I have seen something in Macworld (an all APPLE magazine) about google having a free "MobileMe like" thing that you can send things to and can view over different computers and on the internet. On google, if you want an unrestricted account, it is $55 dollars. I think MobileMe is $99 for a year. I know a few people that have it and like it. I don't know anyone who has had the Google version of it. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would like to know if I will be spending more money on something that I can get for cheaper.
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MobileMe or Google
- Thread starter MACAPALOOZA
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AFAIK, you can't buy MobileMe right now anyways -- you can only sign up for a free 60-day trial. So if you've never used it before, I'd recommend that you try that.
IMO, MobileMe's a combination of different services (email/calendar/address book, web hosting, file hosting, photo hosting, PIM sync, Find my iPhone) that can all be found elsewhere for free, but I've never seen "one" alternative (like Google) that offers all of the MobileMe services together.
i.e. some folks will use Google for email/calendar/address book, GoDaddy for web hosting, DropBox for file hosting, Flickr for photo hosting, etc...
There are a lot of "is MobileMe worth it" threads. GGJStudios should post a link to some good info soon. To me, it seems like the more MobileMe services a person uses, the more they find value in the product. Also, you can usually buy it on Amazon for $79 or so.
IMO, MobileMe's a combination of different services (email/calendar/address book, web hosting, file hosting, photo hosting, PIM sync, Find my iPhone) that can all be found elsewhere for free, but I've never seen "one" alternative (like Google) that offers all of the MobileMe services together.
i.e. some folks will use Google for email/calendar/address book, GoDaddy for web hosting, DropBox for file hosting, Flickr for photo hosting, etc...
There are a lot of "is MobileMe worth it" threads. GGJStudios should post a link to some good info soon. To me, it seems like the more MobileMe services a person uses, the more they find value in the product. Also, you can usually buy it on Amazon for $79 or so.
Personally, it seems to me that MobileMe does what any Exchange server will do (even though it's not really Exchange), and has the added benefit of being able to synchronise perfectly across several different kinds of Apple products.
I have an iMac, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. MobileMe keeps everything perfectly synchronised. Address Book, Bookmarks, Mail, Calendars, it's all there.
The iDisk cloud that comes with it is fast and reliable.
Although Google's Exchange server is very good, if you own a lot of Apple products I think that MobileMe has a clear advantage.
I have an iMac, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. MobileMe keeps everything perfectly synchronised. Address Book, Bookmarks, Mail, Calendars, it's all there.
The iDisk cloud that comes with it is fast and reliable.
Although Google's Exchange server is very good, if you own a lot of Apple products I think that MobileMe has a clear advantage.
In my opinion, the best services for each product are:
Email: Gmail (Google)
Contacts: Mobile Me (Apple)
Calendar: Mobile Me (Apple)
Pictures: Picasa (Google)
File Hosting: Dropbox (Dropbox)
Web Hosting: Google Sites (Google)
Tracking: Find My iPhone (Apple)
I could elaborate on each one, but I don't think anyone wants to read a wall of text. If you want to know why I picked a certain one, let me know. I've used tons of services and I'm very picky about details. I'm very disappointed that there is no one company that has everything. Google and Apple both, in my opinion, have at least one "fatal flaw" that keeps me from using their services exclusively.
Email: Gmail (Google)
Contacts: Mobile Me (Apple)
Calendar: Mobile Me (Apple)
Pictures: Picasa (Google)
File Hosting: Dropbox (Dropbox)
Web Hosting: Google Sites (Google)
Tracking: Find My iPhone (Apple)
I could elaborate on each one, but I don't think anyone wants to read a wall of text. If you want to know why I picked a certain one, let me know. I've used tons of services and I'm very picky about details. I'm very disappointed that there is no one company that has everything. Google and Apple both, in my opinion, have at least one "fatal flaw" that keeps me from using their services exclusively.
For several reasons, I think Windows Live is the best for email. We hate to admit it, but it's true.
