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Apple Introduces Beta of Next MobileMe Mail

Kelmon said:
While I am glad to see that Apple are still working on MobileMe, for myself it is too late and I dropped the service last year after getting thoroughly annoyed at the current Web Mail application. The problem now is that for me to switch back Apple really needs to either reduce the price of the service or, better, make it free to Mac users (hey, I just gave them £2000 for a new iMac). The integration of services is nice but MobileMe is not worth the price when better services are available for free. Making the service free would also go someway to making things better since developers could then depend on users having, for example, access to an iDisk.

Still, for those of you sticking it out with MobileMe I hope that this update is everything that you hoped it would be. You have more patience than I do and I thought I had that of a saint after sticking with .Mac and MobileMe for 5-years.
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Hey, I'm with you on this! I dropped 2k on a Mac, $300 on an iPod Touch and bought the service plans for both. C'mon Apple, can a brother get a little kick-back? I like MobileMe but not for the price - it should be free to Mac customers!
 
QCassidy352 said:
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Just to follow up on my "data mining" point - I always think it's funny when people describe google services as "free." in the sense that you don't write a check to google, yes. But there's always a price to pay for anything of value (which google's services are). In google's case, the price is that they take your private information and sell it to others and/or use it to try to sell you stuff directly. That to me is a real cost. If you don't see it that way then enjoy, but make no mistake - google's services have an upfront out of pocket cost of zero, but they're far from free.
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Fair enough. Keep in mind Google isn't telling companies "This is Bob Smith from Houston, TX who is a 31 year old male and here is his search history". The information is non-identifying and mined in aggregate. The information given out by Google is more like "We found out that 31 year old males in the Houston metro area of Texas frequently search for video game information" so the video game companies can go back to Google and make their ads appear more often for that crowd or tweak the keywords used to show the ad.

I have a friend who works in the marketing field. You'd be surprised how many companies you deal with daily are using this sort of aggregated information and how many are selling it. Apple asked me for my gender, age, occupation, and income when I registered my iPhone so they could sell that information to advertisers and developers who want to know exactly who uses the iPhone. Your cable company, cell phone company, credit card company, car company, and countless other examples do the same thing Google does.
 
patent10021 said:
Valid question and I have NEVER used it. Why would you need to if you have mail.app + an iPhone/Touch?

Instead of prettying some UI I think they need to get iDisk to where 3rd party "iDiskesque" apps are at since it is their OWN app and they need to do something about that godawful annual fee and dinky storage space (without having to fork out more $).

Especially if you buy a new iMac / iPhone / iPad for example. MobileMe should be somewhere around $19.00 max. (100GB incl).

p.s. I just noticed I'm a newbie yet I joined in 2004 :confused::apple:
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raises hand

I use it all the time at work. No open network for my ipod touch, no iphone (verizon), windows pc and not allow to install apps (I can, but they scan the computers every day, got busted for safari).
 
It is just wrong that the mail app on iPad and soon to be iPhone/iPt is better than the one on Mac? but at least MM is catching up. Mobileme really should be free, or at least the 20GB one.
 
dbwie said:
I wonder how many people actually frequently use the MobileMe webmail interface? It seems like I always have either my laptop and use the Mail app, or I have my iPhone and use the Mail app on that for me.com email. It's rare that I'm without my iPhone and need to log in via another computer to check my mail.
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I used to use it all the time since I could not access my private email at work even when our IT group was turning a blind eye to my MBP (corporate firewall blocked the connection). Now that I'm on a Windows PC the webmail interface to my email is even more important but I threw in the towel with MobileMe after a year's use of it. Oddly, I preferred the old .mac implementation of email because despite its old and clunky interface it did at least not refresh the screen at random times and screw up whatever it was that I was doing.

Even with my iPhone at work I'd still rather use the web mail application, although that's quite a lot due to the crappy GPRS connection that I get in the building...
 
thetexan said:
Mobile ME should be free with the purchase of anything Apple. As it stands Google does everything ME does (with the exception of locating your iPhone) for free and much better. I've used Google sync to setup contacts and calendar sync between my iPhone when I was an iPhone customer and my Macbook and Windows PC. Today I'm all synced up between my work PC, home PC/Macbook, and Android phone.

On my Android based phone I use now, the pictures I take on my phone sync with Picasa which Google gives me 1gig of storage for pictures or I can upgrade to 20Gigs for $5 per year which is less than 50 cents per month. I'm sure there are some iPhone apps out there that will upload photos to Picasa. I love Picasa because I can set albums to private, public, public with a "secret" link, or I can allow specific users based off their Google account usernames.
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How wrong can you be? Gmail does MORE than dotmac's email system.... It scans your contents for targeted marketing.
 
tonyhunterajh said:
Hey, I'm with you on this! I dropped 2k on a Mac, $300 on an iPod Touch and bought the service plans for both. C'mon Apple, can a brother get a little kick-back? I like MobileMe but not for the price - it should be free to Mac customers!
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i agree, it would be nice if it would be free... at least for the first year. It would be a win-win - that is, for Apple as long as the customer keeps buying Apple products each year, they'll get the service for free. For frequent Apple customers they'll always have a free service!

