Is Apple's MobileMe worth the money?

[jav6454]

It worth it for me. I now easily manage all my contacts at the same time instead of having multiple copies (iPhone, Mac, cloud, back home). Sure, it's not 100% great, but it provides what I need, ad I have grown dependent on it now.

As for sharing, it's a great and secure platform. Only those you know have access to it (unless you make it public).

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

That must be some Mac-only feature. It doesn't exist on the MobileMe website, and it certainly doesn't exist on accursed windows boxes.

Apple Mail has a To Do feature. That window I posted is the prefs pane for it.

 

[MacVixen]

I am in the trial period still and I guess it's ok so far. The only reason I really use it though is for push.... but from reading these responses it seems like there are other free services out there that will do that? Guess I better look into that before my trial period expires

 

[xilni]

I have some grievances with the Gallery (I can't use it as true image hosting seeing as how it doesn't preserve high resolution images) but otherwise the contact syncing and push email is great. Worth it for me.

 

[AHDuke99]

I only use it for the PUSH capabilities to my iPhone and the fact that I can reply using my Gmail account. All my mail is forwarded to the MobileMe thing.

And I agree that me.com is a stupid address. I wish it was mac.com again.

 

[TLewis]

I only use it for the PUSH capabilities to my iPhone and the fact that I can reply using my Gmail account. All my mail is forwarded to the MobileMe thing.

And I agree that me.com is a stupid address. I wish it was mac.com again.

If that's all you're using, you're wasting $99/year (or whatever you paid). You can get free push email accounts at Yahoo and mail2web.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I only use it for the PUSH capabilities to my iPhone and the fact that I can reply using my Gmail account. All my mail is forwarded to the MobileMe thing.

And I agree that me.com is a stupid address. I wish it was mac.com again.

you can still use your .Mac address...

 

[DiamondMac]

I said somewhat

For me personally, it is very much worth it because I use iDisk all the time and other features

For most of my friends though, it really isn't as they would be better off just using GMail for free

 

[Daveoc64]

I said "somewhat".

In typical Apple fashion, the service lacks a few things that would take about 10 minutes to implement and would add a whole load of functionality.

 

[Trajectory]

I mostly use the synching service for my laptop and iPhone, and use the Web Gallery feature (now called MobileMe Galleries) for all of my digital photos. I don't really use any of the other features, as I have an iPhone and rarely need to access my address book or bookmarks online.

 

[Diaresi]

If that's all you're using, you're wasting $99/year (or whatever you paid). You can get free push email accounts at Yahoo and mail2web.

I don't know what you count as push, but using Gmail (IMAP) with my N95 is push (using the IMAP idle command as far as I can tell) Not sure if an iPhone handles things the same way but it's worth a try.

I voted no, but as has been stated it depends on your needs. I want my bookmarks synced (Foxmarks), email (Gmail), some online storage (Dropbox, which IMO is far and away better than an iDisk), my contacts and calendars synced to my phone but it doesn't need to be instant (iSync using Bluetooth).

For the most part you can get individual services that are better than MobileMe's for free (Galleries > Picasa Web Albums for example). If you use everything MobileMe has to offer, have multiple Macs and an iPhone and enjoy having everything live in one place/be integrated into the OS/iLife then MobileMe would probably be worth it.

 

[TLewis]

I don't know what you count as push, but using Gmail (IMAP) with my N95 is push (using the IMAP idle command as far as I can tell) Not sure if an iPhone handles things the same way but it's worth a try.

Uh, this being an Apple forum, we're talking about the iPhone, not Nokia's N95, and gmail doesn't support push with the iPhone.

Besides, I don't want all of my mail messages pushed. I want selective push, and I can get that with the iPhone (although the same technique should also work with the N95).

I'm not familiar with galleries. Do you mean, "gallery", the open source album organizer? If so, I don't think it provides photo hosting; you have to set that up yourself, and the majority of users don't want to do that.

 

[jc1350]

Gallery = MobileMe's dedicated photo web site. http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/gallery.html.


I think it's much better than Google's Picasa Web Albums, but that's simply my opinion.

You can view a sample I put up (http://gallery.me.com/j_m_clark) to see the public interface (the account owner interface is different and more like the rest of MM we apps).

 

[TLewis]

Gallery = MobileMe's dedicated photo web site. http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/gallery.html.

I think it's much better than Google's Picasa Web Albums, but that's simply my opinion.

Ah, OK. That makes more sense.

It probably is better, for Mac users. However, for those of us without Macs, Picasa is probably it.

 

[DiamondMac]

I am hoping MobileMe continues improving and tweeking because when Google introduces GDrive, I will contemplate whether to fully switch to free GMail.

 

[TLewis]

I am hoping MobileMe continues improving and tweeking because when Google introduces GDrive, I will contemplate whether to fully switch to free GMail.

Google will, in all probability, either impose restrictions/limits on gdrive files, or charge for usage. Otherwise, it's just too easy for people to suck up space with movies, pictures, and backups. On the plus side, Google's pricing for additional storage is a bit better than either dropbox or jungledisk. On the minus side, dropbox has set a pretty high bar for Google to meet, even if you ignore the fact that dropbox already runs on Macs, PCs, and linux boxes.

 

[vandlism]

I was staying at a friend's house for a few days, but didn't bring my laptop with me. I ended up staying away for a few extra days. I used their MacBook most of the time I was there, but was missing my bookmarks, iChat buddy list, etc. I created a new user account, turned on fast user switching, and set up my new user account with my MobileMe account. It downloaded all of my calendars, contacts, bookmarks, and system settings. It was pretty much like having my laptop with me on this trip. I created a few Pixelmator files, and threw them onto my iDisk. It was an unanticipated use of MobileMe, but it was a great service to have.

 

[DiamondMac]

Google will, in all probability, either impose restrictions/limits on gdrive files, or charge for usage. Otherwise, it's just too easy for people to suck up space with movies, pictures, and backups. On the plus side, Google's pricing for additional storage is a bit better than either dropbox or jungledisk. On the minus side, dropbox has set a pretty high bar for Google to meet, even if you ignore the fact that dropbox already runs on Macs, PCs, and linux boxes.

Right. I am curious myself how much space we will get, etc...

On one side, I think Google will give us a good bit of space that may shock everyone

On the other, they can't just give people gigs and gigs for free (well, maybe they can but it would shock me)

 

[TLewis]

Right. I am curious myself how much space we will get, etc...

Yeah, I'm currently trying to decide if I want to wait for it, or subscribe to dropbox. On the one hand, a gdrive will probably be cheaper, but I don't see google matching the features of dropbox.

I'm probably going with dropbox, though.

 

[Mikey B]

I think it's been totally worth the $99 fee for me. I haven't had a problem with syncing at all since day one, and it integrates my 2 mac and iphone seamlessly. I think the iDisk is a great service, it could be better but I think the value is high. 20GB for 99 a year is a fair rate.

And like posted above, you can interchange .me and .mac if you had a previous .mac account.