As many of you know I'm an unabashed fan of what we know about the iPad. I also have some pretty grand predictions about where it all goes. As I've refined my thinking on the what, I've more recently begun to wonder about the how. So I wonder: is mobileme going to get a serious revamp/update alongside the next OS release and shipments of the iPad, and become the tool that makes the iPad insanely great?
Here's what I'd like to see:
Email: I dont use the mobileme email address because I already have my primary business email, and both a gmail and yahoo account. The last thing I need is another one. What Id like however is the ability to use mobilemes push email in seamless conjunction with another email account (which otherwise lacks push). The hitch is that you cannot spoof the from address. Mobilemes servers wont let you.
So yes, you can forward an email address to your mobileme address whichd then get pushed to your device. But when you respond, people will see the mobileme address rather than your preferred address (even if only buried in the header). It feels unprofessional to me and so I dont do this. This doesnt relate specifically to the iPad but I want it anyway!
Photos: To be honest I dont use the gallery app, or mobileme galleries in general. Its something I probably should do as itd probably be a neat way to quickly push pix of the kids off to grandma and grandpa (on their iPhones ) so maybe Ill have to figure that out. However, what Id *really* love to see is for the Gallery portion of mobileme to become cloud storage for iPhoto (or Photos on our devices). So there would be no distinction b/c the two, and youd not be limited by your local storage size.
Music/Video: as with photos, I dream of the cloud storage/sync scenario, with streaming as a bandwidth-dependent option. There has been a steadily increasing amount of buzz that Apple is pushing for exactly this, however both music labels and movie studios are apparently pushing back for the moment. I don't think they can hold out forever. As soon as there's at least one viable alternative, they'll offer this capability up to Apple as well.
iDisk: weve all speculated about a file system of sorts on the iPad, and we know that on some level the iPad drive will be mountable when attached to a mac. But what else will we be able to do? How much finder-like control will we have to sort data (as opposed to simply storing it)? How robust will our ability to access and share the data be? A more robust version of iDisk could essentially become the file system on the iPad, while also providing essentially unlimited cloud back ups of any/all docs.
As I mentioned on my blog, much of what I outline above could be handled on an app by app basis, and not necessarily rolled into mobileme. But as I ponder, I kind of like the integrated approach, especially since Im already a mobileme user. It'd also make mobileme more of a 'must have' for iPad users - especially those like me who want to use it as their primary computer. And obviously it ups the avg revenue per iPad customer which, given the relatively low pricing on the iPad is something that would obviously make Apple happy.
What do you guys think?
Here's what I'd like to see:
Email: I dont use the mobileme email address because I already have my primary business email, and both a gmail and yahoo account. The last thing I need is another one. What Id like however is the ability to use mobilemes push email in seamless conjunction with another email account (which otherwise lacks push). The hitch is that you cannot spoof the from address. Mobilemes servers wont let you.
So yes, you can forward an email address to your mobileme address whichd then get pushed to your device. But when you respond, people will see the mobileme address rather than your preferred address (even if only buried in the header). It feels unprofessional to me and so I dont do this. This doesnt relate specifically to the iPad but I want it anyway!
Photos: To be honest I dont use the gallery app, or mobileme galleries in general. Its something I probably should do as itd probably be a neat way to quickly push pix of the kids off to grandma and grandpa (on their iPhones ) so maybe Ill have to figure that out. However, what Id *really* love to see is for the Gallery portion of mobileme to become cloud storage for iPhoto (or Photos on our devices). So there would be no distinction b/c the two, and youd not be limited by your local storage size.
Music/Video: as with photos, I dream of the cloud storage/sync scenario, with streaming as a bandwidth-dependent option. There has been a steadily increasing amount of buzz that Apple is pushing for exactly this, however both music labels and movie studios are apparently pushing back for the moment. I don't think they can hold out forever. As soon as there's at least one viable alternative, they'll offer this capability up to Apple as well.
iDisk: weve all speculated about a file system of sorts on the iPad, and we know that on some level the iPad drive will be mountable when attached to a mac. But what else will we be able to do? How much finder-like control will we have to sort data (as opposed to simply storing it)? How robust will our ability to access and share the data be? A more robust version of iDisk could essentially become the file system on the iPad, while also providing essentially unlimited cloud back ups of any/all docs.
As I mentioned on my blog, much of what I outline above could be handled on an app by app basis, and not necessarily rolled into mobileme. But as I ponder, I kind of like the integrated approach, especially since Im already a mobileme user. It'd also make mobileme more of a 'must have' for iPad users - especially those like me who want to use it as their primary computer. And obviously it ups the avg revenue per iPad customer which, given the relatively low pricing on the iPad is something that would obviously make Apple happy.
What do you guys think?
