MobileMe's Push Services Detailed, No Mac to Mobile Me 'Push'

[nidserz]

It's totally push between the web and iphone/touch. Either way. But you may have to refresh the web browser to see additions and deletions from the iphone. For example, if you add an event on your iphone, you may have to refresh the browser if you're already in calendar on mobileme. But if you add something to the cal on mobileme, your touch or iphone will update within 2-10 seconds.

It's the desktop syncing/push that is being debated. Number one, people feel they were misled by apple and that there was push from the mac to the web and iphone demonstrated with no manual or delayed syncing involved. Second, there is a debate over whether adding items on the web is instigating an automated sync with the desktop. It's working for some, not for others.

Thanks for clearing that up. Okay the e-mail thing worked in the end, it just took longer than calender and contacts.
As for the desktop issue, mine syncs (I change something on mobile me or the ipod touch) it gets a notification on my desktop a few minutes later or so.
I guess it will get better over time.

 

[jplan2008]

You can get all of this for free. So basically, you're paying Apple $99/year because you don't want to learn how to do it like the other 95% of the population?

According to the threads, having to press "sync now" three minutes before sleeping/shutting down their Mac (realistically this is the only difference between push from Mac and no push for virtually anyone) is a deal breaker for lots of people whether they're going to pay $99 or not. Then the same people think those of us that think that ALL of the features COMBINED is worth $99 are somehow idiots? Doesn't make sense. I'd have to go to several places (Google plus third-party software for syncing with my Mac, Flickr, web hosting/web design option; some storage option; some push capability) and pay something more than zero $ to get everything MobileMe offers, and most if it, for me, does not give me everything I want and need, and doesn't do most of it as well as MobileMe, and isn't as easy and automatic as MobileMe (yes, I'm willing to pay $99 a year for something that's easier, more automatic, and for me, preferable), even today, on day three of MobileMe, with a bunch of problems that I hope and assume will work out. If you prefer the other options, or prefer to spend the $99 on something else, then ... don't spend the $99 on MobileMe.

 

[macklos]

For approx. 27 cents a day I think it is worth it. I see myself using the web interface/apps for the main entry of data and the mac/iphone sync to it. For me its better to use one web interface than bouncing between several applications. I'm just looking forward to Apple getting this roll out smoothed out.

 

[Eric S.]

I still have yet to see why you must pay for this service. Sounds like all you need is a portable calendar.

Nobody needs MobileMe just like nobody needs any of the devices we all love to play with. If paper and pencil work for you, go for it. I do a lot of work online and I will make much use of MobileMe's features, well worth the rather small cost of less than $0.30/day.

 

[HLdan]

The exact difference is this, a desktop app works all of the time, whether or not you have internet access. A Web 2.0 app doesn't... If you are out of range of some sort of internet connectivity you're out of luck. Efficient workflow depends on structure and stability. It is anything but efficient to change how you do your work, and relying on a web app is going to require you to do exactly that when you have to switch back to the desktop app when you're offline.

Beyond the inefficiency, I just don't want to use two apps to do the same thing, one for when I'm online and one for when I'm not. I meet with clients all of the time and probably half of them do not have WiFi in their offices so I'd have to switch back to iCal to do any project scheduling.

That said, it's not a huge deal to wait 15 minutes in the mean time. I just hope I don't forget and close my laptop before I sync and miss something. I'm hopeful that at some point Apple will update the apps to remedy the situation, or at least someone will work out a third-party solution.

I think the frustration is that we've come to expect that something will work well without a lot of interference when it comes from Apple. That hasn't really been the case lately.

Josh

Apparently you either did not read my whole post or you chose to write exactly what I wrote without answering my question properly. I already clarified in my post (as you did) that the difference between the web 2.0 interface and the desktops apps is the fact you can use the desktop apps without the internet. I was not debating that.
The whole discussion here is about instant push and if you want "instant push" you need to use the web 2.0 interface. The complaint people are having is not having instant push from the desktop apps. If you have internet access and you use the desktop apps then push argument is moot right?