I have used both services for a few years each. They both work really well and make life MUCH easier!
Benefits of MobileMe
-Costs money but gives 20 GB of storage through iDisk
-Syncs bookmarks across computers and iOS devices
-Sync'ing of passwords, dock items and all personalized settings of computers
Benefits of Google
-Works better on Windows PC's, can use me.com on Windows machine but not as quick to respond as Google
-Flexibility of platforms (Android and iOS... MobileMe will only work on iOS)
My complaints with Google are that you cannot get access to bookmarks from an iOS device. This makes me sad, I love having my bookmarks everywhere. I use Xmarks to sync bookmarks now and use the Xmarks website to access those bookmarks. The app requires a premium subscription to Xmarks for use.
You can use Dropbox (2 GB free) instead of iDisk (20 GB, part of subscription to MobileMe). It's a fantastic piece of software!
Another thing to note, the Google services for email/calendar/contact sync'ing does not work as well as MobileMe through iOS and Mac dedicated apps (Mail, Contacts, iCal for Mac and the counterparts for iOS). You cannot get all of your google calendars to show up on iOS, contact syncing sometimes has conflicts (I have had 0 trouble with either of these things when using MobileMe). It's kind of a duh! though, MobileMe is made by Apple so it better work flawlessly on their apps.
Now take into account this is just from my experience (4 years now). Others may have negative feelings about one/both of the services.
Benefits of MobileMe
-Costs money but gives 20 GB of storage through iDisk
-Syncs bookmarks across computers and iOS devices
-Sync'ing of passwords, dock items and all personalized settings of computers
Benefits of Google
-Works better on Windows PC's, can use me.com on Windows machine but not as quick to respond as Google
-Flexibility of platforms (Android and iOS... MobileMe will only work on iOS)
My complaints with Google are that you cannot get access to bookmarks from an iOS device. This makes me sad, I love having my bookmarks everywhere. I use Xmarks to sync bookmarks now and use the Xmarks website to access those bookmarks. The app requires a premium subscription to Xmarks for use.
You can use Dropbox (2 GB free) instead of iDisk (20 GB, part of subscription to MobileMe). It's a fantastic piece of software!
Another thing to note, the Google services for email/calendar/contact sync'ing does not work as well as MobileMe through iOS and Mac dedicated apps (Mail, Contacts, iCal for Mac and the counterparts for iOS). You cannot get all of your google calendars to show up on iOS, contact syncing sometimes has conflicts (I have had 0 trouble with either of these things when using MobileMe). It's kind of a duh! though, MobileMe is made by Apple so it better work flawlessly on their apps.
Now take into account this is just from my experience (4 years now). Others may have negative feelings about one/both of the services.
Something that annoys me a little bit is that the capabilities of MobileMe are not duplicated 100% between the OSX and iOS platforms.
For example, on an iOS device, you cannot set your calendar work week to start on a Monday unless you set the location of your iPad and iPhone to something false. (Like set it to UK when you are in the US.) This is annoying, because a work week beginning on Monday has become the standard among many businesses, government and military organisations. It should just be easier to do that, and you should be able to do it even if you are in the US.
Designing a Smart Folder in iMail on an iMac will automatically replicate it to the MobileMe account when you use another iMac or MacBook, but it will not automatically replicate to an iPhone or iPad. This should work easily across the two platforms. I believe that I recall that a Smart Folder is not automatically replicated to the Web interface, either. This should work across platforms.
I have a long, long list of pet peeves, but I would still pick MobileMe as an overall best choice if you are going to use a single service.
For example, on an iOS device, you cannot set your calendar work week to start on a Monday unless you set the location of your iPad and iPhone to something false. (Like set it to UK when you are in the US.) This is annoying, because a work week beginning on Monday has become the standard among many businesses, government and military organisations. It should just be easier to do that, and you should be able to do it even if you are in the US.
