Maybe an apple giftcard for the difference? Like apple did for the early adopters of iPhone 2G when there was a price drop
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MobileMe to Become a Free Service?
- Thread starter bowlerman625
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Maybe an apple giftcard for the difference? Like apple did for the early adopters of iPhone 2G when there was a price drop
Maybe as marketing? Like you said, it works well and seamlessly if you have several Apple devices. People might be thinking of buying more than one Apple product, but wondering how they can keep everything synced.
Apple could promote Mobile Me as a "value add" and perhaps get more buyers of other devices that way?
I would be fine continuing to pay for it if they would actually make it work better and improve some of the feature set. If they make it free, my concern is they will strip down some of the services related to it or allow it to become even slower and less reliable. Apple doesn't need another "hobby" (See: TV, Apple).
Because it would be a good marketing move, as another benefit of using a mac. It would have a "halo effect" as another way to get people in to the apple store. Obviously, not as much as the iPhone's "halo," but another bit of sales pitch couldn't hurt.
Also- by not making money on it, I guess I don't mean not really making money. Although they could be losing money on it for all I know. My point was that it could not be significant, against say the revenue the iPhone provides, or their core computer sales. Having one more way for their sales staff to be able to explain how the iPhone syncs with a mac computer might be more beneficial to Apple then whatever money they make form people actually paying for mobile me, and drive more sales of the hardware for the Mac ecosystem.
I don't think people don't want to use it, I just don't see a lot of people seeing value in paying for it.
I had to let mine lapse recently, but I still get my .mac mail. I plan to renew soon, $99 or not. It's worth the cost to me, if it gets good servers to host it on.
Nail on the head right there. From a business standpoint that makes tremendous sense. Apple would likely pull in much more revenue from advertisers placing content on a regular basis than they would from a limited subscription base. Make the service free, more people use it, apple brings in more $ from iAd services.
i would really welcome this. i have been using mobileme when it was free and called iTools, then i used .mac.
if apple wants to compete with all the free services out there, like dropbox, all of google's cloud based apps, etc, they need to make their service free.
i love the seamless integration of mobileme with my macbook pro, iphone, and ipad. and i love my .mac email address. i've had it for years.
mobileme has been extremely useful and it would make it even better if it were free.
if apple wants to compete with all the free services out there, like dropbox, all of google's cloud based apps, etc, they need to make their service free.
i love the seamless integration of mobileme with my macbook pro, iphone, and ipad. and i love my .mac email address. i've had it for years.
mobileme has been extremely useful and it would make it even better if it were free.
Free me
I guess I am the only one that remembers that it started out as a free service. Before it was .Mac it was called iTools and it was free. It was a benefit of being a part of the Mac community. It certainly was much more basic back then, but I have been using it since. The remote wipe for iPhone and other added features keep it worth the family pac price for this household even if it doesn't go back to being a free service.
I guess I am the only one that remembers that it started out as a free service. Before it was .Mac it was called iTools and it was free. It was a benefit of being a part of the Mac community. It certainly was much more basic back then, but I have been using it since. The remote wipe for iPhone and other added features keep it worth the family pac price for this household even if it doesn't go back to being a free service.
If true, this is good news.
However, it would make sense Apple would limit the free service to iPod touch, iPhone, Mac and iPad owners. Maybe then it’ll remain ad free.
Their next step should be to purchase DropBox and replace iDisk or at least implement a faster WebDAV solution. iDisk is dog slow even on fast connections compared to other services.
Then they should up the storage limit from 20GB to 50GB and finally implement LaLa-like iTunes Web streaming.
However, it would make sense Apple would limit the free service to iPod touch, iPhone, Mac and iPad owners. Maybe then it’ll remain ad free.
Their next step should be to purchase DropBox and replace iDisk or at least implement a faster WebDAV solution. iDisk is dog slow even on fast connections compared to other services.
Then they should up the storage limit from 20GB to 50GB and finally implement LaLa-like iTunes Web streaming.
The best option is to cover both ends.
