MobileMe announced for iPhones, Macs, and PCs -- .Mac is dead
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Jun 9th 2008 2:13PM
posted Jun 9th 2008 2:13PM
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wtf? im hoping you forgot to click the submit button before you finished writing up the article
Oh damn... okay its just another Apple story...
if you guys are going to post anything apple related tell me something that is interesting. Like when the hell I can get my dirty hands on a 3G iPhone...
So while I'm in France taking pictures of women - my wife will be at home watching my Photo album get updated.
Sounds like an even faster way for you to get your stolen iPhone back.
Whoever steals it starts taking pictures - you get the updates...notify the police.
what?
oooh developing...
I love the amount of detail in this story! haha
The logo looks like windows me HAHAHAHA
maybe it will be as usable as windows me
That was just uncalled for...
Cruelty
mos def. certainly was the first thing I thought.
I want to see M$ sue for logo infringement because, you know, this really harms the Windows ME marque...
The post is short because it was posted most likely from WWDC.
Go to me.com right now....it's a social networking site that moved...not this apple bootleg exchange.
mobile me-too ... once again apple tries with their me-too web based services (like mac.com) vs the world.. when will they learn? I guess people just don't want a gated garden path, they'd rather have choice.
I am listening to the life audio stream here.
I am glad that the iPhone is starting to have the features it needed (better sync, persistent data, etc...), but I always feel a little disappointed how so many people get so excited about features that already exist in other products.
Also, I am very uncomfortable with the iTunes, MobileMe, etc... stuff that locks me into Apple's software. Only because my production computers are 64bit Vista and iTunes has never been that friendly on Vista. I would like to see the opportunity for 3rd party developers to access my phone better. I feel that they might be able to make better tools.
I think what you really mean is that Vista isn't friendly with iTunes. Gee whiz, I wonder why?
Yeah, because application developers that write buggy programs that crash is VISTA'S fault. You're smart to realize that. Dumbass. I hate Microsoft and even I can realize how moronic your fanboy statement is. Geez.
they should have just made iSync wireless...
This thing is gonna be like the WebApp on the sidekick...
it IS wireless :)
What about Google apps?
What about Mozilla apps (Thunderbird/Sunbird/Lightning)?
What about Linux clients other than Mozilla ones?
Google? Mozilla?
Today is Apple day. No other software exists. Trust me, you have never seen anything like MobileMe before. Those others are not the apps you are looking for. They never existed.
Bow down to the one true software vendor... Apple.
This is new?
Hardly. Other providers have had similar stuff for ages.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
I wonder if the "web 2.0 apps" will support IE6? :P
Oh God. The last thing I remember having the letters 'ME' in it was the horribly doomed Windows OS.
This may be cursed from the start.
I actually wish that Apple could have come up with a more appealing name than this. It really sounds like Mini Me from Austin Powers.
Agreed. With all the marketing smarts at Apple, they could probably think of a better name. The logo (presuming the "cloud" picture is the logo) is also not very "Apple-like" (maybe the colors are somewhat off in the pic, but still)...
me.com doesnt exist
Wrong, it does exist, but it redirects to a Google "supported" web 2.0 company. I think we can safely bet who sold the domain to Apple...
If we look at the domain's history, it looks like its last owner was Small Seed Company (makers of Me.com, turned Snappville). They started using the domain in late 2004. Before Snappville, me.com was home to holidaychannel.com (believe it or not) and a super-crapy web conferencing system (circa 1999).
Welcome home me.com, you finally (probably) don't suck.
Why would I choose this over Google Apps? It seems like it does the same stuff but with a different interface. Will it use my Gmail account? Does it cost money? Am I missing something?
"It's available for $99 per year -- 20GB of storage."
so...whats new???
oh ya forgot...how much do the ipeople have to pay for this service???
99 bucks a year!!!!! Ripoff!!!!! I'll do it the old fashioned way.
A serious comment. As I listen to MobileMe I am reminded about the same problem with gmail: Many of these tools are great for individuals, but horrible for business/enterprise.
The truth is, no matter how well Apple makes MobileMe, I have to use my corporate email server. The last thing I want clients doing is communicating to me through xxx@mobileme.com, or xxx@mac.com or anything of that sort.
I suppose they might integrate pop3 checking from their App. I dunno... I have my doubts.
That is why they are supporting exchange and this. This is "exchange for the rest of us" as Jobs said. Also you can use your own domain name on .mac but I am not sure about mobileme.