Designing a Smart Folder in iMail on an iMac will automatically replicate it to the MobileMe account when you use another iMac or MacBook, but it will not automatically replicate to an iPhone or iPad. This should work easily across the two platforms. I believe that I recall that a Smart Folder is not automatically replicated to the Web interface, either. This should work across platforms.
I have a long, long list of pet peeves, but I would still pick MobileMe as an overall best choice if you are going to use a single service.
I think a lot of us would understand these choices. I doubt you need to explain.
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
tbh i loved having mobile me and my trial expired a few days back -
really miss MM
i find google a pain to sync with ical and my gmail account
really miss MM
i find google a pain to sync with ical and my gmail account
tbh i loved having mobile me and my trial expired a few days back -
really miss MM
i find google a pain to sync with ical and my gmail account
What issues are you having? It's all pretty seamless on my end.
I have both also and my Me account is up for renewal in July. However, i see absolutely no reason to renew it. I dont use the iDisk. I have drop box for when i rarely rarely need it. Bookmarks either i don't care.
So for me its syncing calendars, email, and contacts. Google does that perfectly. When i got my 2011 mbp i was surprised that apple had added in google syncing built into ical, address book, and mail. It works amazingly well for me. I havn't had any problems with it and i have 3 calendars and 1 calendar with 10 employees with their work shifts all synced up.
Google has pretty much taken away my needs for enterprise services.
Mobile me defiantly, I was on google for ages, but when I signed up for the 60 day free trial about a week ago, I found it so much better!, you can sync everything, not just mail contacts and calendars
Sign up for the trial, and see if you like it, google is always free anyway, but give the mobile me service a try
Sign up for the trial, and see if you like it, google is always free anyway, but give the mobile me service a try
Same here. Between Google and Dropbox, I absolutely have no need for MobileMe. Also, I use an Android phone, so MobileMe is out.
Google is not free, they have bots that scour though your data so you can be sent appropriate ads... Sorry, I just can't trust a company that makes it's money through ads. Pay the $99, it worth it.
Im working on this too.
I've been with Google for a while, and it's all been fine.
Dropbox too for the files, Xmarks for the Bookmarks, Simplenote for Notes.
I signed up to Mobile Me only two days ago, so these are my initial thoughts.
I am syncing with 3 machines, all Mac, and an iphone.
I find the synchronisation on Address and Calendar quite slow compared with Google.
Email, well thats exactly the same.
Bookmarks I'm not bothered about, xmarks does the trick, and local synching once a day to the phone is fine.
iDisk was the greatest issue here so far. I know it's 20gb vs. 2gb, but I cannot update from the iphone only view, synching up to iDisk is very slow compared to dropbox.
The web interface is of course fantastic for Mobile Me.
Initial conclusions are that google has the upperhand on this. It's not about the money £5/month is not huge. Once you've got everything in place with google/dropbox/simplenote/xmarks, then it's easily duplicatable.
I'll play some more.
I've been with Google for a while, and it's all been fine.
Dropbox too for the files, Xmarks for the Bookmarks, Simplenote for Notes.
I signed up to Mobile Me only two days ago, so these are my initial thoughts.
I am syncing with 3 machines, all Mac, and an iphone.
I find the synchronisation on Address and Calendar quite slow compared with Google.
Email, well thats exactly the same.
Bookmarks I'm not bothered about, xmarks does the trick, and local synching once a day to the phone is fine.
iDisk was the greatest issue here so far. I know it's 20gb vs. 2gb, but I cannot update from the iphone only view, synching up to iDisk is very slow compared to dropbox.
The web interface is of course fantastic for Mobile Me.
Initial conclusions are that google has the upperhand on this. It's not about the money £5/month is not huge. Once you've got everything in place with google/dropbox/simplenote/xmarks, then it's easily duplicatable.
I'll play some more.
I've used MobileMe for a few years now. I allowed iPhoto and iWeb to publish a bunch of my photos to MobileMe. I like the way they scan as you mouse over them. I also like Picasa and Flickr. I'm working to replace all the MobileMe stuff I have but I've been too busy to pull it all together.
