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MobileMe to Become a Free Service?

I'm moved off MM - saw some scary stuff on my account earlier this year. My calendar and contacts were showing empty in their cloud and I was afraid it would sync down to my iPhone and wipe everything out. Support could only muster up one email response every 2 days.

Move to google sync for email, contact, and calendar... It's free. Very happy with the service and I feel it is much more portable, if I decide to change platforms in the future.
 
MobileMe won't likely become a free service in the same way Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail and others are free services. It will most likely be a subscription included with the purchase of an Apple product.

A free 1 year subscription to MobileMe with purchase of an iPhone, Macbook, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro, iPad, iPod Touch and so on.

That would mean they would not give refunds to existing users and would simply extend the service for 1 year when a new product is purchased. That would keep it as a paid service (in some sense) while still expanding their offerings to include more Mac users.

I could also see more tiers of service lowering the disk space from 20GB to 5GB then offering additional space for a fee.
 
There may end up being a free version of MobileMe in the future but there will always be a paid version with more features, so there won't be any kind of refund for current paid members.

In my opinion, MobileMe offers a much more polished and reliable solution than the free options like Google offer. You get what you pay for.

Flame away.
 
If you want free go get a gmail or yahoo account and stop moaning. :mad:

I think MobileMe is a brilliant service and well worth the membership fee. I use it every day from sharing large files, syncing my multitude of Macs, the excellent email alias and of course the nifty little cloud base backup program amongst may other things.

Don't understand some peoples way of thinking. Most are happy to pay for two identical services with their 3G data plans but not willing to pay for the excellent and ever (if slowly) evolving MobileMe services.:confused:
 
craigd said:
I think this will be free very soon, courteousy of iAds, very much the same way google do it
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Nowhere has it been established that iAd will infiltrate other platforms aside from iPod/iPad/iPhone.

You're not going to get 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for free. Keep dreaming. They may offer something free, but its not going to be what people are paying for now.
 
Aduntu said:
You're not going to get 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for free. Keep dreaming. They may offer something free, but its not going to be what people are paying for now.
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I think that the ads can sustain a free service for sure. As to what end who knows.

I personally really liked me.com. It's just not worth paying for in my opinion. However I can't say I really utilized it to its full extent. I wouldnbe really happy with free me.com email. Even if it's add supported. I currently use google, the ads are no issue and I use mail.app mostly so I don't even get to see them.
 
reppans said:
Move to google sync for email, contact, and calendar... It's free. Very happy with the service and I feel it is much more portable, if I decide to change platforms in the future.
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Unless you are going to move to Linux, I don't follow your logic of Google services being more portable. Mobile Me is PC compatible.

I use Gmail, but Mobile Me for everything else. It's just easy to set up when you get a new machine and easier to sync with multiple machines. Plus there is no Google iDisk-like component. The closest thing is Drop Box which is either free for a paltry 2GB or $10/mo for 50GB.

LadyHoneyBabe said:
Maybe they're trying to compete with Google Docs or something. Plus they bought that server farm in, I think, North Carolina.
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Yup. Apple is running a beta of iworks.com right now. It's free for the time being. I hope they integrate it as a feature of Mobile Me or iWorks. It's not worth paying extra for.
 
nuckinfutz said:
Most people don't understand the fundamental differences between iDisk and Drop Box. If Apple was to build a front end to iDisk that stored the file locally and then sync'd over WebDAV in the background they'd be able to offer the same performance.
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But iDisk has the ability to keep a local copy, it is just disabled by default i think.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Yup. Apple is running a beta of iworks.com right now. It's free for the time being. I hope they integrate it as a feature of Mobile Me or iWorks. It's not worth paying extra for.
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I'm not sure what I think about iWorks.com yet, because I haven't used it a lot. I'll have to give that a try too and if it works like I think it will, then that would be a welcomed addition to MobileMe.

Have you used MobileMe for a while? Have you come across any problems while using the service? :confused:



I really like MobileMe and plan on subscribing, but I just didn't want to pay for something that will end up going free in a month. I also like find my iPad service that goes along with MobileMe. :D

I hope Apple continues to develop cloud computing for their products because it's needed.
 
If Apple does make it free, I would assume it would offer some kind of compensation to current users. iTunes credit or something.

If you can hold off, probably no harm waiting until WWDC.

Personally, I think Apple should give 1 year free with purchase of a Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. MobileMe really enhances those products. If Apple could get people hooked, it would essentially lock in repeat purchases for that value-added functionality.

If not that, then it should slash the entry price and offer upgrades for more storage and bandwidth for those who would use it.

And they should buy Dropbox.
 
kazmac said:
Like so many of you, I'd opt in if MobileMe were free. Hope it becomes a reality somewhere down the road :)
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I too, would opt in if it were free. However, I don't see any point in limiting the free accounts to only those who buy mac products. MobileMe is a web-based service, it's already platform independent.

I just hope they find a way to monetize it or break even with it. Last thin I want to do is to sign up with them, use it as my primary email, and then find out three to five years later that they're going to charge for it, just like in the past. I would even go so far as to need some kind of guarantee.