"Throw me a friggin' bone here, Apple"

P.
 
Signed up now. Looks great for mail, but I hope that it's part of a larger MobileMe update.
 
thetexan said:
I have a friend who works in the marketing field. You'd be surprised how many companies you deal with daily are using this sort of aggregated information and how many are selling it. Apple asked me for my gender, age, occupation, and income when I registered my iPhone so they could sell that information to advertisers and developers who want to know exactly who uses the iPhone. Your cable company, cell phone company, credit card company, car company, and countless other examples do the same thing Google does.
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I have a background in marketing/PR and so no, I would not be surprised. The only thing shocking about your post is that you conflate what your service providers do when they sell info to what Google does with data mining.

Basic demographic info and what magazines you subscribe to are far less intrusive than a system that mines search history and email to target ads. Summary: Your cable company is not in the business of selling targeted ads, Google makes its money off of that business.
 
My Mobile Me expires in August. I deleted my credit card because I refuse to keep paying $$$$ every year when the service takes this long to get updated with simple features.

I had to answer 3 freaking security questions and talk to a customer support representative to enable POP on my account. Umm Apple....every other email service has this option built in and it's free. Get with it.
 
Speed and cost need to be addressed ASAP. My subscription is up in July.

Microsoft is turning on ActiveSync for Live mail in June and its free. Skydrive is 25gig and its FREE.

MobileMe webmail is a HORRIBLE experience. Live mail and Gmail are 1000x faster. Livemail with out ads looks very nice in comparison to both Gmail and MobileMe.

Live mail and Gmail allow you to use your own domain.

Apple wake up its not all about the iPhone and iPad.
 
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justinfreid said:
QCassidy352 said:
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google doesn't do back to my mac and doesn't sync anything but contacts and calendar. MM syncs bookmarks, dock items, and more. It also allows scheduled backup to your iDisk. Oh, and doesn't mine your data to sell to god knows who.



I would love to de-google myself, but I can't leave gmail because MM mail isn't good enough (mostly it's the performance). If they can make mm as fast and reliable as gmail, I'll gladly ditch gmail.



Other than that (and iDisk being slow), I love mm and think it's absolutely worth the money.
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Just a few points regarding MM vs. Google Sync:

As far as bookmarks go, MM does sync from Safari on a PC or Mac to Safari on an iDevice, but it doesn't provide any web based access to them. You have to edit your bookmarks on a device that you have set up for sync while Google's Chrome based sync integrates your bookmarks into your Google Docs for easy editing and sharing even when away from one of your devices. Plus, the newest version of Chrome supports preference sync, too.
The system-wide preference and Dock sync that MobileMe provides is nice in principle, but even though I use three Macs, I've yet to find a great use for it. I find that I want my preferences and Docks to be different on each computer.

While not integrated with the MobileMe or Google suites, LogMeIn Free is far better and more reliable than Back To My Mac (try it, www.logmein.com). I've actually phased out my use of Back To My Mac entirely in favor of LMI, Apple's VNC implementation is inadequate at best.

Using Backup.app to send files to iDisk is unbearably slow and has very limited options. For backing up your entire Home volume or specific types of files, Mozy is quicker and less intrusive. Plus, Time Machine backups are much more robust and there are numerous ways to upload your Time Machine backups to online storage (Time Warp is one). You can also upload any file under 250MB to Google Docs.

On balance, I don't think MM's service is worth the cost due to the vestigial nature of its web services and incomplete software features even though it is tightly integrated into OS X.

[I just saw your followup and agree that there is a subtle cost associated with Google's services if you're against having your private data aggregated and sold. Remember, there is Google Apps Premier for $50 a year per user that, at least, gets rid of ads in Gmail.]
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You make some decent points, but:

- backup to iDisk just runs in the background. Who cares how long it takes.
- Even if you don't personally use the system wide sync, you have to admit, it's something mm offers and google doesn't.
- Your google bookmark sync sounds good, if you use google docs... Which many people don't
- haven't tried LMI but thanks for the heads up

ultimately, it's not worth it to me to cobble together solutions from a ton of 3rd parties when MM does everything I want for $5/month and integrates into every mac and every idevice I own or will buy. Besides which, I view FMiP as almost an insurance policy, and if I use it once, it's more than paid for the entire year of MM service.
 
I wonder if very many people use MobileMe Mail. I sure don't. Even though I have a Family Account.
Now, if they make the MobileMe service free, like the rumors say, it will probably grow rapidly. Then when it gets real popular, they will probably stick a fee back on the service. I remember that Apple's goal is to make a LOT of money.
 
The inclusion of web based rules management is a huge deal for me.

Rules management has long been one of the top items on my list for iPhone OS improvements. While this leaves out non-subscribers it will make the use of this service more attractive.

Regardless, I still hope to see a client based form of rules management appear in future iPhone/iPad OS updates in order to include other e-mail services.
 
How long after requesting an invite did you guys get the email? I requested it two hours ago and have yet to receive the confirmation.
 
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