MobileMe solution for 2 family members who don't want to share data?

[dynalmadman]

Hi

We have one iPad (mine) and one iPhone (hers). I like some of the things about the MobileMe service and was wondering:

We don't want to share contacts, mail, etc between the devices, but would like to share calendars and perhaps pics. And the device tracking if lost is a no brainer.

So do we need just a single family plan or 2 separate single licenses?

Thanks
Michael

 

[Hammie]

Hi

We have one iPad (mine) and one iPhone (hers). I like some of the things about the MobileMe service and was wondering:

We don't want to share contacts, mail, etc between the devices, but would like to share calendars and perhaps pics. And the device tracking if lost is a no brainer.

So do we need just a single family plan or 2 separate single licenses?

Thanks
Michael

You can't share calendars with a family plan. This was my biggest gripe. I would love to be able to assign read and write access to other family member to either mine or their calendars. Honestly, I'm not sure of the benefit of the family plan other than a slight price savings. My family plan has two iPads and three iPhones on it.

 

[b.c.]

if you're not going to share mail and contacts, perhaps you could get by with just a single MobileMe membership between you?

note that on each device you can individually enable which services you want to sync using Mobile Me (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes). so if your iPad and your wife's iPhone are both connected to same MobileMe account you could just enable Calendars and Find My iPhone on both devices. You would both have identical & equal access to all your calendars

then separately set up your different mail accounts on each (one could be Mobile Me). and for contacts, one of you could sync MobileMe contacts, the other could set up Google contacts or other (have not tried that myself...)

to share photos is a bit trickier, you would need to set up your iPhoto library to be shared between each of your userids on your Mac, but that can be done.

p.s. another unrelated side-benefit of putting other family members on your same MobileMe account - you can use the Back to My Mac feature to provide remote Mac technical support even with all other sync services turned off. this has come in handy for me many times

 

[dynalmadman]

Great information. Thanks so much to both of you.

I guess we will give it a shot.

Michael