Free
Syncing
Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks
Small iDisk
Find my iDevice
Web Gallery
Web Page
Paid
iTunes Cloud (Lala music streaming)
More Sync options
Larger iDisk Pro (Dropbox like speed)
Larger Web space and Gallery
Online Backup
iWork.com Pro (Collaboration and editing)
I'm ready to go Google Free. I just need to know Mobileme is worth investing in more.
Free
Syncing
Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks
Small iDisk
Find my iDevice
Web Gallery
Web Page
Paid
iTunes Cloud (Lala music streaming)
More Sync options
Larger iDisk Pro (Dropbox like speed)
Larger Web space and Gallery
Online Backup
iWork.com Pro (Collaboration and editing)
I'm ready to go Google Free. I just need to know Mobileme is worth investing in more.
Some of you may remember way back in the day, before Mobileme was .mac, it was known as itools and it was free. It was a perk that came with buying a Mac.
Free MobileMe as an iAd platform? That sounds about right. Paid MobileMe without the iAds? I think we're getting somewhere now...
I would welcome this. I enjoyed the features during the free trial period, but couldn't justify $99 per year for it. Since then they've added Back to My Mac, the Find my iPhone feature, and improved its reliability, so I would love to have access to it again, minus the cost. On top of what I pay for cellular service, another 9 bucks a month just seemed inconvenient.
I used to use mobileme for hosting, email, iDisk and photo sharing, but i've outgrown all of them. I won't be renewing this december. Now i just have to make sure i don't lose my iPhone.
Uh $9 a month is $108 a year.
People routinely get Mobileme for roughly $70 through Amazon or less through other places like eBay.
Amazon Mobileme
Hell even Apple doesn't make people pay that much.
http://www.apple.com/promo/
$30 MiR or you get Mobileme for $69 with the purchase of a new Mac.
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We all remember the internal meeting Jobs held discussing how Google was in effect 'declaring war on Apple' by invading their "mobile" turf; what if this is Apple reciprocating. Offering similar options to Gmail for free and attempting to complement MobileMe with iAds in an attempt to unthrone Google. With the high hopes Apple has for iAds (as suggested by the rumors regarding the high developer pricing of iAds) it does make sense, and in the very least, try to hurt Google. Another intriguing question is: would Apple loyalists prefer Apple service over another as long as the quality is acceptable (perhaps even if the quality was less than the options, at first).
The problem with this idea is that it's based on the assumption that Apple wants to be like Google and suddenly become an advertiser.
They purchased Quattro and developed iAds because it represents a mutually beneficial deal for developers on the app store and Apple. Apple designs the ads and runs them on their servers and developers get to deliver free or .$99 apps that can actually be profitable. Quid pro quo...Apple gets more apps hopefully that don't suck and the developer gets to reap the rewards of the success of the app store.
That same play doesn't come into effect with Mobileme. It's not dependent on 3rd party developers delivering content so thusly you will not see iAds in Mobileme.
It might be easier for Apple to run MobileMe as a free service; there's a certain amount of overhead for account administration, customer service, etc., plus a certain level of expectation (higher?) when it's a paid service.
Apple uses software, content and services to drive sales of its high-margin hardware. By publicizing the fact that they are giving away basic cloud services for free, that might drive more people to buy Macs and mobile devices.
Also, this would make them even more of a competitor to Google.
Apple has been doing this stuff since .mac so they've been on the turf for a while. iAds is not gonna be a part of the equation. Apple's building a huge datacenter in NC and with free Mobileme it gives developers a "no brainer" incentive to use Mobileme for their OTA sync. Wifi sync does nothing but irritate the user IMO.
This isn't about hurting Google this is about taking the next leap forward in computing by melding cloud services with mobile and desktop computing
Because Free always has better uptake as witnessed by the legions of people that let Google scrape their emails and other data to provide targeted ads. These people actually perceive this as being "Free" when in fact you're letting Google profit handsomely off your data.
Yes, but a la Google works. MobileMe is crap. So if they make it free then you'd either get free crap without ads, or free stuff that works with ads. Seems fair.