You write that as if it's the only feature you get with MM. That is right up there with the "they want me to pay $100 a year for email". It's disingenuous, at best.
I wasn't trying to give that impression, just that 20 GB is not much.
Regardless what you do get I think is of limited value unless you're trying to set up an "Exchange Lite" scenario where several people need to share up to date contacts, calendars, etc. For that it's a good value. Most people are really just syncing an iPhone with a single Mac, maybe a second computer in some cases. For that all you have to do is plug in the iPhone with iTunes open and your calendar, contacts, notes, etc are quickly synced. MM does that wirelessly, but I use plugging in to charge my iPhone so that's not an issue. The irony is that Mac OS can wireless sync other smart phones via iSync without even needing iTunes.
For the email features, Gmail with IMAP enabled does the same thing as MM and you're not stuck with a cheesy me.com address (why did they get rid of mac.com?) or forced to pay $100 a year to maintain it.
For photos, Flickr is at least as good an alternative.
The only thing left is iDisk and webhosting. iDisk is nice, especially give the Finder's strange lack of support for write via FTP. The web hosting is very limited for reasons described in my previous post.
I wasn't trying to give that impression, just that 20 GB is not much.
Regardless what you do get I think is of limited value unless you're trying to set up an "Exchange Lite" scenario where several people need to share up to date contacts, calendars, etc. For that it's a good value. Most people are really just syncing an iPhone with a single Mac, maybe a second computer in some cases. For that all you have to do is plug in the iPhone with iTunes open and your calendar, contacts, notes, etc are quickly synced. MM does that wirelessly, but I use plugging in to charge my iPhone so that's not an issue. The irony is that Mac OS can wireless sync other smart phones via iSync without even needing iTunes.
For the email features, Gmail with IMAP enabled does the same thing as MM and you're not stuck with a cheesy me.com address (why did they get rid of mac.com?) or forced to pay $100 a year to maintain it.
For photos, Flickr is at least as good an alternative.
The only thing left is iDisk and webhosting. iDisk is nice, especially give the Finder's strange lack of support for write via FTP. The web hosting is very limited for reasons described in my previous post.
If your goal is simply data storage and/or email then MM is not a good value, nor the fastest option available. I use Gmail for my Mail and despite having the service since iTools, I only started using the mail feature to push forwarded Gmail to my iPhone instantly. I still do this even though I?ve hear that Gmail offers Push through IMAP.
If you want it just for images than even Flickr is faster and offers less trouble with older browsers. Even with browsers that are supposed to work with MM?s gallery I have found that I?ve had to link people directly to the image itself for them to see it. It?s far from perfect, and while iPhoto?s interaction is great, iPhoto also works with Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, so that I would call a wash.
YOu say that iDisk and web-hosting are the only things left, but that isn?t true. There are many other features and integrations that make the $6/month well worth it for me. Find My IPhone, Remote Wipe of iPhone are nice and typically cost $2/month(?) from a carrier for a poor cellular tower location.
But my favorite feature set, which has saved me more than once, is the ability to auto-save almost all my desktop settings and some of global settings of my Mac. Even going so far as to sync between Macs and backing up my Transmit preferences and favorites.
Oh, and lets not forget Back To My Mac. I have an admin account setup on my family?s Macs so I can do routine maintenance and whatnot. Sure, I could have set up this feature through a VPN and then write an AppleScript that will tell me the current IP address of a particular Mac I want to connect to when I send a specialized email with that script setup as a rule, but that seems like a of work and a lot of potential places for things to go wrong. You just can?t get simpler than Back To My Mac.
Again, if you don?t need/want the features it offers then it?s not a good buy (but that goes for anything), but for many of us the usefulness and ease of use far outweighs the low cost of this robust service.
A service like this should be a paid service. It's critical enough that a yearly fee will hold the provider (Apple) to a certain standard of expectation. For what you're getting (especially as an iPhone and Mac user), the $100/year is a fair deal. And the service is getting better all the time.
I would agree.
I trust Apple's service more than anybody elses. Considering a number of online storage sites have and are continuing to go under*, I just feel a lot more comfortable that my offsite backups are being well maintained. I trust the new North Carolina server farm will be holding some of my data bases in the near future. And I am willing to pay for it.
They want to update the service properly? Make it free.