My point was if you ARE connected to the web and want instant push what's wrong with using the MobileMe web interface? Everything is in one UI, you don't have to open multiple programs. It mimics the desktop apps near perfectly.

You wouldn't have to before closing your laptop (as you put it) if you made your changes on MobileMe.

 

[HLdan]

Not working for me at least... Its still the same ol' 15 min sync!

Some people were saying that if they make a change on MobileMe that its not triggering an instant push to the desktop for them. It works great for me. I went on MM and added a new calendar. The moment I clicked OK on the calendar my sync on the desktop was triggered. I've tried the quite a few times and it immediately triggers and pushes to my Mac desktop.

 

[kdog1176]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

No you are wrong. Updating MM Calendar/Address Book is kicking off automatic sync on Mac for many of us. If you haven't already watched this:

http://massoh.com/chris/push.mov

Someone has already responded to this, but I think we need to be clear on this. You are mistaken.

If you are not having Push from MobileMe to your Mac, your setup is not working correctly. (I'm not saying it's your fault, it may be a bug for some people)

But... there is Push from MobileMe to your Mac. Just not the other way around.

arn

I don't think so. Many people, including myself, are having problems with this. If we are configured wrong, tell us how to configure. I have read this entire thread (skimming sometimes) and can't find anything that I'm not doing.

FYI, I am running Leopard, did the MobileMe 1.1 Updater, am set to "Automatic," and have rebooted. Also, I have a full-fledged account (not a trial one).

Short of MM features still being "rolled out" to accounts, I really do not know why this works for some and not others. I haven't had a MacBook very long so I am still in the learning stages. I was wondering if the settings in iSync preferences have anything to to with sync kicking off right away after an update is made in MM? I have no devices hooked up to iSync, but I think the first check box (forget exact wording) is for syncing automatically with MM.

 

[aLoC]

According to the threads, having to press "sync now" three minutes before sleeping/shutting down their Mac (realistically this is the only difference between push from Mac and no push for virtually anyone) is a deal breaker for lots of people whether they're going to pay $99 or not.

The difference is not really on the sending end (as you say, you can just click "sync"), but on the recieving end where another member of your family does not find out you have made a change for 15 minutes. If it is the family calendar you could end with a clashing appointment in that time.

 

[fad1]

I think the assumptions were so much that we miss the fine print about what MobileMe really is

 

[BillyBobBongo]

I get your point HLdan, but it's kinda poor on Apple's part to force users into using a web based app over something on their OS. To me using web based apps should only have to be an option when I don't have access to my Mac.

Now don't get me wrong, the web apps are nicely made...but the way in which MobileMe was advertised certainly implied that this was otherwise.

Now I'm not as aggravated as some people are here. I most make changes to me contacts and calendar when I'm on the go (with my iPod Touch) so the system suits my current needs.

Regardless, I do remain hopeful that we'll see 'push' from the Mac to the Cloud in the near future. Friday was a pretty bad day for Apple, lots of things Im sure did not go as planned. Perhaps this 'push' was not working as it should and it got pulled, better to have it functioning properly with sync than not at all.

 

[chris3g]

for those of you that aren't getting mobileme>mac push like in my video, do you have uPnP enabled on your router? I wonder if it may be an issue with the notification that the "cloud" sends out to your mac to initiate the sync not getting through to the proper place. After i got everything working i noticed some uPnP port forwards to each of my computers that i have synced.

An easy way to test may be to temporarily connect your mac directly to the internet, bypass the router, and see if it works like that.

 

[moseleyite]

Some people were saying that if they make a change on MobileMe that its not triggering an instant push to the desktop for them. It works great for me. I went on MM and added a new calendar. The moment I clicked OK on the calendar my sync on the desktop was triggered.

I'm one of the unlucky ones! I have to wait for a sync before any updates appear. I'm using Tiger so perhaps this is the problem.

 

[aLoC]

for those of you that aren't getting mobileme>mac push like in my video, do you have uPnP enabled on your router? I wonder if it may be an issue with the notification that the "cloud" sends out to your mac to initiate the sync not getting through to the proper place. After i got everything working i noticed some uPnP port forwards to each of my computers that i have synced.

I have port mapping turned off and it works for me.