Which is probably why they specifically said its purpose is to give Exchange-like features to people who don't have corporate Exchange access.
$99 for a year with only 20GB storage?
This is going to fail and fail hard.
What if i still have a .mac prepaid card? Will that transfer? or dead?
You should be upgraded for free.
For $99 a year, no cheapster will buy it. They keep saying the free storage sites are better and free. Apple might have stood a chance if it was $50, but if people can't spend $10 for a software update then $99 is far too expensive. A pity.
I quite like all of those features... in my Google account. Hell, as long as I provide the domain, I get all those features and more for free with my own domain name attached. I'll admit, the Google products could be tied together a little better, but they all are extremely good and function as needed beyond expectation. I think this is one market Apple is hitting all wrong.
Classic comment!
" ... in my Google account."
Too true.
I think Steve Jobs just admitted that he's not going to take it to the mat with Google until he absolutely has to get into a fight.
I only hope that Apple and Google can shake hands and work on a deal otherwise they'll get into a sh*t fight that can only benefit the competitors. I'd like to think Google is already too smart to tackle Apple on their own ground (hardware and desktop OS) but it seems Apple is going to hang on to denial a little longer (as far as the mobile OS goes) and that leaves them open to value-add like me.com unable to "gain market traction." As long as Apple wants $99 for a bunch of free services, I doubt they can make it fly. After all, hard core Apple techs pride themselves on not paying for .mac for just this reason -- it should be free and you've already paid for it by being an Apple customer.
$99!!!! Too expensive...my personal exchange account is only about half of that for a year and it does the same thing. I'm interested, but probably not at that price.
I think this is an excellent service, except for the mobileme domain. If they had an option for the small business user to use their own domain (like Google), I would gladly pay $100 a year for full wireless sync.
There is a huge market out there for consumers who need this type of service. The enterprise has enjoyed the benefits for years. I think the iPhone is going to be the catalyst...
.Mac does let you use a personal domain now
Where is the Linux syncing support?! I just want to playback, add/remove music with ease :(
I don't understand about these comments. I now pay >$10/month for exchange push service. If they truly deliver what they said about MobileMe, how is that expensive?
I tend to agree with alpha. I pay more than $99/year for my hosted exchange account that only gives me 500MB of email storage. Even if you split the MobileMe storage in half (default allocation in .Mac) you still end up with 10GB of email storage.
How exactly is that a bad thing?
MobileMe is what FirstClass was offering seven years ago. Apple tried to buy FirstClass in the 90s but instead offered up Apple Powermail servers that couldn't compete.
Everything MobileMe does, I was doing with FirstClass and my Blackberry and my Mac seven years ago.
I'm pretty excited about this, but the $99 is scaring me. Right now, me and my wife both have MBPs and I have a N76 and she has a N82. I sync our contacts and our calendar via isync whenever we get near one of our MBPs, and other than Symbian's stupid recreation of Birthdays as midnight to midnight events on our Nokias, the process works pretty good.
I do wish for something more instant though as I could go a week or so without syncing our cells. This would be a nice solution to that. it'd be nice if it has notes too (didn't see that explicitly mentioned) so I can be at the grocery store and have the latest list on me.
Looking at other comments, it seems there are options out there that may do this but I haven't really tried to go out and find them. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
If $99 scares you there are problems in your life you need to address that have nothing to do with computers.
What about iWeb support as well? Another .Mac feature that seems to have disappeared?
Think about it the other way around: iWeb will have MobileMe support. I can't see that going away.
All the services .Mac has now will remain, including web publishing with iWeb, etc.
I left .Mac years ago and... well... I'm not seeing a reason to go back.
I paid $65 for a lifetime license for Spanning Sync and I use Gmail and Google Calendar... my stuff is already in the cloud.
Okay, if/when I get an iPhone my apps won't sync wirelessly. That really doesn't bother me, especially since Google keeps tweaking their apps to appear nicely on the iPhone.
I think MobileMe should be part of the OS or just plain free (charge $10 or $20 for the Outlook users) and Apple should partner up with Google for the space.
Too little, too late, Apple. This isn't going to convince the former .Mac folks to go running back.
I'm with you on this.
I left .Mac about three months ago. This changes nothing at all. The same services we get everywhere else but $99... Actually if I only paid $99 it'd be okay, but .Mac (MobileWee) in the UK is £69. That's more like $135.
