[Tofino]

i guess it just comes down to what services you need. it seems to me that people's personal opinion on the value of mobileme are based on the devices they use.

i have a friend with a blackberry that bitched about the price of his mobileme subscription (and has been for years), but only uses it for his mail. he tells me he has no use for a calendar that syncs (his is in entourage), and claims he remembers all of his phone numbers, so he doesn't need a synced address book (despite the fact that he has destroyed 2 palms and lost 1 blackberry and had to deal with the loss of his phone numbers each time). on top of that entourage keeps all mail in one (now 7gB) database file, so when that file got corrupted he lost years of email (what's a backup??).

as soon as he got an ipod touch, his opinion changed considerably...

for most device manufacturers the mac is always an afterthought - if any thought is involved at alll. if you're using apple's phone, music player and a mac, the much maligned 'walled garden' is a pretty nice place and mobileme becomes almost essential. as soon as you add a blackberry, palm or a windows mobile device to the mix, its value becomes less obvious. i don't know much about mobileme's integration with non-apple devices on windows through outlook, but on the mac the real fans of mobileme are the ones that use iphones and ipods.

i don't think that says much about mobileme per se, and more about RIM's and Palm's attitude towards non-windows users of their phones, but it does impact mobileme's perceived value for their users.

[Tofino]

i'm curious if you use a mac to sync with your hosting account.

it seems they are offering exchange compatible keriomail accounts, which explains why their calendar syncs to the iphone (it supports activesync). as far as i know, ical on the mac does not (yet), and your calendar would need to be synced through itunes. that's not nearly the same functionality as true calendar syncing through mobileme, and a hassle to say the least. if you run windows, it's a different story, as activesync obviously would be supported.

the reason i ask - it's been my experience that only non mac users would call it a MAC :-P

[JohnnyMac]

We have many clients both Mac and PC that use a hosted Kerio service by InfTek Hosting that is much better than MobileMe. You can bring your own domain name and it supports push to mobile devices flawlessly at only $5.99/mo.
Check it out here: http://www.inftekhos.../groupware.html

[NBIQUITY]

FREE is a big word, not to be thrown around lightly.

Those gmail/google services are free to you because someone is making money off advertising and profiling.
Often people don't feel comfortable with that transaction, but many like yourself do and call it FREE.

[bdennerlein]

Does anyone know what will happen if I let my MobileMe account lapse, or come close to the end date - then try to set up one $30 less expensive through Amazon? I'd like to save $30 - who wouldn't?! However, I don't want to be setting myself up for a mess! Thanks.

[rab777hp]

So you mean to say you're willing to pay 100 dollars a year because gmail has little pieces of text next to a mail message, which you never notice because you're reading your mail?

[hmurchison]

He's got a point. How secure is your email if every message is being scraped to provide

targetted advertising. I mean that's stretching the definition of "free" a bit much.

[rab777hp]

Are you seriously complaining that Gmail isn't safe?
MobileMe isn't safe.
Nothing is safe.

[dbcraig]

Thanks for the tip on Amazon! I sometimes forget to check with them. I tried MobileMe when I bought my iMac, liked it fine, but didn't want to pay the extra for the service. However, I'm finding out that I sorta missed the convenience, and want to do more with my iWeb and iPhotos. I ordered it today from Amazon!

[maflynn]

For my needs, I find MobileMe to a good use of my money. Are there alternatives out there, sure, as this long running hread shows. Can I find cheaper products? Absolutely. Will they be as integrated into OSX, or have the ease of use associated with Apple products? Probably not.

While iDisk can be pitifully slow, I use Panic's Transmit to move files to my iDisk. Even before I got an iPhone, I found that the mobileme product was well worth my money. I used to have a webhost to handle my email needs and online storage. I was paying in excess of what apple charged and while I got more flexbility I also got more setup work. mobileme just works at syncing the items I need sync'd across my devices which now include the iPhone which means that its even more useful

[maflynn]

rab777hp said:

So you mean to say you're willing to pay 100 dollars a year because gmail has little pieces of text next to a mail message, which you never notice because you're reading your mail?

Yes, I don't want a company reading my emails and then providing "directed marketing" based on that. I don't want google reading my emails, and I don't want them watching my whereabouts (google latitude). There's no such thing as a free lunch and while google doesn't charge you anything, the cost of losing my privacy is too great.

[hmurchison]

[quote name='maflynn']
>

rab777hp said:

> So you mean to say you're willing to pay 100 dollars a year because gmail has little pieces of text next to a mail message, which you never notice because you're reading your mail?Yes, I don't want a company reading my emails and then providing "directed marketing" based on that. I don't want google reading my emails, and I don't want them watching my whereabouts (google latitude). There's no such thing as a free lunch and while google doesn't charge you anything, the cost of losing my privacy is too great.

+1

And MobileMe is only going to cost me $69 through Amazon. Hell I can get a Family Pack for less than $100.

[rab777hp]

Do you seriously think your email is private or something? It goes through many many servers, from your ISP to your email provider, at each of these places, your email is there for reading, people have a common misconception that email is private, that's not true, it is quite public.

[Headrush69]

The MobileMe services most appealing feature for me is push service. Emails, contacts, calender changes are practically instantly pushed to my other machines and to my iphone and vice versa

The issue I have is the hosting features. The space and monthly bandwidth is incredibly small compared to what I get from my current domain hoster at a cheaper price.

20GB vs 750GB of space
200GB vs 7500GB of bandwidth
(not to mention access to an assortment of things like subdomains, databases, etc - the standard stuff)

Many people with personal web sites might not need this, but even a moderately advanced web site would.
(For example, a family tree with many photos, some personal video tutorials, etc)
You can always use more 3rd party software like youtube.com but if you like and want to maintain your own complete site, mobileme.com doesn't cut it.