Instead of charging $100 a year for stuff that should be free or very nearly free. Create bloody value.
Ireland, is it my imagination or what, but every time apple comes out with an update or something new, the first thing I hear is you saying ... make it free. FYI Apple is, first and foremost, a business and as such, as a favor to their share holders, should at least try to make a profit ... radical idea for sure, but necessary. Other than that I do enjoy most of your posts.
I trust Apple's service more than anybody elses. Considering a number of online storage sites have and are continuing to go under*, I just feel a lot more comfortable that my offsite backups are being well maintained. I trust the new North Carolina server farm will be holding some of my data bases in the near future. And I am willing to pay for it.
And why not make full use of MM, since one is paying the $100/year.
For example, I work off the Cloud completely. I've got symbolic links set up that point toward my iDisk. Anything I change or drop into my Documents folder on my Mac (I set up a new one) is automatically updated on iDisk. And I can access my iDisk and view my 3.26gb of data via my iPhone, and work on them from anywhere in the world - from wherever there is web accesss. It's ridiculously easy. And syncing for the most part is quite reliable.
On those rare occasions when there is a syncing issue (usually when by bandwidth is being hogged by something else), I simply stop iDisk syncing and then turn it back on. My 3.26gb of data syncs in less than an hour and I can do whatever I like in the meantime. And from then on it's just qiuick incremental syncing as changes occur to the folder. It's like Time Machine in this regard.
Why have your documents limited to local storage, when you can have access to them on the Cloud? The yearly fee is definitely worth it, and I know that since it's a paid service it's here to stay and I'm getting a better experience overall. Esepcially when it comes to customer service.
If your goal is simply data storage and/or email then MM is not a good value, nor the fastest option available. I use Gmail for my Mail and despite having the service since iTools, I only started using the mail feature to push forwarded Gmail to my iPhone instantly. I still do this even though I?ve hear that Gmail offers Push through IMAP.
If you want it just for images than even Flickr is faster and offers less trouble with older browsers. Even with browsers that are supposed to work with MM?s gallery I have found that I?ve had to link people directly to the image itself for them to see it. It?s far from perfect, and while iPhoto?s interaction is great, iPhoto also works with Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, so that I would call a wash.
YOu say that iDisk and web-hosting are the only things left, but that isn?t true. There are many other features and integrations that make the $6/month well worth it for me. Find My IPhone, Remote Wipe of iPhone are nice and typically cost $2/month(?) from a carrier for a poor cellular tower location.
But my favorite feature set, which has saved me more than once, is the ability to auto-save almost all my desktop settings and some of global settings of my Mac. Even going so far as to sync between Macs and backing up my Transmit preferences and favorites.
Oh, and lets not forget Back To My Mac. I have an admin account setup on my family?s Macs so I can do routine maintenance and whatnot. Sure, I could have set up this feature through a VPN and then write an AppleScript that will tell me the current IP address of a particular Mac I want to connect to when I send a specialized email with that script setup as a rule, but that seems like a of work and a lot of potential places for things to go wrong. You just can?t get simpler than Back To My Mac.
Again, if you don?t need/want the features it offers then it?s not a good buy (but that goes for anything), but for many of us the usefulness and ease of use far outweighs the low cost of this robust service.
I wasn't that familiar with Back to My Mac so I checked into it and it does look interesting. I would probably just use VPN, which wouldn't need a script unless the other Macs are being moved around across different networks. I would probably also use Mac OS's built in VNC capabilities. A little more work, but if you need stuff like VNC and VPN you're probably savvy enough to set them up without too much effort.
So clearly you get good value out of it, solipsism. But I think the uses you described are pretty exotic. I mean, how many people have a need to sync system or application preferences across multipe Macs? My point was the majority of people using MM have no real need for it at all. I personally know many who use it in an extremely limited manner. Apple just really pushes it, especially on non-computer savvy customers buying Macs at their retails stores. And that is what is disingenuous.
I'd like to see the ability to send a link to someone else... ...allowing them to track your phone.
...a simple example; someone is meeting you off a hike, an hour before you arrive you send this special e-mail and they can now see your location and know when to set off to go to the trail head to collect you.
Brilliant idea! I've had .Mac/MobileMe since day one and love it. But yours is a better idea! Providing of course, not ads!
