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MobileMe sync vs Google

Dino F

Dino F

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 16, 2010
4,515
3,405
Croydon, South London, UK
I currenlty have all my contacts and calendars synced with MobileMe, however, my main email address is with google.com.

Can anyone shed some light on what the differences are between using the 2 different syncing options? Which one is best...?!:confused:
 
MobileMe syncs bookmarks and notes (if you use the stock app) -- Google sync with Exchange is free, but does only mail, contacts, and calendars. Those are your only differences; which is best is subjective.
 
Dino F said:
I currenlty have all my contacts and calendars synced with MobileMe, however, my main email address is with google.com.

Can anyone shed some light on what the differences are between using the 2 different syncing options? Which one is best...?!:confused:
Click to expand...

I use hotmail, however I have used google and it works perfectly. I wouldn't pay for mobileme if I had the option of using gmail via exchange activesync.
 
I wouldn't pay for mobileme if I had the option of using gmail via exchange activesync.
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...so if I cancel my sub for MobileMe, will I lose all the photos that I have currently saved there, or is the subscription only to actively sync, email, contacts and bookmarks, 'over the air'?
 
I would never trust google with all my personal info. They seem to have a slightly shotty track record concerning security. I'll keep my mobile me thanks. Works perfectly for what I need.
 
Dino F said:
...so if I cancel my sub for MobileMe, will I lose all the photos that I have currently saved there, or is the subscription only to actively sync, email, contacts and bookmarks, 'over the air'?
Click to expand...
You can use Dropbox and Flickr instead of iDisk and Gallery.
 
I think the bottom line is that there are free alternatives, but the free alternatives may require some additional configuration, etc.

I prefer MobileMe because I buy a family pack off of eBay each year for less than the cost of an individual pack. (My last family pack was 92$ total.) I love the convenience of being able to add that to my iPhone and have everything as far as contacts and calendars taken care of. I do not use it for email.

I also do not have much experience with Google's contacts layout on the web; IE how their info editing screens differ from MobileMe's, but I like the way MobileMe works as far as contacts. (...as far as mimicing the look of Address Book on the Mac, etc.)

For me it's been a no-brainer - less than $8/month combined for my wife and I to have that much convenience is worth it to me.
 
Dino F said:
...so if I cancel my sub for MobileMe, will I lose all the photos that I have currently saved there, or is the subscription only to actively sync, email, contacts and bookmarks, 'over the air'?
Click to expand...

The only thing you get on MobileMe without a sub is 'Find My iPhone'. Googlesync will only do your contacts, email and calendars - it wont do your photos or bookmarks.
 
I think with these services it just really depends on what you need.

All I need are my emails, contacts and calendars synced so using el goog is fine with me. I'm so jacked up into google anyways so it makes sense.

Works perfectly so that is all I ask for.
 
Google's contacts always kind of bothered me since the first, middle, and last name are all in one field. I prefer MobileMe's method of seperating them. I can't think of an actual reason why that's a problem, but it always annoyed me. One of the reasons I like MobileMe better.

Plus, I always felt safer with the MobileMe control panel on Macs and Windows. That advanced tab that lets you force-overwrite in one direction has saved my a$$ is the past. Does Google sync have anything like that? I really don't know.

Other reasons I like MobileMe:

* Safari bookmark syncing is essential if you have multiple Apple products.

* Same thing with Keychain syncing if you have multipel Macs

* The photo galleries are fantastic. I use it and I use Flickr but they're both good at different things. Anyone who says one is a sub for the other clearly doesn't do much photo sharing.


And finally, yeah, iDisk sucks. Use dropbox for sure.

If you just own an iPhone then MobileMe is nice, but not critical. If you own multiple iOS devices and multiple Macs then it's an absolute necessity.
 
For contacts and calendars, I actually use both services. If I make a change on my Mac's address book, it will change MobileMe and Google. Same with calendars. This was very helpful when recently switching from the Droid X to the iPhone 4. It took a little fiddling to get them all to work well together, but now it's nice having them all synced together.
 
One thing to remember too if leaving MobileMe is that it's contacts system uses a lot of custom fields which don't naturally get translated to google ... i found my contacts a bit of a mess when i tried to migrate
 
I prefer Google Sync because it's free, I have both a personal and work email account through Google, and it's extremely easy to sync iCal and Address Book between my Macs and my iPhone. And with Dropbox also being free, it wouldn't make sense for me to pay for MobileMe. Safari bookmarks don't matter to me because I use Chrome as my primary browser, so the only place where I use Safari would be my phone.
 