Then there's push email. MobileMe push email works flawlessly on my iPhone and iPad. MobileMe sync works flawlessly on all my iDevices. So if Apple offers a sync version of MobileMe for free, I might opt to let my paid subscription go and use the free version. But if the only way I get to keep my push email across my iOS and OS X devices, then I'll cough up for another year. It's worth it to me as it integrates so well with my Apple gear.
There are some minor niggles...
I'm sure there are some users for whom some of these niggles would be a huge deal. Not for me. I like MoMe and will continue using it as long as Apple sells/provides it for free/discontinues it as long as they grandfather me in.
Then there's push email. MobileMe push email works flawlessly on my iPhone and iPad. MobileMe sync works flawlessly on all my iDevices. So if Apple offers a sync version of MobileMe for free, I might opt to let my paid subscription go and use the free version. But if the only way I get to keep my push email across my iOS and OS X devices, then I'll cough up for another year. It's worth it to me as it integrates so well with my Apple gear.
There are some minor niggles...
- Mobile Me email will not allow you to switch off its spam filter and it does make mistakes from time to time.
- Every now and then iSync complains that I need to "reset sync" and I know I haven't done anything to bring this on myself. It's not as robust as Palm hotsync used to be but it's worlds better than Mark/Space Missing Sync or BB Desktop Manager for OS X.
- Email on iPhone and iPad does not allow "reply as" so if I use MobileMe or Gmail or whatever to aggregate half a dozen emails in one account, when I reply, I'm forced to reply as the email associated with the aggregation account I happen to be using. The fact is I don't want nobody using my MobileMe email. I might decide to switch again .
- There is no week view on iPhone. A $1 app took care of the problem but this should have been part of the built in calendar.
- It seems like the MobileMe sync thing spins all the time. It's my own fault for setting to sync often but it's nice to keep everything current. I used timemachineeditor to tame TM so it runs at 2am because having TM fire up every hour to try to send a few hundred meg was downright tiring.
- There aren't clean and separate notes and todos applications. Notes and todos show up in Mail.app. I guess this is like Outlook but I remember M/S used to sync BB notes with stickies and never offered to sync notes with Mail.app. I think the blame for the lack of a clear direction for todos and notes lies with Apple. What's more notes show up in Mail on Me.com but todos don't seem to show up in Mail or in Calendar either.
I'm sure there are some users for whom some of these niggles would be a huge deal. Not for me. I like MoMe and will continue using it as long as Apple sells/provides it for free/discontinues it as long as they grandfather me in.
I had use both service fir few year.
The benefit of Mobileme are
Costs money but gives 20 GB of storage through iDisk
-Syncs bookmarks across computers and iOS devices.
The benefit of Google is
Works better on Windows PC's, can use me.com on Windows machine but not as quick to respond as Google.
The benefit of Mobileme are
Costs money but gives 20 GB of storage through iDisk
-Syncs bookmarks across computers and iOS devices.
The benefit of Google is
Works better on Windows PC's, can use me.com on Windows machine but not as quick to respond as Google.
Progress:
MM on three Macs, and one iphone 3gs
MM is working smootly, I still have to work out iweb, but bookmarking and notes are all good, as well as email.
The only drawback so far is the accounts on mobile me, I want to send email as another email address, thats all good and well using webbased email, not so with mac mail - I need to set up a separte account with my alternative email details to send mail that way, same on iphone.
Gmail setup is pretty much the same, using xmarks to sync bookmarks, and dropbox (web only, no app on macs, app on iphone) as storage.
I've got a couple of api's posting content into dropbox via email and form on my website which is rather cool, something idisk does not have (afaik).
I am happy with both, not that synching is all good (it took me a little while to get everything synced up together, a couple of duplications but sorted now).