The upside for Apple making the service free is it's then a Mac seller. It makes the Mac platform more appealing. So the $100M less per year they make from Mobile me they more than make up for selling Macs, and they still get to take a cut from the service apps people add on to their Mobile me menubar, and they get that developer cost money too.
Eventually Google is going to be taking this business away from them anyway, this is a way to stop that from ever happening, and it brings more Mac users into the mobile me loop, with the added opportunity of doing some very interesting social networking stuff in the future.
Mobile me is grand, but it's too expensive. They could make it cheaper, but I think it would be seen as a far more balsy and open move if they made it completely free and created an API for developers to write their own Mobile me apps. I could only imagine the free publicity the likes of Engadget would give them on a move like this. Though the PR stuff would be just the icing on the cake.
And why not make full use of MM, since one is paying the $100/year.
For example, I work off the Cloud completely. I've got symbolic links set up that point toward my iDisk. Anything I change or drop into my Documents folder on my Mac (I set up a new one) is automatically updated on iDisk. And I can access my iDisk and view my 3.26gb of data via my iPhone, and work on them from anywhere in the world - from wherever there is web accesss. It's ridiculously easy. And syncing for the most part is quite reliable.
On those rare occasions when there is a syncing issue (usually when by bandwidth is being hogged by something else), I simply stop iDisk syncing and then turn it back on. My 3.26gb of data syncs in less than an hour and I can do whatever I like in the meantime. And from then on it's just qiuick incremental syncing as changes occur to the folder. It's like Time Machine in this regard.
Why have your documents limited to local storage, when you can have access to them on the Cloud? The yearly fee is definitely worth it, and I know that since it's a paid service it's here to stay and I'm getting a better experience overall. Esepcially when it comes to customer service.
I can't agree with you more. Have been a .Mac user since day one and use MM everyday. Love it. Recommend it. Wouldn't do without it. Well worth the money. Hell, I don't know anything better that costs only 27¢ a day.
Thank heavens it is not free. If it were, a lot more would be dissing it because it didn't do enough. This way, they can only assume that it isn't worth it. And we all know what 'assume' means.
I definitely think the Mobile Me service should be a paid service. I just think it should offer everything that the other mail services and MORE. I think 20GB of online storage space is pretty damn sweet for $100/year, but I think the idisk should work much better/faster - especially when accessing it through Finder. (and thats just 2 of the many features that Mobile Me offers! well worth $99/year)
As for accessing the actual Mobile Me site on iphone:
If you purchase the Bolt app ($.99) you can access the same Mobile Me site you access from your computer. Its a browser app that will disguise itself as other browsers such as Firefox and it will access the proper Mobile Me page. This is a fact, I've done it myself. (you're welcome, makers of Bolt app.) I agree that Apple should find a better way to make all of those web apps accessible by default for iphone users, but this is a good and cheap alternative in the meantime if it really means that much to you!
(oops, I meant to make the title "Keep it Paid" not "Keep it Free" :-P
About Bolt : I have bought it, installed on the iPhone 3G. But although I can access the Mobile Me home page and I'm able to enter my ID & PW, I still can't enter my Mobile Me pages...Am I doing anything wrong ?
I've noticed that MobileMe is now syncing my subscribed calendars over the air to my iPhone even though they don't show up on the website and despite the iPhone telling you they won't sync over when you turn on over-the-air sync. Of course, the only one that doesn't is the Birthdays calendar from Address Book. The solution there is just publish it to MobileMe and subscribe to it on the iPhone itself.
Trouble is there is no way to know how long this sync will take and no progress bar or indicator of how far along the sync is. So you can't ever just throw stuff in there and be sure it will be synced to the cloud because it could take anywhere from a few minutes to days. You may be able to share the file later on, or access it from another computer, but you may not, and there is no way to tell.
This is NOT TRUE. Under Snow Leopard 10.6.1 ( and maybe even before), I can keep a local copy of iDisk, viewable and accessible, in the sidebar of my Finder. There, I can drag files in and out, at will.
Automatically, after any changes to iDisk, iDisk will immediately begin to sync with the cloud.
ADDITIONALLY, at the moment of syncing a progress bar will appear at the bottom of the Finder window, while iDisk is selected in the side bar of Finder.
