.me questions... Family Plan / Multi-users

[b52hbuff]

I have already looked at the other '.me' thread. Given the cross platform implications of .me, would it make sense to have a separate forum for questions?

Anyway, I have already visited:
http://www.apple.com/mobileme/

And I am very impressed with the capabilities. I realize from the demo and the other thread that the real value add is the seamless integration between 'the cloud' and the iphone (and other platforms') applications. I think this is going to really help boost the WAF (wife acceptance factor). True, you could put a bit of effort into finding free apps, but my wife isn't going to put in that kind of effort.

My application is to sync up contacts and calendar information required to coordinate an active family of two adults and three children. The children are too small to to using the .me applications, so it'll just be me and my wife entering in the data.

So does anyone have any deeper information beyond what is available here:
http://www.apple.com/mobileme/

I am trying to understand whether I can make my 'application' work with an individual account, or whether I really need the family plan?

I think both of us will be using individual iphones, web and pc/outlook. We might 'share' an old ipod touch or media center pc.

Anyway, in the demo the instructor showed how you could have 'different calendars'. So can my wife and I choose which calendars we choose to push out?

Does the address book have this property as well? Can we choose which entries to push?

 

[IMcD23]

as you must know, it isn't released yet and so anything that isn't on the website, demo, and release keynote is not told, because apple is a very secret company

 

[b52hbuff]

Actually, I am new to the Apple product line and Apple as a company. I got my first ipod as an unwanted gift. I was pretty excited to upgrade to an ipod touch. Since I am not totally familiar with Apple, it's products or services, I thought I'd ask a question from other folks who might be more familiar.

Just like there are 'iphone' leaks, there might be MobileMe leaks. Or perhaps someone who is familiar with how .mac works may be able to make some intelligent comment.

Another question I have is how secure do folks think MobileMe will be? Or from experience how secure is .mac? Would you put your SSN or other sensitive data on .mac/MobileMe? Has .mac ever been hacked or been the source of any identity theft?

 

[memesmith]

My wife and I have shared a dotmac account since it was free. To be honest by wife doesn't use the synced calendars as much as I'd like. But its definatly possible.

One weirdness is that when my wife got her new MacBook and logged into dotmac for the first time, it automatically changed the dotmac account details to what she'd just put down on her Mac.

With dotmac you can also have extra email accounts, without a family plan, but we don't actually use dotmac email as we have an excellent email service from our ISP.

 

[kkat69]

First of all to clarify

With dotmac you can also have extra email accounts, without a family plan, but we don't actually use dotmac email as we have an excellent email service from our ISP.

Not true. You have the ability to have alias's which still point to the same email account. Thus the inbox is all the same.

If the core features are similar to .Mac (which they should be)

I am trying to understand whether I can make my 'application' work with an individual account, or whether I really need the family plan?

By application do you mean you are writing one? Whether it's the case or not you don't really need a family plan.

I think both of us will be using individual iphones, web and pc/outlook. We might 'share' an old ipod touch or media center pc.

Anyway, in the demo the instructor showed how you could have 'different calendars'. So can my wife and I choose which calendars we choose to push out?

Currently not really if you use the default. They'll all sync, but you CAN choose which ones to see in iMail. You just uncheck them. In Outlook, calendars translate to 'categories'

It might change but I doubt it.

Currently you can however manually publish each one you want (in iMail right click and select 'publish')

Does the address book have this property as well? Can we choose which entries to push?

Again, currently I haven't seen how to pick and choose.

My system is setup that my wife's MB and my iMac share the same .Mac account... mine. Her iCal autosync's to .Mac, same with mine, and same with both our address books.

I use MissingSync now to sync our Treo 750's to the macs. Then for me, I have to sync my Treo to my Dell to pull my Exchange items via ActiveSync. Now all my computers are in sync. Once it was setup, it's a no-brainer and I have all my calendar information from outlook and iCal sync'd similar with my address books.

 

[b52hbuff]

By application do you mean you are writing one? Whether it's the case or not you don't really need a family plan.

By 'application', I mean how I intend to use the service. I want to have multi-platform synchronization for various devices that my wife and I use. And I want the ability to have multiple calendars for each user. For each calendar, I want the ability to select whether data is pushed or kept private.

So for example, if my wife and I both have work calendars, we might want them pushed out *within* our private devices. But we don't need to see each other's work appointments. And we might have shared calendars for medical appointments and family activities. But I want to keep medical appointments and family activities within their own calendars so that I can share/print family activities and keep the medical appointments private.