why is .me usefull?

[mark34]

but it will still have push.

and the other three are all technically possible. even if not currently implemented. which i'm sure someone will do. all those picture uploads people talk about can be done from the iphone to flickr. its nothing unique.

I just don't see flickr being the same level of integration with iLife applications, though I do think you can subscribe to flickr galleries on AppleTV just like with .Mac web galleries.. that's cool. As I have said on this thread, I am just someone who sees much of the value of Apple World being the integration between devices and applications and online. For me .mac has always been important to that end, and MobileMe should be much more so.

There are plenty of ways to kludge together "near Mac" integration on PC's. Perhaps I am just to lazy to kludge, or just place too much value on elegantly implemented solutions. Nah, pretty sure I am just too lazy and perhaps too price inelastic when it comes to shiny new objects.

 

[Solesk]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

You are overlooking the fact for someone who has a small business or an active social life for that matter the ability to have contacts and appointments push from device to device is easily worth the $100, but you are forgetting that there are plenty of places to get it cheaper than that. Like I said for me and my situation it is worth the $8.33 a month. Just because it is available and free doesn't mean that it is for everybody, just like MobileMe won't be worth it to everyone. $8.33 a month is a small price to pay for my contacts to be synced on my Mac(s) and iPhone without having to think about it.

 

[skwoytek]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

Where did you find that Google has push capability to iPhone?

 

[Niiro13]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

The whole question is: do you want to do it through the webbrowser or do you want to do it through native programs?

Google can do everything MobileMe does...through web based methods. Yes, it can technically "push" calendar, contacts, and photos...but you need to go to Mobile Safari to do that.

Isn't it better to pay $8.25 a month to be able to add a contact through the address book or add a calendar event through Calendar.app and have it synced rather than adding it to both Google AND Calendar (or Google then syncing)?

So the $99 is simply: web-based method vs native applications.

 

[Mikey B]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

Working through Google's UI is so frustrating that I probably would pay $200 to have an Apple-made interface.

I've been dying to find a way to sync my mac, iphone, and work PC. And for a small fee, it might actually be here!

 

[firewood]

I guess I just don't get why there is a cost for this. Google and others offer full cloud computing for free. All your mail, contacts, and calendars live online, and while you can download them to a local computer, you also have access to them from anywhere. Is push really worth the cost?

You don't understand push. Stuff that has been pushed to your phone is there even when you're out in the field without any connection. It's also there on time, not when you happen to poll 5, 10, 20 minutes later. That email blast about a deal on those expensive concert tickets you really want going to the first person who replies, the server crash costing your company over $1000/min is sales, or you BFF replying after completely misunderstanding your last email, etc. could costs you a lot more than $99 if you poll for it many minutes later. Stuff you enter in your calendar goes directly back to your secretaries desktop calendar as soon as you drive back into cell phone range (without you taking your hands off the wheel) so she doesn't double book your meetings. etc. etc.

If you can't afford it, or your time isn't that valuable to you, then ignore it and use google or yahoo.

 

[DeuceDeuce]

Where did you find that Google has push capability to iPhone?

He didn't, he is uninformed and doesn't even understand what he is trying to say.

 

[memesmith]

ok i'm sorry. forget i asked the question. reading your responses is giving me a headache. google does what 90% of the people in this thread want. FOR FREE. yes. i get it, apple advertised a cool feature. but since when do people fork over $100 without researching the competators, who just happen to cost nothing?

i'm really not a mac hater. i own a touch, i have a macbook, i plan on getting a 3g. but that doesnt mean we have to blindly throw money at apple. so pay your $100 and forget i asked the question.

I've watched this debate for a few days, smiling but not being bothered to post. But this last post of yours has made me so cross I just have to wade in. Your false "apology" reads as though you are actually quite upset that the entire macrumors community didn't slap their collective forehead and say "my god! You are right! There we were about to fork out $100 for mobileme, but you, oh great and wise one, have show us the one true way, free cloud computing via google! Oh what fools we were."

But we didn't. Some of us pointed out why .mac works for them, others agreed that google met their needs. The first reply, IIRC said "if its not for you, don't buy it". No-one said "You MUST buy it". So I find myself really offended by your technologically-more-sensible-than-thou attitude. You asked the question, you should more properly appreciate the answers.