Drawbacks: Linux. I know thats a bit of a swear word here, but there are a few linux instances I use for work, and I know that the google setup works with thunderbird. MM is a no go at all there. I've not tried it on Windows yet. May do this virtually, and see how I progress with MM
Price for MM is still an issue, as I am getting all the services (except for find my iphone or course) for free.
I will wait until the end of my trial and decide then, who knows a free offer might come up by then.
MM on three Macs, and one iphone 3gs
MM is working smootly, I still have to work out iweb, but bookmarking and notes are all good, as well as email.
The only drawback so far is the accounts on mobile me, I want to send email as another email address, thats all good and well using webbased email, not so with mac mail - I need to set up a separte account with my alternative email details to send mail that way, same on iphone.
Gmail setup is pretty much the same, using xmarks to sync bookmarks, and dropbox (web only, no app on macs, app on iphone) as storage.
I've got a couple of api's posting content into dropbox via email and form on my website which is rather cool, something idisk does not have (afaik).
I am happy with both, not that synching is all good (it took me a little while to get everything synced up together, a couple of duplications but sorted now).
Drawbacks: Linux. I know thats a bit of a swear word here, but there are a few linux instances I use for work, and I know that the google setup works with thunderbird. MM is a no go at all there. I've not tried it on Windows yet. May do this virtually, and see how I progress with MM
Price for MM is still an issue, as I am getting all the services (except for find my iphone or course) for free.
I will wait until the end of my trial and decide then, who knows a free offer might come up by then.
If you are using all Apple devices MobileMe is great. The way it syncs all information between all your Apple products is great but if you add a android phone or windows PC in the mix it can throw a wrench in your plans. Android sucks for mobileme calendar (can't even add things)and the contacts won't sync unless you setup a Mac to sync to google but I have had conflicts with that and contacts getting messed up.
Now that Apple has effectively killed the syncing of MobileMe outside of Apple devices, it's dead to me. (and you thought the 5th of May, 2011 was all about Cinco De Mayo)
BusyMac, SyncMate, Spanning Sync et al. are not happy campers at this point.
BusyMac, SyncMate, Spanning Sync et al. are not happy campers at this point.
I've never understood this concern. Yes, a bot is scimming through my e-mails to deliver a small, targeted ad at the top of the window if I'm using the browser version. So what? It doesn't display anything on my iPhone e-mails, just the actual e-mail.
I'd rather have ads that are relevant and targeted to me than some random "Click here to win an iPad / TV / (insert random expensive item here)!!!!!" ad that I see on so many websites not using Google ads.
And yes, I do trust Google with my data. In all the years of using Gmail, I have never received any spam, only newsletters that I'm actually subscribed to and real e-mails.
I'm thinking about paying the $5 a year for 20GB of extra Picasa space to share photos with family and friends. Where else can you get 20GB for $5 for a year?
I use Chrome as my web browser and there is an extension called "better gmail" that eliminates ads from the page altogether.
I just cancelled my MobileMe and can't say I've noticed any difference in the service. I've always used Google for calendar and mail anyway (due to some shortcomings on MM in these areas) so it was nothing to port contacts over as well. For photos I use flickr and storage = Dropbox. The best part is, Mac address book,calendar still work the same as they link with google, so it's not like you have to install different software or anything.
I often hear the argument on here that MobileMe is better because it allows you to sync multiple devices. Well, I have an iMac, an iPhone, and an iPad, and after cancelling my MobileMe and setting things up I can say it's just as seamless - absolutely no difference.
I just cancelled my MobileMe and can't say I've noticed any difference in the service. I've always used Google for calendar and mail anyway (due to some shortcomings on MM in these areas) so it was nothing to port contacts over as well. For photos I use flickr and storage = Dropbox. The best part is, Mac address book,calendar still work the same as they link with google, so it's not like you have to install different software or anything.
I often hear the argument on here that MobileMe is better because it allows you to sync multiple devices. Well, I have an iMac, an iPhone, and an iPad, and after cancelling my MobileMe and setting things up I can say it's just as seamless - absolutely no difference.