I've had Google for a while and tried MobileMe...They only thing that turned me off about MM was when I deleted an email on MM from my Mac it wouldn't delete it from my iphone. I would have to then manually go into the mail app on my iphone for it to update and delete the email...that's rediculous...you think apple would take care of something as silly as that. I could delete an email on my Mac on MM and then look on my iphone later and think I have a new email only to find it's the one I deleted an hour ago from my iMac. So I'm sticking with Google sync where I don't have this problem. Otherwise, I think MM is pretty good.
 
As an IT Manager with several iPhones connecting to our Google Apps, it's a no brainer for me; Google all the way. I have had zero issues with it and it's free.
 
FloridaMac said:
I would have to then manually go into the mail app on my iphone for it to update and delete the email...that's rediculous...you think apple would take care of something as silly as that.
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It's supposed to work that way. I guess there was something wrong with your phone, but there's nothing for Apple to 'take care of.' MobileMe already supports IMAP.
 
Small White Car said:
It's supposed to work that way. I guess there was something wrong with your phone, but there's nothing for Apple to 'take care of.' MobileMe already supports IMAP.
Click to expand...

It's really supposed to work that way? Why do I not have that problem with Googlesync? If I'm on my desktop in my google mail and I delete an email the red number indicator on my mail app on my iphone disappears. It doesn't do that for me when I delete an email from my desktop on MobileMe. The red number remains on there...I have to actually go into the mail app for it to delete it. That just doesn't seem right unless I have some setting that's keeping that from happening.
 
You can sync your notes to Google (or Yahoo) - that was added recently with one of the iOS upgrades. My iPhone Notes show up as a folder in gmail (called Notes).

I sync contacts, calendar, and Notes with my gmail. Unfortunately, I believe I heard the Notes sync is one-way (although I've never tested it). Contacts and Calendar are definitely 2-way sync.
 
Here's a catch-phrase that will make some fanboys upset:

Google's sync 'just works'.

They've been doing cloud based sync better than anyone else for a few years now. I have only dabbled with it on iOS, though.
 
I've been a long time user of gmail/google account. Use it for mail/contacts/calendars.. Sync is always live, and its available for many platforms.. I've switched between several phones for work reasons and its always so easy to add my google account and mail/cals/contacts all come down, on iOS,android,WP7, heck even on BB (though that is a pain in the ..)

mobileMe looks like a nice product, I have one account through a friend, but really don't make much use of it.
 
I HAD mobile me... it was NOT worth the one year I had it. The things I needed it for like push email was replaced by google's services, and same thing with find my iphone, which apple let's you have for free now.

Now I use google's push email, to sync and retrieve my email. I use google calendar to sync my pocket informant app (ok the iphone's calendar is RUBBISH!!!!!). The pocketinformant app was worth the 9.99 I spent 2 yrs ago :). For notes, I use evernote since it syncs my notes on my computer, iphones, ipad with my evernote account. Evernote is 150% better than the notes app since i can load pdfs, pictures, in addition to notes. For example, I can "scan" a document by taking a picture, load it on evernote, then tag it for archiving purposes. Then it sync automatically. The notes app on the iphone can't touch evernote. I have pdfs, notes, etc... for car maintanance related stuff, school documents, etc.. or evernote that I can use the search function to retrieve.

I don't have a solution for syncing bookmarks over the air, but its not a big deal since I use the chrome browser anyway.


Oops... i forgot to add. I also use the contacts app on my gmail. Once you set up google push notifications on the mail app, you can sync your contacts as well. SO if add a contact to my phone, it'll sync it to google online, then when I open my computer, it syncs the contacts on my Air. And Vice versa if I add a contact on my MBA and it'll end up on my phone :)

God I feel like a google ad LOL but it really is a valuable free services.
 
I just love how MobileMe syncs my bookmarks, notes, calendars, contacts, everything SO easily. There are definitely some quirks, but I think that I would pay the renew fee next year.
 
JohnnyQuest said:
I just love how MobileMe syncs my bookmarks, notes, calendars, contacts, everything SO easily. There are definitely some quirks, but I think that I would pay the renew fee next year.
Click to expand...

If you have a lot of Apple devices, in my opinion it's definitely worth it. Just make sure to grab the "Old Version" from Amazon or something so you get it half off (average renewal price ranges from 40-60$)
 
Just to clarify, I'm sure mobileme works for people but for me its just not worth paying for something $70 per year that I can have somewhere for free. Mobile me and google's and everonotes are 100% perfect, but in the day and age where we are in a recession, I'd rather put the 70-100 dollars for better uses.
 
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