Thanks but no thanks! Maybe I will think again if I get an iPhone, but this isn't enticing me back at all.
This movie is worth watching, pretty cool features:
http://www.apple.com/mobileme/guidedtour/
hooray, they expect me to change my email address to get real push email to my phone? stupid. At least with Blackberry I can push an existing gmail account.
And where is the support to sync with google calendar?
Apple just told us .Mac users, among other things: "As a MobileMe subscriber, you can continue to use your mac.com address for email. You will also be issued a me.com address with the same user name that you can use if you prefer. The choice is yours."
I don't want a mac.com or a me.com address, I want the address I've been using for the past 13 years, which I currently have hosted with google apps, pushed to my iphone.
I realized that... after hitting Send of course!
You can forward your gMail to other email accounts. (And, like gMail, .Mac/.Me accounts can be POP or IMAP)
http://mail.google.com/mail/#settings/fwdandpop
This is quite bad from apple and quite shocked to be honest but. I been using hotmail beta for the last 8 months and to be honest, it looks alot better than this.
$100 is a joke, looks like they are trying to take advantage of the iphone popularity!!!
I certainly don't dispute that this is "groundbreaking" in the sense that it is a completely new paradigm from what is currently available to enterprise users; however, I do believe that it offers for Mac what Windows users have enjoyed in the form of Exchange for many years and does so on an application platform native to the Mac instead of something "ported" from Windows (i.e. Entourage/Exchange).
I've had a hosted Exchange account for quite some time (probably 2.5-3 years) and I've used it with both Windows Mobile and now iPhone. I also have a .Mac account which I've played around with. One of my biggest complaints about .Mac was the lack of real-time synchronization between Web, iPhone, and Computer especially in the area of contacts.
From what I've seen of MobileMe, it seems they've really gone after the deficiencies that exist within .Mac. The price is attractive for me since it vastly increases the amount of storage and does so for a lower price than what I'm currently paying.
Haha. It shows an lorem ipsum-message upon subscribing.
Looking forward to this, though they should have made it free.
The me.com site is not up yet.
http://jimrock.tumblr.com/post/37761729/go-to-any-browser-type-me-com-simple-easy-to
Don't pay full price. .Mac has always been available from 3rd parties for less, both for the first purchase and subsequent renewals. I recently renewed for $65, not $99.
Comparison to the Google suite: no advertising, finer interface. And the cross-platform iDisk FTP/storage is great.
but apple is one big advertisement
Re-direct is now up that sends you to http://www.apple.com/mobileme/ when you access http://www.me.com.
Also, there is a FAQ on Apple's website that explains more about the transition from .Mac to MobileMe: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1932
i was just emailed this - so glad i can still use my @mac.com email address... don't like the sound of @me.com - The money is worth it if i can still use Back to my Mac - i literally use it all the time
Dear .Mac member:
Today Apple announced a new Internet service called MobileMe - taking the best of .Mac and adding a host of new features. As a current .Mac member, your account will be automatically upgraded to MobileMe in July. For a closer look, watch the MobileMe Guided Tour and read below for an overview of your new service.
Mac integration you know and love. With MobileMe, you'll continue to enjoy features that take advantage of seamless integration with Mac OS X and iLife - Back to My Mac; access to your iDisk in the Finder; Mac-to-Mac syncing of Dock items, preferences, and more; iWeb site publishing; and photo and movie sharing directly from iPhoto '08 and iMovie '08.
New web applications for when you're away from your Mac. MobileMe features a suite of web applications at www.me.com that have the familiar look and feel of the applications on your Mac. Because these web applications stay in sync with your Mac and other devices, you'll have the same information wherever you go. Here's what you'll find at me.com:
Mail, the anchor of the new suite, is even better with a refined interface.
Contacts has a new three-pane interface, contact groups, maps integration, search, and photo support.
Calendar is a brand-new web application that feels just like iCal, featuring multiple calendars, click-and-drag event creation, and more.
Gallery lets you manage your collection of shared photos and movies from anywhere. You can now upload photos, rearrange their order, and set sharing preferences, all from a browser.
iDisk now has the familiar look of the Mac OS X Finder. It features drag-and-drop filing and an easy new way to share large documents, by sending an email with a link for downloading the file.
Account lets you manage settings such as storage allocation.
To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later.
Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar. In addition to Mac-to-Mac syncing, MobileMe now keeps your iPhone, your iPod touch, and even a PC in sync. MobileMe pushes new contacts, calendar items, and bookmarks to your Mac or PC, and over the air to your iPhone or iPod touch. For example, if you add a calendar event on the web, the change will automatically be pushed to your Mac and iPhone. New email will be pushed to your iPhone in seconds, eliminating the need to check for messages manually.
As a MobileMe subscriber, you can continue to use your mac.com address for email. You will also be issued a me.com address with the same user name that you can use if you prefer. The choice is yours.
Double the online storage. To give you plenty of space for your email, photos, and other files, MobileMe doubles your storage from 10GB to 20GB for an individual subscription.
We'll be sure to update you when the new service goes live. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the upcoming transition from .Mac to MobileMe, please visit the MobileMe FAQ.
Sincerely,
The MobileMe Team
Thanks for posting this - I just saw my email too.
I'm really glad I can keep the .mac mail as well as that was my main concern. I intend to make it into an e-mail only account if that's still possible with mobile me. I really haven't had any use for the features (again, google seems better like the rest have said) but I really like the mail so I'll try and keep that intact.
I would love to switch from Bberry to iphone, but I do work for a few companies and use multiple email accounts. Any idea if me.com will accomodate? I imagine you'll need a primary email for this service and the other email accounts will be checked via pop3 internet connection, like other exchange services. It would be great if they could push my other email accounts like bberry does. Either way, I think I'm sold on the new iphone.
I think you meant to say ".Mac is gone baby, gone."
Regardless, awesome film reference.
This is nothing more than .Mac stripped of old iTools features and Mac-centric branding, and re-engineered for iPhone users, so they are just looking to expand their base.
Calendar/address book syncing already exists via a USB plug, and mail has always been IMAP.
The real losers here are people like me who are going to have to explain this mac.com -> me.com mess to our mothers and grandmothers who are struggling with the digital age as it is, but could figure out iWeb and iPhoto.
MobileMe seems to be a copy of Windows Live (and what Google and Yahoo! already offer). Seriously.
I wonder how well my Hotmail service will work Apple's MobileMe.
Hm, Microsoft Mesh, anyone? Wonder what Joel Spolsky has to say on this one...
Da**, all my links got nuked..
Joel On Software (bitching about Microsoft Mesh): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html
Microsoft Mesh: http://www.mesh.com
After watching Apple's online intro to MobileMe, it looks fantastic. Makes file sharing and device synchronization look easy.
Why can't they just make it work with Exchange Server and ActiveSync?
Also, this is exactly what a Blackberry does. Can you say "just another big brother app?" Why would I want to push all my info through the prying eyes of another company whose privacy policies are as prone to be preyed upon by the government as the telephone companies who are controlled by the government currently? Don't drink the Kool Aid. Your stuff is their stuff with this service.
Ah yes, another product called "ME"....
Should be a winner too...
Just like the last one....
Well, I for one am looking forward to the new MobileMe service. It looks like a really streamlined and more integrated service than .Mac. I have used .Mac since it was the free iTools and find many of its features quite useful. Don't get me wrong, I have definitely researched all of the other free/paid solutions out there and yes, you can get the same thing for free (I also have a Google account and enjoy many of its benefits). But for me, the integration with the Mac ecosystem is the best with .Mac and looks to be even better with MobileMe. You don't have to research and try to get a bunch of different services to try to talk to one another. To me it makes sense for the OS developer to offer these services so that they can more tightly integrate into their desktop and mobile software.
From what I've read on Apple's site and answered at WWDC:
- Domain forwarding is supported by .Mac and will be supported with MobileMe. (I use this feature now)
- Yes, iWeb and iPhoto/iMovie will be just as integrated as .Mac currently is. And even more now that you can create and manage web galleries online.
- There are a couple of things going away that I don't think many will miss: iCards, web access to bookmarks (syncing will still be featured), and .Mac slides.
So you get:
- web versions of email, calendar, address book, web gallery, iDisk
- Push email, calendar, address book and gallery syncing of iPhone and iPhoto/iMovie published content.
- url linking of idisk files (no more YouSendIt)
- 20GB storage
- Basic Web Hosting for iWeb or custom built website with Domain Forwarding.
- Many 3rd party apps supporting syncing from existing .Mac services.
The technology has existed for some time, but I personally find that Apple has a way of wrapping it all up and making it simple enough that I'll actually use it. And for that I'll pay for it.
"There are a couple of things going away that I don't think many will miss: iCards, web access to bookmarks."
