you access with a program like Cyberduck. WebDAV support in Finder just seems to be garbage in general.
Someone above mentioned what happened a couple weeks ago with the old .Mac homepages. Basically everyone with a http://homepage.mac.com/username type page got screwed over unnecessarily. I host a ton of my own music on my page and have used the same links for ages; now they're all broken.
MobileMe is in fact, rather awesome for the apple-centric user. MobileMe works perfectly for me so I'm not sure why some are having problems but it's certainly not a universal problem with the service.
I agree MobileMe is a great service with a lot to offer, particularly for the Apple-centric. It seems to work flawlessly for the vast majority of users, which makes it all the more frustrating for those of us who are affected by the mysterious ghosts in the cloud.