I think the way it works is Mail contacts the cloud server when you first start it, and leaves the connection open. That way you can get notifications down the original connection without the cloud server having to establish a new connection and potentially bumping in to issue with the firewall. You can see this by running netstat -finet in the terminal and you will see that Mail has an ongoing connection to the cloud server.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

for those of you that aren't getting mobileme>mac push like in my video, do you have uPnP enabled on your router? I wonder if it may be an issue with the notification that the "cloud" sends out to your mac to initiate the sync not getting through to the proper place. After i got everything working i noticed some uPnP port forwards to each of my computers that i have synced.

An easy way to test may be to temporarily connect your mac directly to the internet, bypass the router, and see if it works like that.

With all these problems, I too am wondering if it is router/firewall related.

Some of you having problems should put your machine on the DMZ of the firewall and see if that helps.


As a side note: I'm all for MobileMe and get why people want to use it without having to combine a workflow of a bunch of different free online apps, but I did want to add that dropbox is basically iDisk, yet only at 5 GB. It also works on Windows and OS X.

 

[j763]

Both your answers aren't complete solutions. Backup software doesn't keep two desktops in sync. And online storage plus ftp is not a user friendly masses solution that fits tidily into the os.

I happily pay for an ftp solution I like - fetch. $25. If $99 a year makes life easier than using gmail or yahoo or other online solutions then it's worth it. If it saves me an hour or two of hassle, then it's paid for itself. If you're still working at the local quickie mart, you probably shouldn't be paying for convenience because time may be money, but if you're not making much money, then money is definitely TIME! Ouch. Use the freebies. They're not that bad. But then, one can afford to spend the extra grand for the convenience of a mac in the first place, ....

My replies were in regards to two specific features that the OP cited: "Local desktop iDisk" and "if I need to reformat my hard drive for any reason I can safely wipe the drive clean and download everything back to my desktop including iCal calenders" as being "2 things that nothing on the web competes with on .Mac". The OP requested "Correct me if I'm wrong". So, I did... WebDAV access through the Finder is painfully slow (in fact, any shares are) -- something that one hopes will be addressed in 10.6 -- so if time is money or vise-versa, you wouldn't be loading shares through the Finder. You'd have a good couple hundred gigs or more worth of an SFTP share that you'd be accessing through something with a good FTP implementation like Panic's Transmit.app. As for being worried about losing data - the point that the OP mentioned - you would want to have a real backup solution in place: Time Machine seems fine for most purposes.

These are points that the OP raised, not me. I frankly think that this is an utter and complete waste of Apple's resources when there are so many third party solutions (Google, Fastmail and others) that do all of these things far better than Apple can. Online services are not one of Apple's core strengths, and by the looks of things, won't be anytime soon either. To take just one example, email, for instance... Instead of implementing IMAP IDLE on the iPhone... which works beautifully and flawlessly in Mail.app under Mac OS X... they're using a horrendously insecure proprietary non-standard implementation... for Yahoo accounts at least. MM either uses the same method or uses P-IMAP, which is some proprietary obsolete junk from Oracle that is found in older versions of Windows Mobile. Why is it that Mail.app on the desktop has full and proper (indeed, excellent support for IMAP IDLE), but the iPhone doesn't? I hate to sound conspiratorial, but it seems as if Apple has deliberately crippled the iPhone in this particular regard just to sell MM accounts to people who actually uh... want to get their email on their mobile device when it arrives, not 15 mins after the fact.

If you need calendars on-the-go, you'd already have an Exchange server. If you're a home user, you're going to be plugging your iPhone into its charger every night anyways, so you may as well just hook it up to the computer instead of the wall, and save yourself the hundred bucks.

[edit]
For more on the crappy email implementation on the iPhone, see http://www.ferris.com/2007/07/20/iphone-imap-vul/
[/edit]

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Also, we could find out more if some of you dropped to terminal and typed:

lsof -i


This will list processes and their connections to the internet. I don't have mobileme so I can't do this, but it should tell you if it is maintaining a persistent connection to the MM server.

