[JohnDonahue]

It is far more than a name change. It is a complete revamping of the service to cater to their consumer electronics customers. I don't know why anyone would even have cared about the change of names from Rendezvous to Bonjour, except that they changed it to conform to the name of the networking standard they had proliferated throughout the Windows world. That may have made people a little mad, but in reality, who should have cared. It helped "Switchers" transition easier, all that much the better for the platform. And the name change was meaningless. The functionality and interface of Rendezvous/Bonjour did not change to conform to Windows standards. It remained an OS X component in all respects. The same cannot be said for MobileMe. It is an iPhone product that is replacing a Mac user product. You really cannot deny that. Yes most, definitely not all, of the features are the same and yes they are giving more storage capacity. The question that should be asked is, "Why are they giving more storage space?" The answer is not because they are feeling magnanimous and generous due to their recent successes and market place dominance in the consumer electronics arena, no it is because iPhone users will need it or they will find the service non-functional. iPhones are great little devices, but they are a tad shy when it comes to storage capacity. And, since Apple wants to win over even the non or novice computer user they need to offer a service that gives them just exactly what they are missing from their iPhones, storage space they can access anytime, anywhere.

Get used to this trend. Apple, while I love the company and have bought into all of the consumer electronics gear that I am allowed to access in my geographic location (just added an Apple TV to my new HDTV, but due to no AT&T service can't have an iPhone) I know that my beloved computing platform is slowly, but surely, slipping by the wayside in terms of company importance.

[MacGod]

JohnDonahue said:

As someone who is locked out of the iPhone game, due to the fact that AT&T deems my locality insignificant to their business plan, it appears that MobileMe as a .Mac replacement is merely a thumb in my eye as a loyal Apple customer.

It looks like my .Mac subscription is now pointless, since I cannot have an iPhone. What about the rest of us who loved .Mac for what it had to offer us Macintosh users? Is Apple forgetting how they got to where they are today?

How is this a tumb in the eye or Apple forgetting about Mac users? If you are a .Mac subscriber, as of MobileMe's unveiling in July, you will have twice the webspace and access to all the sames features (minus a few like iCards and Panther syncing). For the same price as .Mac, MobileMe offers you the same things plus more storage. How do you lose?

[SandroM3949]

I don't get how MobileMe will be useless to you if you currently have .mac. MobileMe does not require that you have an iPhone. If you can use one with the service then you get more value for your money, otherwise it works just the way it does now, with more storage and with better background synching and better support for PCs if you have to use them.

I could see this being an issue if the service requires an iPhone but it doesn't. Hell, I'm not even sure I'm going to upgrade to a new iPhone. Honestly, the things that I'm most looking forward to, MobileMe and iPhone 2.0 software don't require the purchase of a new iPhone. Personally, I'm not sure of the value of having GPS or 3G on my phone. Sounds like bells and whistles to me, but better software sounds like a good deal to me.

Now, if you're a heavy user of iCards, then yeah, I feel for you. I do like sending those, but I think I may be the only one.

I think you may have inadvertently jabbed your own thumb in your eye.

[hayesk]

Such whiny babies.
People bitched about Rendezvous being changed to Bonjour, and now nobody cares.
In a few months nobody will care about MobileMe either. Besides, having a me.com email is a lot more noteworthy than mac.com. Non-computer geeks don't care if your email ends with mac.com. Me.com has more appeal outside mac geekdom.

[hettingr]

now if it only works. I use two different computers (one of them vintage), iPhone and iDisk, and some of the combinations don't sync.

[JohnDonahue]

It is far more than a name change. It is a complete revamping of the service to cater to their consumer electronics customers. I don't know why anyone would even have cared about the change of names from Rendezvous to Bonjour, except that they changed it to conform to the name of the networking standard they had proliferated throughout the Windows world. That may have made people a little mad, but in reality, who should have cared. It helped "Switchers" transition easier, all that much the better for the platform. And the name change was meaningless. The functionality and interface of Rendezvous/Bonjour did not change to conform to Windows standards. It remained an OS X component in all respects. The same cannot be said for MobileMe. It is an iPhone product that is replacing a Mac user product. You really cannot deny that. Yes most, definitely not all, of the features are the same and yes they are giving more storage capacity. The question that should be asked is, "Why are they giving more storage space?" The answer is not because they are feeling magnanimous and generous due to their recent successes and market place dominance in the consumer electronics arena, no it is because iPhone users will need it or they will find the service non-functional. iPhones are great little devices, but they are a tad shy when it comes to storage capacity. And, since Apple wants to win over even the non or novice computer user they need to offer a service that gives them just exactly what they are missing from their iPhones, storage space they can access anytime, anywhere.

