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macmanchgo, on 03 December 2010 - 08:12 AM, said:
The interface is MUCH MUCH nicer than Google's plain blue and white interface. It makes using MobileMe more enjoyable and it works better too. So I recommend taking a subscription to MobileMe now, you won't regret it.
pagodroma, on 03 December 2010 - 10:36 AM, said:
I'm a hold-out from the days of iTools, then .Mac, and now MobileMe. I still use the service but with some trepidation. Many of the frustrations I experience are shared among the other commenters. The fact that there is NO advertising is my number one reason I still use it. The day they bring in iAd is the day I jump ship.
tony_d, on 03 December 2010 - 11:13 AM, said:
Been using this service since the iTools days. I like that I get email aliases.
Gmail's interface is completely customizable, and if you are a Google Apps Premium subscriber, you can turn off ads completely and include your own branding in the UI. This is a nice touch. You can also create aliases for your custom domain.
MobileMe is trying to imitate a desktop app using a lot of heavy AJAX code and image files, and this makes the web interface terribly slow. Gmail is optimized for speed. The keyboard shortcuts for the webapp are much more robust than MobileMe's. I'll grant you, it may not be as pretty, but it sure is a lot more functional than MobileMe. Pretty is not necessarily the best thing for a webapp if it comes at the expense of performance. And there are gorgeous desktop apps like Sparrow, that support custom Gmail functionality.
bradhurley, on 03 December 2010 - 08:53 AM, said:
I synchronize using Transmit and that works quickly and efficiently, but I view my iDisk as an online backup not as a file server. While it's true that separate services offer similar features for free or little money, it's the integration in one tool that I find valuable. Plus it helps that some software has built-in backup to your iDisk (Quicken for example).
Transmit is definitely the best way I've found to move files onto iDisk. But if iDisk is just to be treated like another cloud backup folder, then the price is ridiculous for that little storage. You might as well buy Amazon S3 (which Transmit also supports) and pay for only what you need.
While some software does integrate with iDisk, there is a rising tide of software integrated with Dropbox, due to their robust APIs they offer developers and the growing (multi-platform) user base. I think you'll find that of iOS apps that work with cloud services, only a small percentage work with iDisk. And most of those will work with Dropbox too. Apple's iWork is the notable exception.
KennethBerger, on 05 December 2010 - 09:47 AM, said:
I have used iTools/.Mac and Mobleme since it came out and also use Google Mail/Contacts/docs since it came out.
Mobile me despite it's short comings is so much better than the Google offerings that I continue to use it as my primary email, calendar and contacts.
Google needs to learn about interfaces and they need to provide real mail folders.
Google is less reliable than MobileMe mail, but both have regular problems.
If you have more than one mac and lots of idevices then it make total sense.
Mobile me despite it's short comings is so much better than the Google offerings that I continue to use it as my primary email, calendar and contacts.
Google needs to learn about interfaces and they need to provide real mail folders.
Google is less reliable than MobileMe mail, but both have regular problems.
If you have more than one mac and lots of idevices then it make total sense.
I have to differ with you - Gmail has been at least as reliable as MobileMe, probably more so. MobileMe has definitely had its share of downtime for various services. It would be interesting to compare outage statistics from the two companies for a truly accurate assessment.
I think Google does know about interfaces - they know how to make them extremely fast. This really matters. Time is money, and MobileMe's web interfaces are practically unusable for anyone that needs to get things done quickly. The depth of Gmail keyboard shortcuts should not be underestimated.
Regarding labels, Gmail has a very different philosophy to mail overall, and it took me awhile to get my head around it. I've had a Gmail account since 2005, but rarely used it until this year. The concepts were foreign to me. But after reading posts by Merlin Mann about Inbox Zero, the ideas behind Gmail started to make a lot more sense. I used to have enormous hierarchies of folders that I would laboriously catalog messages into. Then it started to dawn on me - how do I usually find messages? Search. Gmail's starring and label systems are generally enough for me to organize mail in a basic framework, and then search can take it from there.
Now it is definitely the case that Apple Mail and Gmail do not work well together - messages that have multiple labels will show up in multiple folders. It's not great to have all that duplication. But I'm really hopefully about Sparrow, and they've already come a long way during their beta cycle. I'm looking forward to their debut on the Mac App store.
This post has been edited by sterlingz: 23 December 2010 - 09:02 AM
Posted 26 April 2011 - 07:50 PM