BTW I just had a call from a friend whom I helped set up with google apps for his small business. He is interested in mobileme because "sometimes I'm offline and haven't synced and well googles a bit clunky". I'm not sure mobile me will meet his needs, but I'v told him we'll work it out when my (little used but still worth it) .mac account is upgraded.

 

[kdog1176]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Try arguing google web based apps are the "same" as push email on a blackberry forum and see how far it gets ya. LOL.

 

[wildmilne]

Anyone know if this will be available acrossed all countries, whether your phone is on a network or unlocked? ..for those of us that sometimes travel to unpopular locations.

 

[basbr]

iDisk on iPhone

Does anyone know if iDisk will be accessible from iPhone?

 

[richard4339]

I guess I just don't get why there is a cost for this. Google and others offer full cloud computing for free. All your mail, contacts, and calendars live online, and while you can download them to a local computer, you also have access to them from anywhere. Is push really worth the cost?

I keep coming back to me.com checking to see if it's live yet, and I don't even have an iPhone (yet). Google's solution isn't a complete one, which is why this appeals to me. I have a PC and a Mac. Short of the GoogleSync apps out there that you really have to tinker with to get to sync, there isn't a good way, short of Exchange, to sync contacts/email/calendars between Outlook, Apple's built in apps, and have a live web-based interface as well. Even without the calendars, to me, this is easily worth it. Google took a step forward with the ability to sync calendar's with Outlook, but that still doesn't help with contacts or multiple calendars (they only let you sync one).

Google has the best solution now. In a few weeks though, MobileMe will put it to shame... I'd subscribe to this even if I weren't getting an iPhone.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

Does anyone know if iDisk will be accessible from iPhone?

I don't know and to be honest I didn't even think about that until you posted it, that would be pretty great, store documents you don't use regularly but need access to on iDisk...wow!

 

[Niiro13]

Does anyone know if iDisk will be accessible from iPhone?

Based on what was demonstrated, no.

Then again, I don't see how they could do that. Integrating iDisk from the iPhone would mean a huge update to the firmware. I don't think that they would risk beta 8 and integrate iDisk. Because if anything's wrong (which is more likely with a large update), then the 3G iPhone gets delayed and so does firmware 2.0.

 

[Solesk]

He didn't, he is uninformed and doesn't even understand what he is trying to say.

or maybe your too ignorant to read my posts. according to the keynote any app will be able to push notifications to your iphone 3g. meaning you will instantly know when you recieve a google email.

You don't understand push. Stuff that has been pushed to your phone is there even when you're out in the field without any connection. It's also there on time, not when you happen to poll 5, 10, 20 minutes later. That email blast about a deal on those expensive concert tickets you really want going to the first person who replies, the server crash costing your company over $1000/min is sales, or you BFF replying after completely misunderstanding your last email, etc. could costs you a lot more than $99 if you poll for it many minutes later. Stuff you enter in your calendar goes directly back to your secretaries desktop calendar as soon as you drive back into cell phone range (without you taking your hands off the wheel) so she doesn't double book your meetings. etc. etc.

any app can send push notifications to your phone. .me is not required. you can be nearly guaranteed that gmail, salesforce, and other sites will take advantage of this when it's available. you will know instantly when your company server is down. when those concert tickets are available.

i do understand the argument of there even when you dont have a signal. but how many does that really apply to? for the people it applies to, i'm sure .me is well worth the money. but i can count the times i've had zero signal in the past 5 years on one finger.

and i never said google was the perfect solution for everybody. but alot of people, in this thread, just want to see the same emails from anywhere. or the same calender events. and be instantly notified when email arrives. or even upload pictures just taken to a remote server their friends can see. these people seem to love .me but don't realize they can do it all for free. i'm just trying to save them money.

 

[basbr]

iDisk on iPhone over Web 2.0?

Based on what was demonstrated, no.

Then again, I don't see how they could do that. Integrating iDisk from the iPhone would mean a huge update to the firmware. I don't think that they would risk beta 8 and integrate iDisk. Because if anything's wrong (which is more likely with a large update), then the 3G iPhone gets delayed and so does firmware 2.0.

