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Macworld, on 03 December 2010 - 04:31 AM, said:

I guess I still don't see why I would pay for a service like MobileMe when each individual service it offers is bested elsewhere.

Why would I use me.com email or calendar instead of gmail and google calendar? Why would I use iDisk instead of the free dropbox? I'm sorry, apple gets my money on macs, but MobileMe is just a waste of it.

Each year I reluctantly pony up the money so I can synch a few specialized apps that I use. I don't use any of the standard features - as the previous writer points out they are lame compared to popular alternatives. As soon as I figure out how to handle my synching needs I'm gone.

Strange that when you buy a new mac they sell you Mobileme for $69. Third-party vendors do likewise, or even less. Yet when automatically renewed, Apple charges $99 for the same service. When my year runs out, it will be MobileWasMe for me.

I signed up for MobileMe earlier this year for the first time. I decided I wanted the syncing capabilities and find my iPhone. Of course the latter is free, now. I still like the syncing, though. I've thought about going to Google, but I hate their contacts interface and it's harder to sync those with a Mac.

If you're going to use it, definitely look around. You can find it under $70, sometimes under $60. I just picked up an older copy on Amazon for $41. It doesn't matter, the codes still work.

Nice article.

I now have a different take on this than I used to when I had only one device. Apple now convinced me to purchase multiple devices - iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, two laptops, two desktops that I use regularly. The MobileMe convenience of easy syncing all of these for calendar, bookmarks, mail (both client and web) plus enough cloud capability for storage, web capability, personal file transfer, public file transfer, photo sharing, plus some other capabilities easily makes it worthwhile to me for the $5/month. I know that I can do all of this with free third party capabilities, but the extra hassle of keeping up with these, configuring them, etc would take much more of my time and effort than I am willing to put in to save the $5/month. Plus, I do not have to worry if the third parties are looking at and using my information.

I have the Family Plan.
5 emails
5 Galleries
Sync for 3 iPhones, 5 Macs

Less than $16.00 a year per person from Amazon.

(And yes, I have a DropBox account, too.)

dwd3885, on 03 December 2010 - 04:56 AM, said:

You're right on - if you have to search for a reason to buy something don't buy it! I bought into MobileMe last year and it worked maybe 10% of the time. I had to fight with it to sync with calendar. I'm sorry Apple - this is a looser product.

I have been a MobileMe subscriber for years. I'm finally ditching it when it renews next month. For me, the service just doesn't provide enough value to justify the $99 per year.

One caveat to anyone considering purchasing MobileMe - if you use your MobileMe email address as your iTunes account name, you won't be able to change it, even if you decide to discontinue your MobileMe subscription. All of your iTunes purchases will still be tied to that email address.

For some reason, this limitation ONLY applies to MobileMe users, which makes it even more frustrating, since I have been paying Apple for both MobileMe as well as all of my iTunes purchases. I'm currently working with iTunes support to see if there is anything they can do to resolve this, but I haven't made much progress yet.

I am as dismayed by the ineptitude of this useless product as I am enamoured by the brilliance of my MacBook Pro. It is, perhaps, most specifically the idisk component that really disappoints:

1. It is unreliable: on three occasions over the last year it has inexplicably lost folders of critically important work files. It resulted in the matter being escalated to the team in Cupertino to try to recover the lost items - generally taking well over a week to resolve (if at all).

2. It is unstable: I often find that it refuses to share files without any apparent reason - the link simply points to a page saying the file is no longer available.

3. Worst of all given the above frustrations is the fact that it is, fundamentally, incompatible with Time Machine. Try entering time machine to recover something that was last seen on your idisk a week ago... it shows the idisk as it is today. Now try doing the same with DropBox and you can retrieve anything from anytime... oh, and it's free!

It is as if idisk has been planted on Apple as a joke and they still haven't got it! (Could it be that Adobe are sniggering behind their hands about it... try uploading a file to your idisk - is that an Adobe Flash 'uploader.swf' it uses, baked-into Apple's own software... surely not???)

dwd3885, on 03 December 2010 - 04:56 AM, said:

Last I checked, 20GB of storage on Dropbox was not free.

keithlucas, on 03 December 2010 - 06:10 AM, said:

I stopped using iDisk a number of years ago for similar reasons. It was very slow and syncing was unreliable. Sounds like it has not improved much since then.

I'm getting a 404 when trying to submit a review, so here it is:

Advantages:


Complete integration among all my electronic devices (Macs, work PC, iPhone). Incidentally, they did this before Google, which is why I switched from Gmail. I like the use of alias accounts and I get very, VERY little spam.

Back to My Mac is a feature I've just recently started using but absolutely LOVE. I can keep my files on my iMac's HD at home and access them from anywhere on my MacBook Air. On secure networks this works great; on public, it's harder (of course)...so in those latter cases I just copy the file and put it back.

Weaknesses:

Cannot set calendar alarms/reminders on the website and mail rules have to be set up on the website AND email client. (They will only sync among Mail.app.)

iDisk is absolutely dreadful. I only use it for Backup.app now and use Dropbox for regular file storage. I'd buy extra storage space if I weren't beach balled every time I wanted a file. (And don't even think about putting your 1Password files here for syncing.)

Overall Thoughts:

There's a few minor quirks, which I mentioned, but I most of all value the total integration of the service. Support is very good. I do wish iWork Online was integrated into this service, a la Google Docs.

I've yet to pay the heavy $99 pricetag. There are deals out there. It's worth it to me.

TowerTone, on 03 December 2010 - 06:00 AM, said:

I second that. It amazes me that people continue to cite the $99 MSRP for MobileMe as a huge barrier. Like you, I purchased the Family Pack from Amazon for $76.50. $15.30 per user per year. I have seven Macs and Ki haven't experienced any of the problems with MobileMe that are mentioned here. Lucky, I guess.