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Apple to Offer Free MobileMe Service to Some iOS Users?
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No it can't, not all in one place with a fully integrated interface and seamless integration across all facets of my mac. Being able to sync my dock, web favorites, mail.app settings and account, system settings (even my desktop wallpaper) and to be able to sync any other mac so i can work away from home is priceless and I don't know a single other service out there that does that. A fiver a month is a tiny price to pay for this one service alone, before we even get onto the insanely good web galleries that are actually cross browser compatible.
What are you missing from iTools - I find me.com a great web service and my subscription is amazing value for money. Email, web hosting, syncing and back up services, iDisk, image galleries, back to my mac, find my iPhone - it's a great suite of tools. Coupled with drop box, it's perfect.
Lets be honest - MobileMe is a rip off. In todays age it's stupid to expect people to pay for something they get get from someone else (who will provide a just as reliable, if not more reliable service).
One such example: DropBox. Unlike the mobile me disk, you can sync with a mac, linux or windows PC. You can revert files, you can publicly share files, etc.
Their paid plan (which I have) is $99 / year for 50GB Storage. Apple charges $99 /year for 20GB space. You could argue that you get all these cool extras like email and calendars. Gmail. Hands down, MUCH better than MobileMe's mail. Same goes for the calendar. I'm not talking about how 'magical' it 'feels'. I'm talking pure functionality, which me.com does not have.
Then you've got Gallery. Looks nice, but compared to flickr (or even getting a $1 /month hosting account), is poor and a feature that few use/need/want.
As far as I can see, the only thing worth paying for on Me.com is Find My iPhone/iPad, but even then its not worth anything near $99 /year. $49/year MAXIMUM unless they bump the diskspace to 100gb and add some features other than iLife crud.
(sidenote: If you're a diehard Me.com fanboy, save your breath - I'm not interested.)
One such example: DropBox. Unlike the mobile me disk, you can sync with a mac, linux or windows PC. You can revert files, you can publicly share files, etc.
Their paid plan (which I have) is $99 / year for 50GB Storage. Apple charges $99 /year for 20GB space. You could argue that you get all these cool extras like email and calendars. Gmail. Hands down, MUCH better than MobileMe's mail. Same goes for the calendar. I'm not talking about how 'magical' it 'feels'. I'm talking pure functionality, which me.com does not have.
Then you've got Gallery. Looks nice, but compared to flickr (or even getting a $1 /month hosting account), is poor and a feature that few use/need/want.
As far as I can see, the only thing worth paying for on Me.com is Find My iPhone/iPad, but even then its not worth anything near $99 /year. $49/year MAXIMUM unless they bump the diskspace to 100gb and add some features other than iLife crud.
(sidenote: If you're a diehard Me.com fanboy, save your breath - I'm not interested.)
My MM renewed yesterday. I like the service and am happy to pay £59 a year for it as it works better and faster than every alternative I've tried. It needs some continual improvement in areas. A free/paid two-tier system makes sense with improved service for paid users. However the main improvement I'd like to see is addition of formatting/importance etc. in mail but this would need an update in iOS so may not be able to differentiate between free/paid
"Free" is about right for the steaming heap of stuff, AKA MobileMe. I subscribe for the "Find my iPhone" and "Remote Wipe", and thought the remote sync with the PC might be handy. Not so!
100% CPU usage
The last update unceremoniously wiped out Outlook's calendar completely. Gone! Many others experienced this.
100% CPU usage
The last update unceremoniously wiped out Outlook's calendar completely. Gone! Many others experienced this.
You must not be a very busy person at all. My iPhone would be utterly useless without MobileMe. I use every single feature to its fullest, and I would be lost without the ability to pick up my freshly restored iPhone or iPad and not be able to enter my login info and pull down all of my important data.
Syncing over the air, back and forth, between contacts and calendars and email is so staggeringly important to a person with a business to run, I don't think you can even begin to properly understand it.
You are clueless to that value of MobileMe. Absolutely clueless.
Do you not think if there was a better option that could accomplish all of what it does, for less money, that people would use that instead?
Oh, and GMAIL!?!?! Give me a ****** break!
Sorry I don't like having my account hacked once a week and my contacts spammed. Push email? Push contacts? Push Calendars? Bookmarks? Notes? Dock Items?
What are those?
(And yet you pay for MobileMe. What a joke)
Slick
How do you find the service in terms of speed, reliability etc? iDisk is awful. Its so slow no matter what time i tried to access it.
iDisk has not been "slow" at all in more than 3 years.
If your connection is slow, is doesn't automatically get faster when using an Apple service.
I have a doubt about whether MobileMe will ever be free. It's a niche product, something that is simply not in the mind of common people. These people do not have an imagination about web services and syncing. They still believe (and to be honest, I myself prefer it too), that their data is stored on one piece of hardware. If they want to have synced data wherever they go, they simply buy one single laptop or iPhone and take it with them, so syncing is unnecessary. People don't know that they could even do this. Hell, they don't even know you can connect to a file server, not to mention that they don't know what it is. These people still think that a Browser is the gate to the Internet and have no imagination about what is possible beyound.
If Apple would like to push this, they have to teach people what it is, what it does and most importantly, what the advantage is. Right now, with all that huge storage (for common people) on their pieces of hardware, there is simply no advantage at all. They got email from a free internet service or their working place, they don't need hosting, they don't do backup, they don't store things in the cloud, ... And seriously, how often do you loose your phone, or have even heard of a friend having lost his?
