My hopes for MobileMe

[Mad Mac Maniac]

By the end of the year I hope I will never have to hook my iPad 2, or my iPhone 4 to my Macbook again.

Anyone with an Apple product (or maybe just iDevice, or maybe iDevice + Mac combo) can create a free MobileMe account. You can log in to your MobileMe from any Apple device. MobileMe in the cloud will contain all your settings, contacts, photos, videos, music, apps, etc. In order to reduce strain on Apples servers many things like apps, music, movies, etc. wouldn't actually be stored by apple, just the knowledge that you own the rights to it.* (So then you can redownload/stream any song, app, movie OTA)

You can selectively choose which songs, photos, apps etc you want installed on each device and whenever you want to add something (say a photo album) you just pick it up from the cloud. You could also select to automatically sync all music, or all photos, or all apps, etc.

Also, this could create the medium for user accounts on iDevices, something people have been asking for. Also, this means you can pick up your friends iPad and log in to your mobileme and view your photos (or whatever you want)! You can choose to stream your media from mobileme over the internet or download it locally onto the device. If you DL it then even when you aren't online you can log in to your mobileme and still have the files you DLed. while not logged in the file stays on the device(taking up storage), but it is hidden from view until your account is logged in. To delete the file either the MobileMe user must delete it or the device admin can delete the whole MobileMe account data.

It this all too ambitious? Do you see any holes with this idea? I think this would be really great, and personally I feel like it is really within grasp for Apple.



*If this is still too much strain for Apple to store all your photos, home movies, etc then Apple could require that every photo, etc would need to remain on one of your devices. Your devices would then act as the storage and Apple would just provide the infastructure to sync everything together. For example, say I request to view a photo album that isn't stored locally on my iPad, MobileMe would ping every device that has that file stored locally and retrieve it. If none are online, then the request stays open until one of the devices has come online and responded.

 

[alangrehan]

It this all too ambitious?.

In theory that all sounds great and may be what they're working towards but in reality if they introduced that I reckon there would be so many problems! Remember in 2008 when mobileme started!

I reckon they'll just make contact / calender syncing free and they'll link mobileme to itunes in some way. They'll see what the uptake is on that and then roll out some more changes.

You'll still have to pay for the Web hosting, iDisk etc.

I also still think you'll have to pay for mobileme by way of an iDevice. The cost will be linked in with an iDevice with a year subscription included with every new iPhone etc.

My mobileme works great and I love it for calenders and contacts and I'm petrified they're going to change it and it will turn to rubbish.

 

[spacedesign911]

I like mobileme, we have a family pack and, it works well, I would like to be able to use the push email with my own domain name, it that gets support then it will tick all boxes for me.

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

I think MobileMe will be there revolution of the year. It has to most possibilities and can solve all problems like wireless syncing iOS apps from MacBook

 

[mofunk]

I don't want to store all my stuff on the web or MobileMe. Only the stuff I need to access. I've been using MobileMe for close to 10yrs and this is by the best its been. I know there are bugs and stuff but for the most part its a lot better to navigate around.

Some of the things you mention you can already do. You have to set it up.

 

[boston04and07]

My hopes for MobileMe!

That's exactly what I'm hoping for, too, with one difference. Most of my music and videos in iTunes didn't come from Apple - they were ripped off of CDs and DVDs. Apple would have no way of knowing whether or not these files were obtained legally or not, so if they went the way of storing everything you have in the cloud, I can easily see them only allowing iTunes-purchased content to stay there. Not good for those of us who bought their stuff elsewhere. I'd much prefer that MobileMe turns into the "brains" of the whole operation, while the storage part occurs on the user's end. Perhaps the Time Capsule could turn into an always-on storage device that your other iDevices could fetch files from when needed. And, I'd love it if more than just media files were included in this - i.e., Pages docs, etc.

Ideally, I think it'd be cool if all of your media and other stuff were listed on all of your devices, but not necessarily residing there until you try to access them, at which time they're downloaded from your Time Capsule (or whatever) at home. The iPhone or iPad could intelligently remove files from a device that haven't been used in a while when space is needed - much like how apps that haven't been used in a while are now terminated silently in iOS multitasking. Perhaps a little icon or symbol next to the files would show you which ones were currently saved locally, and which ones weren't, so that you'd know what stuff you have when you don't have wifi or 3G. And an option to pre-download specific files when you know you're going out of range would be awesome. No more clunky iTunes syncing.

We'll see how things shake out, but I'm hoping Job's promise that MM would be better in 2011 turns out to be true, and I'd be perfectly fine with some type of service like this. I'm sick of wanting to listen to a song on my iPhone, only to discover it's back on my Mac at home!