Just tonight I uploaded 816MB in files.
How?
I dragged those files into my local copy of iDisk. When I was done dragging, iSync started syncing with MobileMe/the-cloud and was done in ~30 minutes.
I then logged into MobileMe and shared those files quite easily.
I use MobileMe and iDisk features and think they are great.
Yet none of the things I do require the 'desktop'-style technology that makes MobileMe completely useless when you use a computer that doesn't have one of the supported browsers. I am still left emailing links to my office computer as I can't access MobileMe from their browser. And if I went on holiday, would I be able to keep up to date in a web cafe? Who knows? So I can never rely on it.
They kept the interface design simple, but just got over-excited when it came to selecting the technology for the web. The original Hotmail, before MS started screwing with it, was a classic example of a service you could use anywhere, because it was just plain old html.
One of the things I use iDisk for is sharing files with my Bootcamped Windows setup.
I have no files at all in Windows, as I don't trust those guys to write a fit-for-purpose OS, but I often need full Office functionality.
I have an iDisk folder called Mac2PC. It's a bit clunky, but hopefully avoids any scenarios where PC can write to Mac, such as shared folders in VMWare (shudder!).
I believe there may be some changes in Snow Leopard that allow the PC to read Mac files. Hopefully read-only, as I don't want PC writing to my Mac !
I do not like the new public folder for idisk. I have been using personal domain name to forward to this page to make it easier for clients and vendors to send me large files that are too big to email. On the previous version, it will a simple one-click process to initiate an upload. The "improved" version is not at all intuitive, and it involves going to a separate page and them making a click to start the upload. I hope they "fix" this by either making an actual improvement, or by allowing reversion back to the previous version.
This is NOT TRUE. Under Snow Leopard 10.6.1 ( and maybe even before), I can keep a local copy of iDisk, viewable and accessible, in the sidebar of my Finder. There, I can drag files in and out, at will.
Automatically, after any changes to iDisk, iDisk will immediately begin to sync with the cloud.
this is pretty much exactly what I said. My only complaint is that while they *begin* to sync immediately, they don't have a progress bar or any indication of how long it's going to take.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BuffyzDead
ADDITIONALLY, at the moment of syncing a progress bar will appear at the bottom of the Finder window, while iDisk is selected in the side bar of Finder.
This is true but for me it didn't show any progress, just the barber pole stripes.
My experience (two times) was that I would drop large files into the iDisk and then after the quick copy-progress bar was over (seconds), there was pretty much no feedback at all.
Since the files were all huge, I realised that it couldn't be synced yet and after poking around for a bit, I found the progress bar of which you speak spinning away so I walked away thinking it would sync in the background.
After many hours, the files appeared on MobileMe web interface and then in iPhone's IDisk app but when I go to share them from the Phone, two of them disappears as I select them leaving only the third one. When I switch back to MobileMe on the web, the files have similarly disappeared, even though they still show in the folder on my desktop and the progress bar is not spinning anymore.
Then I repeated this whole procedure a second time and got the same results except it took two days before the files were "transferred" (even though they were not).
Bottom line is that I can't rely on the service. I can't be sitting looking at little tiny progress bars in the bottom of windows on my desktop for hours while they complete. If I have a synced folder on my desktop, I should be able to reliably drop stuff in there and access it later from the web. I should have some indication as to how long the sync is going to take, not have to watch a little bar and go back and check it over a long period of time. If the sync is going to take a matter of days (which it did both times for just a few Gigabytes of stuff), then the progress bar is not helpful. And if the sync fails, I should get some kind of email or message to that effect.
Ireland, is it my imagination or what, but every time apple comes out with an update or something new, the first thing I hear is you saying ... make it free.
In that case of Mobile me this is not your imagination. I explained my stance on why this would be a good thing for Apple and its users. They can open Mobile me to app/services, make money from them, charge developers a fee to join the program and use the API, and they can use this new and much improved Mobile me service to up-sell Macs. This would be good PR and a bonus too. I think this is a better direction, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
In that case of Mobile me this is not your imagination. I explained my stance on why this would be a good thing for Apple and its users. They can open Mobile me to app/services, make money from them, charge developers a fee to join the program and use the API, and they can use this new and much improved Mobile me service to up-sell Macs. This would be good PR and a bonus too. I think this is a better direction, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
And I do know Apple is a business btw, sheesh.