Right now, this service is for people who know the advantages. And these are willing to pay.
If Apple would like to push this, they have to teach people what it is, what it does and most importantly, what the advantage is. Right now, with all that huge storage (for common people) on their pieces of hardware, there is simply no advantage at all. They got email from a free internet service or their working place, they don't need hosting, they don't do backup, they don't store things in the cloud, ... And seriously, how often do you loose your phone, or have even heard of a friend having lost his?
Right now, this service is for people who know the advantages. And these are willing to pay.
If the poster was new to MobileMe when that happened, I think that I might be able to understand how he could configure his settings that would cause the Outlook calendar resident on his PC to get wiped.
But, then again, if your Outlook calendar is all that important, one should probably understand the instructions thoroughly before embarking on a synchronisation.
The combination of iTunes and MobileMe, together with a variety of PC and Mac computers trying to synchronise all the information, can be a daunting task to somebody new to it.
Some of the choices should be made clearer, I think.
If you have MobileMe and a variety of devices syncing to it via its Exchange features, you can end up with duplicate contact lists and duplicate calendars. This is not anything wrong with the service...it's just that newbie instructions could probably be a little clearer.
I'm speaking from the typical idiot's point of view...I love the service now that I'm used to it, but I still have calendars I am afraid to delete!
And remember that Apple doesn't always play nicely with Outlook and Windows. Do you remember when tech support would tell you openly that you shouldn't try to replicate more than one calendar across applications and devices? The newest version of MobileMe and iOS interacts perfectly, but in previous versions you could potentially fill up your 32GB iPhone or 64GB iPad with spurious calendars created by this inappropriate interaction.
Now that they've sorted that, and now that I am used to it, I wouldn't want to be without it. It has some clear advantages to other Exchange services like the free Google service, especially if you are on Apple devices.
Google is doing that for them. The free Exchange server that Google provides its email users is moving the learning curve, and it might be a good idea for Apple to keep up now that storage space is cheap. Google seems to be deliberately providing more and more free services, and you have got to wonder about why.
I mean, it's relatively cheap considering where their money's coming from. I'm keeping MobileMe whether it's free or not, but a casual user might not see much difference between the $100/year Apple service and the free Google service, or the user might not see the Apple-specific services (like the locator and security wipe) worth the price.
I dunno. I think that Apple might find that if the service is free, more people will want to be on the MobileMe service than the Google Exchange service.
Whoever is able to get the majority of the regular, everyday users on their servers is going to have a huge, huge database of information for heuristic analysis...and this is where the real money will be coming from. Without violating anybody's privacy, your analysis will still be able to spot trends. You'll be able to see what it is that the majority of people will want to see in the way of products and services...and you will be able to sell that information, all without necessarily violating anybody's privacy.
You just have to be sure that you are only pulling an analysis from people who have the tendency and ability to buy something like what it is that people are talking about, I guess. It might or might not do you any good to know what kind of game it is that teenagers want to buy if their parents are horrified at the prospect and will refuse to buy it even if you produce it, for example.
If Apple can do it the right way, if they have the storage space and heuristic technology to compete with the Dulles facility, then IMHO they should do it...full speed ahead.
But, what do I know.
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You can find a much lesser price at Amazon and get all the features of MobileMe. I've been doing this for years!
trekkie604 said:
You can find a much lesser price at Amazon and get all the features of MobileMe. I've been doing this for years!
I was looking at a colleagues HTC Android phone the other day, the included HTC Sense is free and includes the 'Find My Phone' and a plethora of other innovative features. Apple will hopefully add some of these in a free tier http://www.htc.com/uk/htcsense
No it's not because of me...and to be honest someone else on this forum taught me this mobile me "hustle" if Apple didn't want you to recycle the free trial then they'd block your phone after one trial...EVERYONE I know uses mobile me for free via free trials just for "find my iPhone"...sorry it's not worth $99 a year...get off your high horse!
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I appreciate that you can string together similar services from around the web to get MobileMe type stuff for free, but I don't think MobileMe is "garbage". I use it and I'd love if iDisk was more like Dropbox (which I also use) and if it was cheaper. The iLife integration is tough to beat, though and syncing everything is really good. I use find my iPhone. It would be good if they make MobileMe free, but I use just about every feature (including the email address) so I hope they don't drop anything.
I appreciate that you can string together similar services from around the web to get MobileMe type stuff for free, but I don't think MobileMe is "garbage". I use it and I'd love if iDisk was more like Dropbox (which I also use) and if it was cheaper. The iLife integration is tough to beat, though and syncing everything is really good. I use find my iPhone. It would be good if they make MobileMe free, but I use just about every feature (including the email address) so I hope they don't drop anything.
I've been using MobileMe since day one release and I find it to be great!!!
All the features work great for me, best service I've ever used and a $100 a yr is easily affordable for the average user.
All the features work great for me, best service I've ever used and a $100 a yr is easily affordable for the average user.
Of course it's not worth 99 a year, but not because it's a bad service, but because you can simple find it for less on Ebay or Amazon. I believe i paid 69 or 70 bucks and for a year of great service it's pocket change. You waste more just by being lazy and driving even if you can walk damn distance (not that you do that, just an example where you can waste more than 99 dollars per year).