MobileMe: 2 (ish) weeks later
Amid the furore of iPhone 3G release news and comment cluttering these hallowed pages of late, I’ve shamefully neglected Apple’s other major re-imagining project that happened at the same time: the transition from .mac to MobileMe. For the uninitiated, .mac was a suite of web tools including email, calendar and online storage space. MobileMe is pretty much a suite of web tools including email, calendar and online storage space, but with some funky new functionality including, in theory at least, seamless and live syncing of your data across pretty much any device you care to name (as long as it’s an iPhone or iPod touch, in the case of mobile devices).
Such has been the rockiness of the road to MobileMe launching, Apple has now started a near-daily blog to keep users updated as to the status of various services.
I signed up for a 60-day trial just after the iPhone launched, and actually must say I’ve been blissfully spared the many teething problems others have reported. The web apps (accessed by visiting www.me.com) all work smoothly and cleanly, and data syncing, after a frustrating wiping of certain numbers on my iPhone which might be my fault anyway, is pretty much as advertised. Because I don’t use Mail as my primary email client nor iCal for my calendars (tethered to Exchange at work, hence the weird setup as discussed below), I haven’t suffered too much from the 15-minute delay when data is changed on the computer and has to sync back up to the ‘cloud’.
I should say I haven’t quite ‘taken the plunge’ fully and moved my life over to MobileMe. I’ve kept my Gmail account and have everything forwarded from there to my ‘@me.com’ address (somehow I don’t want all my email tied up in a subscription-based email system) where I check it on the phone, web or through Mail on those occasions I do fire it up.
I’m also using some horrendous voodoo-like setup to keep my Exchange calendar (pulled down through Entourage) synced up with iCal which then syncs with the cloud and therefore my iPhone and web apps - far from ideal and ripe for data mixup somewhere along the line, but so far so good and once set up, not really a huge problem as I’m rarely away from Entourage for more than a couple of days to sync it all up.
Because Exchange is (regrettably) my primary server environment, I probably would have overlooked MobileMe altogether were it not for the fact that my iPhone just won’t talk to our Exchange server for love nor money (I’ve tried both, it’s quite unresponsive).
Will I keep on the subscription? Still undecided to be honest. Whilst the suite of apps is pretty impressive, very simple to use and generally responsive, I’m still not sold on what it really offers me over and above simple syncing between my computer and iPhone. The feature I’d most like to use - scheduled back-ups of certain data to the iDisk online storage to keep my ailing hard drive from maxing out all the time - is disabled in the trial version, but currently I’m thinking I could spend the amount of the subscription on a basic hard drive and fire up Time Machine. I’m going to wait it out in the trial though, and see how I feel at the end of it…
What are your experiences with MobileMe? Avoiding it like the plague, or think it’s the best thing since sliced processor cores? Fire off in the comments.
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2 Responses to “MobileMe: 2 (ish) weeks later”
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I think the one downfall of having a hard drive is if the unthinkable happens and a break in and its stolen or other act that leaves computer and hard drive unusable. I do think off site file storage is a good idea, but maybe some server space somewhere is a better still?
I like mobile me even with all its faults (which I think will get sorted). The cloud is where its at, and this is apples first attempt lets not expect the earth in a day, it has some space to evolve yet
Good point(s) Stephen - I must admit despite reservations I do enjoy the simple, clean interfaces for the web apps and yes, a bit of me feels more comfortable knowing my data isn’t anywhere near my morning cup of coffee…