Yup and just sit back and let the spam flood gates open with the "free" accounts. What a winning idea.
Apple, if you are listening. Please, please, please do not listen to this idea.
Comments
You write that as if it's the only feature you get with MM. That is right up there with the "they want me to pay $100 a year for email". It's disingenuous, at best.
I wasn't trying to give that impression, just that 20 GB is not much.
Regardless what you do get I think is of limited value unless you're trying to set up an "Exchange Lite" scenario where several people need to share up to date contacts, calendars, etc. For that it's a good value. Most people are really just syncing an iPhone with a single Mac, maybe a second computer in some cases. For that all you have to do is plug in the iPhone with iTunes open and your calendar, contacts, notes, etc are quickly synced. MM does that wirelessly, but I use plugging in to charge my iPhone so that's not an issue. The irony is that Mac OS can wireless sync other smart phones via iSync without even needing iTunes.
For the email features, Gmail with IMAP enabled does the same thing as MM and you're not stuck with a cheesy me.com address (why did they get rid of mac.com?) or forced to pay $100 a year to maintain it.
For photos, Flickr is at least as good an alternative.
The only thing left is iDisk and webhosting. iDisk is nice, especially give the Finder's strange lack of support for write via FTP. The web hosting is very limited for reasons described in my previous post.
I wasn't trying to give that impression, just that 20 GB is not much.
Regardless what you do get I think is of limited value unless you're trying to set up an "Exchange Lite" scenario where several people need to share up to date contacts, calendars, etc. For that it's a good value. Most people are really just syncing an iPhone with a single Mac, maybe a second computer in some cases. For that all you have to do is plug in the iPhone with iTunes open and your calendar, contacts, notes, etc are quickly synced. MM does that wirelessly, but I use plugging in to charge my iPhone so that's not an issue. The irony is that Mac OS can wireless sync other smart phones via iSync without even needing iTunes.
For the email features, Gmail with IMAP enabled does the same thing as MM and you're not stuck with a cheesy me.com address (why did they get rid of mac.com?) or forced to pay $100 a year to maintain it.
For photos, Flickr is at least as good an alternative.
The only thing left is iDisk and webhosting. iDisk is nice, especially give the Finder's strange lack of support for write via FTP. The web hosting is very limited for reasons described in my previous post.
If your goal is simply data storage and/or email then MM is not a good value, nor the fastest option available. I use Gmail for my Mail and despite having the service since iTools, I only started using the mail feature to push forwarded Gmail to my iPhone instantly. I still do this even though I?ve hear that Gmail offers Push through IMAP.
If you want it just for images than even Flickr is faster and offers less trouble with older browsers. Even with browsers that are supposed to work with MM?s gallery I have found that I?ve had to link people directly to the image itself for them to see it. It?s far from perfect, and while iPhoto?s interaction is great, iPhoto also works with Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, so that I would call a wash.
YOu say that iDisk and web-hosting are the only things left, but that isn?t true. There are many other features and integrations that make the $6/month well worth it for me. Find My IPhone, Remote Wipe of iPhone are nice and typically cost $2/month(?) from a carrier for a poor cellular tower location.
But my favorite feature set, which has saved me more than once, is the ability to auto-save almost all my desktop settings and some of global settings of my Mac. Even going so far as to sync between Macs and backing up my Transmit preferences and favorites.
Oh, and lets not forget Back To My Mac. I have an admin account setup on my family?s Macs so I can do routine maintenance and whatnot. Sure, I could have set up this feature through a VPN and then write an AppleScript that will tell me the current IP address of a particular Mac I want to connect to when I send a specialized email with that script setup as a rule, but that seems like a of work and a lot of potential places for things to go wrong. You just can?t get simpler than Back To My Mac.
Again, if you don?t need/want the features it offers then it?s not a good buy (but that goes for anything), but for many of us the usefulness and ease of use far outweighs the low cost of this robust service.
A service like this should be a paid service. It's critical enough that a yearly fee will hold the provider (Apple) to a certain standard of expectation. For what you're getting (especially as an iPhone and Mac user), the $100/year is a fair deal. And the service is getting better all the time.
I would agree.