Perhaps it would be best to have multiple tiers of services for free accounts versus one or more levels of paid accounts.

Cheers,

DCBass
 
Mine expires on June 12, so hopefully they will announce something at WWDC.
 
Aduntu said:
Nowhere has it been established that iAd will infiltrate other platforms aside from iPod/iPad/iPhone.

You're not going to get 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for free. Keep dreaming. They may offer something free, but its not going to be what people are paying for now.
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Why not? I get 25gb on skydrive for absolutely FREE. MobileMe being pay for is seriously outdated. The only thing it has going for it is the remote wipe. Google syncs all my calendars, email, contacts, etc between my work PC, Mac laptop at home, iPad, iphone etc. Live sync keeps any file I want synced to any computer, including the iPad/iPhone if I log online. So far I have not spent a single penny for any of those services.
 
spinedoc77 said:
Why not? I get 25gb on skydrive for absolutely FREE. MobileMe being pay for is seriously outdated. The only thing it has going for it is the remote wipe. Google syncs all my calendars, email, contacts, etc between my work PC, Mac laptop at home, iPad, iphone etc. Live sync keeps any file I want synced to any computer, including the iPad/iPhone if I log online. So far I have not spent a single penny for any of those services.
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Because they're add supported chief. I'd agree that MM needs a major update. I think this is going to happen which is why I signed up.
 
bdhokie said:
I agree that they'd better greatly improve performance if they create a free service; I do find iDisk a bit sluggish and hate to think what happens if MobileMe's usage increases 500%.
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Make it 5000%... I honestly don't think Apple has infrastructure to support a massive free cloud service. Even with their current premium paying customer base iDisk is either slow or slow as hell but what would happen when it becomes free and the masses start rolling in. Having one new massive server farm won't solve anything. You have to have bunch of them scattered around the world in order to provide solid service. Regarding emails in order to keep it sensible they would have to introduce multiple domain names or otherwise it will be john.doe5356@me.com for any new account or allies. Therefore, if Apple is really going to introduce free MobileMe I truly hope they have a new massive infrastructure to support it.
 
Nuvi said:
Make it 5000%... I honestly don't think Apple has infrastructure to support a massive free cloud service. Even with their current premium paying customer base iDisk is either slow or slow as hell but what would happen when it becomes free and the masses start rolling in. Having one new massive server farm won't solve anything. You have to have bunch of them scattered around the world in order to provide solid service. Regarding emails in order to keep it sensible they would have to introduce multiple domain names or otherwise it will be john.doe5356@me.com for any new account or allies. Therefore, if Apple is really going to introduce free MobileMe I truly hope they have a new massive infrastructure to support it.
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I think the iDisk performance has got much more to do with Apple's webDAV implementation in Finder.
 
I could see it coming free, but with limitations, like there would be "Mobile Me" and "Mobile Me Pro". free might get you 2gb of data, and the pro gets you the 20gb, you will get an email account for both and the syncing between the devices.

If you currently have a subscription you just get the Pro version automatically.

just my thoughts.
 
nuckinfutz said:
Because they're add supported chief. I'd agree that MM needs a major update. I think this is going to happen which is why I signed up.
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No ads in skydrive that I can see Dude. If they are there they must be tiny. No ads with live sync eiher, it just syncs automatically and invisibly. Gmail and hotmail do have very small unobtrusive ads, but you can use both on the iPad/iPhone built in mail with zero ads. Same with calendar and contacts.

So the only thing MobileMe has that isn't available completely free and completely non ad based is the finder/remote wipe, which I admit is useful. I'm not cheap by any means, I have a MacBook air, a couple of 3g's and 2 64gb 3G ipads, but I just hate to waste money on things that have been free for quite some time now. All the devices I mentioned, plus 3 pc's at work, and 3 laptops at home get synced perfectly, for free and with no ads.

Rant isn't meant for you though, but it's just in case SJ is cruising these forums lol!
 
spinedoc77 said:
Rant isn't meant for you though, but it's just in case SJ is cruising these forums lol!
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No worries mate. I think the sync features rock but as you say this is becoming standard in the industry for free. I bought into MM because I knew about the NC data center and it's pretty much clear that Apple has some Cloud ambitions so I bought in.

I think they can do a lot with a Pro version. Apple didn't just buy Lala to kill it they have plans there. Also that new Trademark for iTunes Live leaves me VERY curious. "Live" can mean a lot of things.
 
elppa said:
I think the iDisk performance has got much more to do with Apple's webDAV implementation in Finder.
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Its true that webDAV is ineffective and part of the reason. Regarding the Finder implementation I have to somewhat disagree. Also third party webDAV solutions struggle with MobileMe webDAV although they are bit more efficient then Finder. Also, if you travel around a world you notice great variations between transfer speeds which can't be explained with actual internet connection speeds. Therefore I can only assume that MobileMe data center coverage isn't capable of carrying out the current user load and spread. If there is strong increase of user base with free MobileMe I can't picture a scenario in which Apple is ready to handle that successfully when they can't even provide a solid service for the paying customers.
 
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