You may not miss them, but this statement is just not true about many of the .Mac services that Apple has cancelled, ESPECIALLY Apple iCards!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsmiley/
Many .Mac subscribers feel that the "upgrade" to MobileMe was a downgrade, and the loss is acutely felt. Others are finding out about this one life event at a time.
Apple doesn't seem to want to hear about this issue, though. iCards related threads in the Apple Discussions forums have been deleted, one after the other... after being heavily censored in the first place. Apple also deleted its .Mac category on its feedback page and has not replaced it with a MobileMe category.
Two petitions are online pleading for the reinstatement of Apple's iCards:
http://www.petitiononline.com/06291970/petition.html
and
http://www.petitiononline.com/ic110608/petition.html
Apple iCards were simply elegant, and there is no other cheesy ecard service that measures up anywhere near Apple's standards.
Apple's Discussion moderators deleted this comment from an iCards thread, so I'm plastering it all over the Web:
"Everyone, call Apple Customer Relations at this number to complain (I found it was the best # to call after trying several). They say number of complaints matters.:
800-767-2775 "
— k2graphics
I think some of us are missing the point here. Yes, I wish the price was halved, but the appealing thing is a two-way push of contacts and calendar. Sure, I can use google calendar via web access, or subscribe to my google calender in my favorite email software, but to have the push go both ways if I want to use my own software - that's great. Now, if this will work with the mail program on windows mobile, than this is more than just for iPhone users. Would be great to have two way push going between iCal on my macbook and my HTC Diamond (soon, hopefully); I'm not holding my breath, though.
Bottom line for me: Pushing contacts and calendars two ways using the software I like is nice. Drop the price, or triple the online storage space and I might buy it.
at first i was also wondering why anyone would use this. but youre right. i would use this for syncing contacts. the other things would just be a bonus. i cant think of any other device i can keep my contacts so easily syncd with.
ya, theres att mobile backup. but thats $24 per year anyway. and i still have to pull it down to a pc. then i would have to import/export with outlook.
some phones (i heart nokia) can sync with servers pretty easily. but thats still manual or timed. and i cant get zyb.com to work for me anymore in the US ever since they "improved" their site. (i never get the confirmation text to my phone). and even still id have to import/export with outlook.
ya, its easy to just dock a symbian/winmo/whatev phone to the computer when i get home. but i never do. so i end up with different phones and different sim cards and different pcs with different contact lists. lol.
i think $99 is too much though. after two years with an iphone 3g (life of the contract) total cost will be back up to $397 and $497 if you get mobileme.
is there a better way to keep a phone contact list synced with my outlook without having to do anything manually? is there something im overlooking? i really hope so. but otherwise, i am considering this.
.mac and now MobileMe look appealing to me because they help wrap everything up conveniently. I know there are other, cheaper ways to sync information between devices, to organise email from several accounts, to host a website, to back up. But Apple are offering a coherent solution, one that would save me time: well worth 69 pounds a year.
However, I am hesitating about signing up because of reports that .mac is extremely slow when used from Europe. No point in spending money on a time-saving service if it actually slows you down. Is anyone aware whether Apple has taken effective steps to address the speed issue?
does anyone know if i can use any email address with this mobile me? I dont want to use a weird email address for business but if it is possible to use any email addy and wirelessly synch my iphone, pc, etc it would be great. thanks for letting me know.
Nope...for now (info from .MAC support) 3d party e-mail accounts are not supported. As suggested in several replies here you can forward your other e-mail accounts to your me.com or mac.com account.
IMO a little flaw (read cloud) in perfect blue sky.
I'm with MR DJ on his point he brought up.
Would my iphone have to be on constant data usage to receive updates?
Can calender updates be sent from iphone to iphone without using this service.
I lost my e-mail from my .Mac e-mail but for some reason it stayed in MobileMe. What happened? How can I fix this?
Mobileme is an outrage. Here's my video protest about Mobileme:
http://joesummerhays.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/my-ode-to-apples-mobileme-failure/
Is it just me or does that "ME" look a whole lot like the one on Windows "ME"? I'm just sayin.....
Apple's Discussion moderators deleted this comment from a .Mac iCards thread, so I'm plastering it all over the Web:
"Everyone, call Apple Customer Relations at this number to complain (I found it was the best # to call after trying several). They say number of complaints matters.:
800-767-2775 "
— k2graphics
What about Windows Mobile Phones ?