Get used to this trend. Apple, while I love the company and have bought into all of the consumer electronics gear that I am allowed to access in my geographic location (just added an Apple TV to my new HDTV, but due to no AT&T service can't have an iPhone) I know that my beloved computing platform is slowly, but surely, slipping by the wayside in terms of company importance.

[dtarr]

> Get used to this trend. Apple, while I love the company and have bought into all of the consumer electronics gear that I am allowed to access in my geographic location (just added an Apple TV to my new HDTV, but due to no AT&T service can't have an iPhone) I know that my beloved computing platform is slowly, but surely, slipping by the wayside in terms of company importance.
[/quote]
I hope you're wrong, but I'm afraid you might be right.

[CheeseHead]

{quote}The same cannot be said for MobileMe. It is an iPhone product that is replacing a Mac user product. You really cannot deny that.{quote}

That's the most absurd thing that I've ever heard. .Mac/MobileMe is hardware agnostic. It functions no differently on my mac or my boot camp partition than it does on the iPhone. I'm sure you'll get some people to buy into your conspiracy theory propaganda, but the fact is that there are no features specific to the iPhone. There is much more to .Mac/MobileMe that will benefit from the increased disk space far more than the iPhone will.

{quote}Get used to this trend. Apple, while I love the company and have bought into all of the consumer electronics gear that I am allowed to access in my geographic location (just added an Apple TV to my new HDTV, but due to no AT&T service can't have an iPhone) I know that my beloved computing platform is slowly, but surely, slipping by the wayside in terms of company importance.{quote}

I'm sorry you feel that way, but the mac platform has substantially benefited from Apple's consumer electronics ventures. They also integrate and greatly enhance the mac experience.

[JohnDonahue]

I hope I am wrong too. I love the platform. I have always avoided the Windows platform, at home. I am a IT specialist, so I have no choice but to know the other platform inside and out and when I come home I don't want to spend time fixing computers. So, I hope to high heavens that I am oh so wrong. I don't want to change. I know there are other options to Windows, but where is the commercial software for those platforms? Sure, there are lots of shareware and open source choices for Linux and the others, but what support do you get and how often are they something you would really want to sit down and use.

I hope I am wrong. Please, God, let me be wrong.

[NW_Mike]

You know, John Windows isn't a must. I am the Sys Admin where I work and we transitioned from all Windows & Novell to Mostly Mac and Mac OS X server. We run ERP software on a Win Terminal Server and have 2 Windows pc's for SolidWorks and that's it. Sometimes it takes a little creative thinking, but often you can replace Windows-at least mostly.

[JohnDonahue]

Yeah, and I used to work at a NASA facility where only a few holdouts, AUTOCAD users (at the time AUTODESK was not developing new versions of AUTOCAD) were Windows users. There were several Unix workstations attached to a Supercomputer that was gradually losing its usefulness as everyone was getting G4 desktops to replace their aging 68K Macs.

It is even possible for some of the most sensitive work in the world to be completed in an all Mac environment. I am a firm believer that you can replace any Windows "necessary" environment with an all Mac environment, if you really are motivated. And, if you want to have a system that always works when you want it to, I think that should be enough motivation for any bean counter. Rush Limbaugh forced ABC Radio to let him replace their call screener software (a Windows only application) with one he provided (Mac based) because theirs was always going down and they would have to fallback on caller ID from the phone company for caller identification. Not a very good fallback system for a very widely listened to nationally syndicated radio call-in show. Since they switched to the Mac system of their own design, not a day of down time.

[Link33]

I want to know about this push email feature. I think Yahoo had it when the iPhone came out but I'm a little confused with it. Is it like a miniature sync query to the server? I hear the "push" part but how can mobile me find my device unless my device says first, "Here I am". I have gmail on my iPod Touch. Will it get pushed as well? I have it setup as an IMAP account and it works well as it is. I guess my ultimate question is, how is this push thing any different than "Hey I'm here, got any new mail for me?"
I get that the address book and calendar "push" is new but really is it that different from mail going out and looking for new mail? (I am looking forward to the latter sync features.)
Cheers!
Link33

[ZenJD]

iPhone support may be nice for when I buy my first iPhone in July, but I'd rather stick with .mac considering they are KILLING BOOKMARKS ONLINE. This is going to be a MAJOR factor in deciding if I renew my subscription or not! If they aren't added back by fall, I will most likely dump MobileMe.

[Embries]

I agree, mobile me sucks the sweat of a dead man's backside, Sounds like something a preschooler would think up. I was building Basic programs before Reagan sold weapons to the Taliban. I plan to keep my mac.com address as my little way of sticking it to the man.