 

[Agathon]

for those of you that aren't getting mobileme>mac push like in my video, do you have uPnP enabled on your router? I wonder if it may be an issue with the notification that the "cloud" sends out to your mac to initiate the sync not getting through to the proper place. After i got everything working i noticed some uPnP port forwards to each of my computers that i have synced.

An easy way to test may be to temporarily connect your mac directly to the internet, bypass the router, and see if it works like that.

This is what is causing it for me. It works at work, but not at home since I live in a building with a pretty severe firewall. That's not a big deal. Free broadband over a LAN is worth more than worrying about push contacts.

On the other hand, the fact that there is no push from the mac is irritating.

 

[chris3g]

Also, we could find out more if some of you dropped to terminal and typed:

lsof -i


This will list processes and their connections to the internet. I don't have mobileme so I can't do this, but it should tell you if it is maintaining a persistent connection to the MM server.

this is all i have

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
AppleVNCS 764 Chris 4u IPv6 0x1ce2ff4 0t0 TCP *:vnc-server (LISTEN)
SystemUIS 773 Chris 10u IPv4 0x1cdfe70 0t0 UDP *:*

if mail is running then there are connections to mail.mac.com that remain open, but calendar and contact push work whether mail is running or not.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

They would have been far better off implementing IMAP IDLE in the iPhone software and letting folks use their IMAP accounts rather than resurrecting this buggy proprietary Oracle solution they're using -- P-IMAP extensions -- to get email pushed.

Please enlighten us and point us to where Apple states that they have implemented P-IMAP.

Even if they had implemented P-IMAP, it has to rest on top of IDLE anyway.

 

[Kaptajn Haddock]

It is if you close your Notebook 10 seconds after adding a new entry in Calendar.

Well I often do, or maybe not after 10 seconds, but 15 minutes is a long time. Annoying that I would have to sync manually from the computer. Why?! Would it overload the system to much I guess?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

[edit]
For more on the crappy email implementation on the iPhone, see http://www.ferris.com/2007/07/20/iphone-imap-vul/
[/edit]

This is from last year with 1.0 software, pushing from Yahoo! not MobileMe.

 

[flinstone]

Unbelievable

It's shameless, misleading and criminal advertisement.
I AM an Apple fan but this is a rotten Apple!

 

[Matthew Yohe]

It's shameless, misleading and criminal advertisement.
I AM an Apple fan but this is a rotten Apple!

Clearly it isn't.


From Apple's page: "Everything just clicks.
MobileMe works with the applications you use on your Mac every day. Changes you make in Address Book and iCal are synced with MobileMe every 15 minutes, then pushed to your iPhone or iPod touch. And your Mac receives the changes you make on your iPhone, iPod touch, or the web. MobileMe even syncs Safari bookmarks."

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Clearly it isn't.


From Apple's page: "Everything just clicks.
MobileMe works with the applications you use on your Mac every day. Changes you make in Address Book and iCal are synced with MobileMe every 15 minutes, then pushed to your iPhone or iPod touch. And your Mac receives the changes you make on your iPhone, iPod touch, or the web. MobileMe even syncs Safari bookmarks."

To be fair...they're changing the text on their pages due to the backlash that this is causing.

 

[bretm]

Apparently you either did not read my whole post or you chose to write exactly what I wrote without answering my question properly. I already clarified in my post (as you did) that the difference between the web 2.0 interface and the desktops apps is the fact you can use the desktop apps without the internet. I was not debating that.
The whole discussion here is about instant push and if you want "instant push" you need to use the web 2.0 interface. The complaint people are having is not having instant push from the desktop apps. If you have internet access and you use the desktop apps then push argument is moot right?

My point was if you ARE connected to the web and want instant push what's wrong with using the MobileMe web interface? Everything is in one UI, you don't have to open multiple programs. It mimics the desktop apps near perfectly.

You wouldn't have to before closing your laptop (as you put it) if you made your changes on MobileMe.

The online apps are slow. They hang. They don't always update correctly. They scroll horribly. They don't load and cache images. They don't show all your emails. They don't have the
Keyboard sjortcuts. They are a poor weak substitute for a desktop app if it's available. Nuff said.