I’ve been using MobileMe and the demo expired today. So, I’ll talk a bit about the service, who’s gonna benefit from it and if it’s worth the price.
For those not familiar with it, MobileMe is a service offered by Apple which provides:
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Synchronization between your Macs, Windows PCs and iPhones over the internet. Content synchronized includes: calendar events, contacts and e-mail. No sync cables required.
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Photo Gallery: a nice online gallery that can be accessed on a web browser, iPhone app or iPhoto.
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iDisk: an online disk which you can access from your Mac, Windows or iPhone (through the iDisk app).
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Website hosting and full compatibility with iWeb.
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A [email protected] e-mail address.
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Find my iPhone: localization service for iPhones. You can locate the phone, remotely wipe the memory and lock it, and send messages to it.
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Combined storage of 20GB for all services.
Prices start at $99/year and that may sound steep. So, let’s evaluate it.
Setup on Mac is ridiculously simple, as MobileMe is part of OS X. So it is in the iPhone. On Windows, it requires installation of iTunes and MobileMe Control Panel. I had no problems installing those on Windows 7. And if you have problems, Apple support website is very helpful and easy to understand.
After I setup my 3 devices (Windows 7 PC, MacBook and iPhone), it started working instantly. After some minutes, all devices were synchronized. And whenever I change something, it’s automatically reflected in all my devices. Met someone new and stored a new phone number in your contact list? No worries, it’s already in Outlook and Contacts. Received a new meeting invite in Outlook? It’s also on iCal and iPhone Calendar. Worried about e-mail signatures? No problem, that’s the same in all devices. It’s really that simple. If you use different devices in different places, this is definitely for you.
Then, there’s iDisk. On the Mac, you may have a local replica of it, which gets synchronized every now and then. On Windows, you may mount iDisk as a network drive. And on the iPhone, use the iDisk app to access your files. The service has two uses: it has a directory structure that resembles a Mac OS X /home directory, where you put your personal files; and it has a Public directory which you can use to share files with your friends – say goodbye to pendrives. I’m using it for backing up important files and also for reading material I might want to access in my iPhone. The storage space is 20GB, and that’s more than enough. That storage space is also used for the me.com e-mail account and your website.
Finally, the Gallery. It’s a nice way of sharing photos. You may think it’s useless due to Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and others, but you’d be surprised that there are a lot of people out there who think their interfaces is too complicated. And it is, in fact, for people who don’t like computers. Gallery is quite the opposite. It has a great interface – beautiful and easy to use. You can take a peek at mine, if you want.
On the iPhone side, the phone locator is great. You can really locate a lost phone, lock it, send a message to the thief and even wipe out its memory to preserve your privacy. Very neat!
Oh, and one last thing… all of it can be accessed from a web browser as well. Thewww.me.com address lets you access all the services in a web interface that’s identical to the ones in your Mac OS X programs. Very nice!
So, is it worth $99/year? Hm… probably not, but since there’s no cheaper service that combines all of this, I started my subscription today. 🙂
Merry Christmas!