Then do you think it's likely that iPhone's Safari can log in on MobileMe and access iDisk from there?

 

[Ori]

OK forgive me if this question has been asked.

I have exchange in the office. If I am allowed to have access to it then I will get my MobileMe to connect to it.
My problem is this. I use btconnect accounts for my private emails (3 accounts) and they are not push. Will Mobileme auto collect my emails from those accounts and then push them to my iphone like my old Blackberry did?
If not do I have to forward all my mail to my new .me account? The problem with that is that when you reply it will be from the .me account and not from the account that I received the email on. Not great.

Any ideas?

The over the air sync is great though and I will find that very useful as I won't need to connect to itunes everytime I add a contact on my iphone. I even connect after 1 contact is added as something may happen (lost/stolen/damage) to my iphone and I wouldn't want to lose that contact!

 

[JonboyDC]

Anyone know if this will be available acrossed all countries, whether your phone is on a network or unlocked? ..for those of us that sometimes travel to unpopular locations.

I can't see why it shouldn't be, but I would be seriously worried about international roaming data charges. We all heard the horror stories about people getting multi-thousand dollar phone bills when traveling outside the U.S. because their phones kept pulling e-mails and because they kept checking the web, weather, maps, etc.

 

[GuillaumeB]

Me.com is live! right now!!!!
































...j/k

 

[question fear]

Just to wade into this for a second, here's my experience with google calendar. Granted, it was about a year and a half ago, but still.

I had a Treo 650, and I used goosync to keep my gcal and treo in sync. I also had a gcal that sent events to my iCal, so in a very kludgy way it did what mobileme does.

The problem was that it was like banging my head against a wall sometimes. Recurring appointments would sometimes work, sometimes not, sometimes they'd just refuse to delete themselves. The google calendar interface, FOR ME, is worse than even iCal, and I hate iCal. I use it because it's great for integration, but sweet jesus is it a sucky program sometimes. Anyway, for me gcal was even worse. And google notifier drove me nuts, as it never seemed to update properly, and would drop offline regularly.

So, FOR ME, I will continue with .Mac for now. It costs money, yes, but it also saves me the time and headache that the gcal option offered. If google drastically improves over the next year, I'll transition back. No one's holding a gun to my head and forcing me to stay with .mac/mobileme beyond my subscription year if there's something better. But right now I don't think google and .mac are even close to similar...and until they are I won't regret my decision.

 

[Niiro13]

Then do you think it's likely that iPhone's Safari can log in on MobileMe and access iDisk from there?

Currently it cannot through .mac.

As for MobileMe, I dunno. Then again, what use is it? Safari would have to have a dedicated downloads folder, but then they'd have to update the iTunes with an iPhone/iPod Touch driver so that the iPhone/iPod Touch would mount onto the desktop.

If that's the case, then I'd imagine that you wouldn't be able to execute any of the files in the downloads folder because then people would make viruses.

 

[Kupe]

Then do you think it's likely that iPhone's Safari can log in on MobileMe and access iDisk from there?

It seems to me, according to this MobileMe page, you will be able to do that.

Then again, what use is it? Safari would have to have a dedicated downloads folder, but then they'd have to update the iTunes with an iPhone/iPod Touch driver so that the iPhone/iPod Touch would mount onto the desktop.

C'mon, Think Different. I find myself in a lot of locations wishing I could get a particular file from my desktop. Desktop synced to MobileMe --> access to MobileMe --> file available on any computer with a web browser. You really see no use in this?

 

[GuillaumeB]

It seems to me, according to this MobileMe page, you will be able to do that.

At least, from the video demo, it shows iDisk syncing to the iPhone..; crossing fingers

 

[Niiro13]

It seems to me, according to this MobileMe page, you will be able to do that.
C'mon, Think Different. I find myself in a lot of locations wishing I could get a particular file from my desktop. Desktop synced to MobileMe --> access to MobileMe --> file available on any computer with a web browser. You really see no use in this?

There's no mention of the iPhone on the iDisk page.

If I really wanted to see it on my iPhone, I would email it to myself.

I know it's not practical and it'd be nice to access the iDisk instead of emailing, but then again, Apple took out MMS. Would not be surprised if they didn't allow the access of the iDisk on the iPhone.