I trust Apple's service more than anybody elses. Considering a number of online storage sites have and are continuing to go under*, I just feel a lot more comfortable that my offsite backups are being well maintained. I trust the new North Carolina server farm will be holding some of my data bases in the near future. And I am willing to pay for it.
* http://www.pcworld.com/article/16485...huts_down.html
They want to update the service properly? Make it free.
Instead of charging $100 a year for stuff that should be free or very nearly free. Create bloody value.
Ireland, is it my imagination or what, but every time apple comes out with an update or something new, the first thing I hear is you saying ... make it free. FYI Apple is, first and foremost, a business and as such, as a favor to their share holders, should at least try to make a profit ... radical idea for sure, but necessary. Other than that I do enjoy most of your posts.
I would agree.
I trust Apple's service more than anybody elses. Considering a number of online storage sites have and are continuing to go under*, I just feel a lot more comfortable that my offsite backups are being well maintained. I trust the new North Carolina server farm will be holding some of my data bases in the near future. And I am willing to pay for it.
* http://www.pcworld.com/article/16485...huts_down.html
And why not make full use of MM, since one is paying the $100/year.
For example, I work off the Cloud completely. I've got symbolic links set up that point toward my iDisk. Anything I change or drop into my Documents folder on my Mac (I set up a new one) is automatically updated on iDisk. And I can access my iDisk and view my 3.26gb of data via my iPhone, and work on them from anywhere in the world - from wherever there is web accesss. It's ridiculously easy. And syncing for the most part is quite reliable.
On those rare occasions when there is a syncing issue (usually when by bandwidth is being hogged by something else), I simply stop iDisk syncing and then turn it back on. My 3.26gb of data syncs in less than an hour and I can do whatever I like in the meantime. And from then on it's just qiuick incremental syncing as changes occur to the folder. It's like Time Machine in this regard.
Why have your documents limited to local storage, when you can have access to them on the Cloud? The yearly fee is definitely worth it, and I know that since it's a paid service it's here to stay and I'm getting a better experience overall. Esepcially when it comes to customer service.
If your goal is simply data storage and/or email then MM is not a good value, nor the fastest option available. I use Gmail for my Mail and despite having the service since iTools, I only started using the mail feature to push forwarded Gmail to my iPhone instantly. I still do this even though I?ve hear that Gmail offers Push through IMAP.
If you want it just for images than even Flickr is faster and offers less trouble with older browsers. Even with browsers that are supposed to work with MM?s gallery I have found that I?ve had to link people directly to the image itself for them to see it. It?s far from perfect, and while iPhoto?s interaction is great, iPhoto also works with Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, so that I would call a wash.
YOu say that iDisk and web-hosting are the only things left, but that isn?t true. There are many other features and integrations that make the $6/month well worth it for me. Find My IPhone, Remote Wipe of iPhone are nice and typically cost $2/month(?) from a carrier for a poor cellular tower location.
But my favorite feature set, which has saved me more than once, is the ability to auto-save almost all my desktop settings and some of global settings of my Mac. Even going so far as to sync between Macs and backing up my Transmit preferences and favorites.
Oh, and lets not forget Back To My Mac. I have an admin account setup on my family?s Macs so I can do routine maintenance and whatnot. Sure, I could have set up this feature through a VPN and then write an AppleScript that will tell me the current IP address of a particular Mac I want to connect to when I send a specialized email with that script setup as a rule, but that seems like a of work and a lot of potential places for things to go wrong. You just can?t get simpler than Back To My Mac.
Again, if you don?t need/want the features it offers then it?s not a good buy (but that goes for anything), but for many of us the usefulness and ease of use far outweighs the low cost of this robust service.
I wasn't that familiar with Back to My Mac so I checked into it and it does look interesting. I would probably just use VPN, which wouldn't need a script unless the other Macs are being moved around across different networks. I would probably also use Mac OS's built in VNC capabilities. A little more work, but if you need stuff like VNC and VPN you're probably savvy enough to set them up without too much effort.
So clearly you get good value out of it, solipsism. But I think the uses you described are pretty exotic. I mean, how many people have a need to sync system or application preferences across multipe Macs? My point was the majority of people using MM have no real need for it at all. I personally know many who use it in an extremely limited manner. Apple just really pushes it, especially on non-computer savvy customers buying Macs at their retails stores. And that is what is disingenuous.
I'd like to see the ability to send a link to someone else... ...allowing them to track your phone.
...a simple example; someone is meeting you off a hike, an hour before you arrive you send this special e-mail and they can now see your location and know when to set off to go to the trail head to collect you.
"There's an App for that."
Brilliant idea! I've had .Mac/MobileMe since day one and love it. But yours is a better idea! Providing of course, not ads!
The upside for Apple making the service free is it's then a Mac seller. It makes the Mac platform more appealing. So the $100M less per year they make from Mobile me they more than make up for selling Macs, and they still get to take a cut from the service apps people add on to their Mobile me menubar, and they get that developer cost money too.
Eventually Google is going to be taking this business away from them anyway, this is a way to stop that from ever happening, and it brings more Mac users into the mobile me loop, with the added opportunity of doing some very interesting social networking stuff in the future.
Mobile me is grand, but it's too expensive. They could make it cheaper, but I think it would be seen as a far more balsy and open move if they made it completely free and created an API for developers to write their own Mobile me apps. I could only imagine the free publicity the likes of Engadget would give them on a move like this. Though the PR stuff would be just the icing on the cake.
And why not make full use of MM, since one is paying the $100/year.
For example, I work off the Cloud completely. I've got symbolic links set up that point toward my iDisk. Anything I change or drop into my Documents folder on my Mac (I set up a new one) is automatically updated on iDisk. And I can access my iDisk and view my 3.26gb of data via my iPhone, and work on them from anywhere in the world - from wherever there is web accesss. It's ridiculously easy. And syncing for the most part is quite reliable.
On those rare occasions when there is a syncing issue (usually when by bandwidth is being hogged by something else), I simply stop iDisk syncing and then turn it back on. My 3.26gb of data syncs in less than an hour and I can do whatever I like in the meantime. And from then on it's just qiuick incremental syncing as changes occur to the folder. It's like Time Machine in this regard.
Why have your documents limited to local storage, when you can have access to them on the Cloud? The yearly fee is definitely worth it, and I know that since it's a paid service it's here to stay and I'm getting a better experience overall. Esepcially when it comes to customer service.
I can't agree with you more. Have been a .Mac user since day one and use MM everyday. Love it. Recommend it. Wouldn't do without it. Well worth the money. Hell, I don't know anything better that costs only 27¢ a day.
Thank heavens it is not free. If it were, a lot more would be dissing it because it didn't do enough. This way, they can only assume that it isn't worth it. And we all know what 'assume' means.
I definitely think the Mobile Me service should be a paid service. I just think it should offer everything that the other mail services and MORE. I think 20GB of online storage space is pretty damn sweet for $100/year, but I think the idisk should work much better/faster - especially when accessing it through Finder. (and thats just 2 of the many features that Mobile Me offers! well worth $99/year)
As for accessing the actual Mobile Me site on iphone:
If you purchase the Bolt app ($.99) you can access the same Mobile Me site you access from your computer. Its a browser app that will disguise itself as other browsers such as Firefox and it will access the proper Mobile Me page. This is a fact, I've done it myself. (you're welcome, makers of Bolt app.) I agree that Apple should find a better way to make all of those web apps accessible by default for iphone users, but this is a good and cheap alternative in the meantime if it really means that much to you!
(oops, I meant to make the title "Keep it Paid" not "Keep it Free" :-P
About Bolt : I have bought it, installed on the iPhone 3G. But although I can access the Mobile Me home page and I'm able to enter my ID & PW, I still can't enter my Mobile Me pages...Am I doing anything wrong ?
Trouble is there is no way to know how long this sync will take and no progress bar or indicator of how far along the sync is. So you can't ever just throw stuff in there and be sure it will be synced to the cloud because it could take anywhere from a few minutes to days. You may be able to share the file later on, or access it from another computer, but you may not, and there is no way to tell.
This is NOT TRUE. Under Snow Leopard 10.6.1 ( and maybe even before), I can keep a local copy of iDisk, viewable and accessible, in the sidebar of my Finder. There, I can drag files in and out, at will.
Automatically, after any changes to iDisk, iDisk will immediately begin to sync with the cloud.
ADDITIONALLY, at the moment of syncing a progress bar will appear at the bottom of the Finder window, while iDisk is selected in the side bar of Finder.
Just tonight I uploaded 816MB in files.
How?
I dragged those files into my local copy of iDisk. When I was done dragging, iSync started syncing with MobileMe/the-cloud and was done in ~30 minutes.
I then logged into MobileMe and shared those files quite easily.
TYPO in Title Bar. It should read:
iDisk Provides a Progress Bar in Finder
And we all know what 'assume' means.
Perfume for the ass?
Yet none of the things I do require the 'desktop'-style technology that makes MobileMe completely useless when you use a computer that doesn't have one of the supported browsers. I am still left emailing links to my office computer as I can't access MobileMe from their browser. And if I went on holiday, would I be able to keep up to date in a web cafe? Who knows? So I can never rely on it.
They kept the interface design simple, but just got over-excited when it came to selecting the technology for the web. The original Hotmail, before MS started screwing with it, was a classic example of a service you could use anywhere, because it was just plain old html.
I have no files at all in Windows, as I don't trust those guys to write a fit-for-purpose OS, but I often need full Office functionality.
I have an iDisk folder called Mac2PC. It's a bit clunky, but hopefully avoids any scenarios where PC can write to Mac, such as shared folders in VMWare (shudder!).
I believe there may be some changes in Snow Leopard that allow the PC to read Mac files. Hopefully read-only, as I don't want PC writing to my Mac !
Frustrating.
This is NOT TRUE. Under Snow Leopard 10.6.1 ( and maybe even before), I can keep a local copy of iDisk, viewable and accessible, in the sidebar of my Finder. There, I can drag files in and out, at will.
Automatically, after any changes to iDisk, iDisk will immediately begin to sync with the cloud.
this is pretty much exactly what I said. My only complaint is that while they *begin* to sync immediately, they don't have a progress bar or any indication of how long it's going to take.
ADDITIONALLY, at the moment of syncing a progress bar will appear at the bottom of the Finder window, while iDisk is selected in the side bar of Finder.
This is true but for me it didn't show any progress, just the barber pole stripes.
My experience (two times) was that I would drop large files into the iDisk and then after the quick copy-progress bar was over (seconds), there was pretty much no feedback at all.
Since the files were all huge, I realised that it couldn't be synced yet and after poking around for a bit, I found the progress bar of which you speak spinning away so I walked away thinking it would sync in the background.
After many hours, the files appeared on MobileMe web interface and then in iPhone's IDisk app but when I go to share them from the Phone, two of them disappears as I select them leaving only the third one. When I switch back to MobileMe on the web, the files have similarly disappeared, even though they still show in the folder on my desktop and the progress bar is not spinning anymore.
Then I repeated this whole procedure a second time and got the same results except it took two days before the files were "transferred" (even though they were not).
Bottom line is that I can't rely on the service. I can't be sitting looking at little tiny progress bars in the bottom of windows on my desktop for hours while they complete. If I have a synced folder on my desktop, I should be able to reliably drop stuff in there and access it later from the web. I should have some indication as to how long the sync is going to take, not have to watch a little bar and go back and check it over a long period of time. If the sync is going to take a matter of days (which it did both times for just a few Gigabytes of stuff), then the progress bar is not helpful. And if the sync fails, I should get some kind of email or message to that effect.
Ireland, is it my imagination or what, but every time apple comes out with an update or something new, the first thing I hear is you saying ... make it free.
In that case of Mobile me this is not your imagination. I explained my stance on why this would be a good thing for Apple and its users. They can open Mobile me to app/services, make money from them, charge developers a fee to join the program and use the API, and they can use this new and much improved Mobile me service to up-sell Macs. This would be good PR and a bonus too. I think this is a better direction, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
And I do know Apple is a business btw, sheesh.
In that case of Mobile me this is not your imagination. I explained my stance on why this would be a good thing for Apple and its users. They can open Mobile me to app/services, make money from them, charge developers a fee to join the program and use the API, and they can use this new and much improved Mobile me service to up-sell Macs. This would be good PR and a bonus too. I think this is a better direction, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
And I do know Apple is a business btw, sheesh.
Yup and just sit back and let the spam flood gates open with the "free" accounts. What a winning idea.
Apple, if you are listening. Please, please, please do not listen to this idea.