MobileMe Update Adds Lustre to Apple Cloud

Lonnie Lazar ()

mobileme_login.png

It’s taken almost eight months, but Apple seems to finally have the mobileme cloud services product firing on all cylinders after an update Wednesday.

A redesigned log-in page is the most obvious cosmetic change but a perceptibly faster UI and better integration among calendar/mail/contacts appears to bring the service up to a level worthy of the hype that accompanied its launch last July.

See the Apple support document for details and let us know in comments how you feel about mobileme. Is it worth $100 a year?

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About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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  • firesign

    for $50 a year i’d consider it. for $100? don’t think so.

  • http://www.jeremystuff.com Jeremy

    I originally bought a .Mac account to do a web site for my Youth Group at church. between the web site and groups I thought it would be fun. And it only cost me $60 or $70 the first year. Now with the automatic sync with my iPhone and the “cloud” and the photo galleries, I love it! It’s totally worth it! I don’t use it for my church anymore but I have my personal web site and my wife’s photography business web site plus hosting all the photo sessions in the gallery. We use it ALL THE TIME! It’s definitely worth the money for us!

  • csbmonkey

    Nope. It is not worth $100 a year.

    I am currently in the midst of replacing everything MobileMe does with other services that are available online. Dropbox is faster for syncing than iDisk and LogMeIn is much faster than Back To My Mac for remote desktop (and is cross platform). Syncing address book contacts will go to Gmail now, as will iCal syncing. I am using Picasa Web for galleries (faster than MobileMe pages and easier to get embed code for photos from) which I can upload to straight from iPhoto on my G5 (or Picasa for Mac on my Intel MacBook). For $100 a year I can have my own domain with a host like PowWeb and have unlimited storage and transfer space. It may not be iDisk easy to access, but 20GB vs unlimited for the same price, PLUS 650 email addresses, plus point and click installs for a wide array of open source aps for blogging and wikis and photo galleries.

    There are a few things you can get out of a MobileMe (nee .mac need iTools) account that are specialized, but for the most part everything offered at MobileMe can be done just as easily with better and free services available elsewhere.

    My biggest regret is that I used my .mac email address for SO many things. That’s pretty much why I am using up my last year with MobileMe to slowly migrate all the registrations I did with .mac to gmail. More unfortunate are the shareware applications I purchased that I used my .mac address for.

    I will say that I certainly think that Apple pulled a long term bait and switch here. This goes WAY back to iTools, of course. iTools was limited, but they gave you that free .mac email address. That was nice. Then iTools was canceled and .mac came into being with hardly much difference between it and iTools except you had to pay money to keep it (there was iDisk as long as you didn’t mind waiting in perpetuity for your files to upload/download/open/save). However, for a paltry $10 a year you COULD keep that .mac email address with an email only account. Then MobileMe comes along, flounders for months with a lousy deployment and silently ditches iCards (one of the single most silly fun things about iTools and .mac and couldn’t have been remotely difficult for them to keep going but it just wasn’t perceived as “cool” anymore) and more silently ditches the email only availability for .mac accounts. SO, it took a while, but damn if they didn’t hook, line and sinker at least a few people starting way back in the days of iTools with those free .mac email addresses. You get people using it for free, get them REALLY using it with registrations, etc. and then make them pay a little to keep it (or a lot if you didn’t want to go through the pain in the ass it was to get email only) and then make them just downright pay a lot to keep it.

    Not to mention that you do NOT get anything EXCEPT chat support for MobileMe period. $100 a year for a service you will never be able to talk to anyone at Apple about.

    I am keeping up with my own changeover from MobileMe to the other services and plan to write up documentation on how to ditch it.

  • http://411macjunkie.com 411macjunkie

    I believe it worth it as well! It mainly depends on the individual. Would you use it for business use or personal use? How often do you check your email and need to access and transfer files? These are just a few questions an individual should ask themselves before buying this service.

  • Duality

    I love, love, *loooveee* MobileMe. I couldn’t be happier with the service so all of these updates are just icing on the cake. I know people have had issues with it, particularly those that got on board on launch day, but it’s been absolutely problem free for me.

    It’s just the best service I’ve paid for on my computer/handhelds. I think it’s worth it purely for the cloud syncing of my calendars and whatnot, but the webspace, email address (which is now my primary email address) and web drive make it really exceptional.

    MobileMe all the way. =) Here’s hoping they keep updating it to really make it shine.

  • Sinister Joe

    It’s definitely worth it if you own more than one Mac and an iPhone. As someone pointed out you can replicate most of the features using free services but that takes time to setup, different logins, setup on each computer, and is less integrated with other Apple apps like iLife. It really comes down to the simple question of if $100 (much less, in fact) is worth the amount of time you save by using a pre-fab solution.

    I really dig the fact I can sync my Mail rules, bookmarks, keychains, contacts, and calendars between my 3 Macs and iPhone by basically entering a username & password on each machine. Total setup time is probably 30 seconds per machine at most.

    If I’m not at my computer I can just use the website for everything instead.

    The Backup app that’s included with MM is actually quite good also. I use it locally backing up to my file server and also backing up some select items to my iDisk.

    It’s also an under looked feature that some (all?) of Apple’s pro-apps support it also. I use MM to sync my Logic stuff between my two audio workstations.

  • designwallah

    csbmonkey, you’ve summed up the fiasco perfectly. I’d like to add that syncing between more than one computer and the cloud has been a nightmare. ANd they’ve just added iDisk, but it seems that you can only share one file with friends. Apple’s solution to share more than one file is to create an archive of the multiple files and share that archive – this seems very lame.

    I too am considering using Gmail and the other Google apps with which I will be able to sync to my iPhone. And Dropbox is truly great, so with a bit of digging around, I’m certain there’s a slew of tools available for much less money than MobileMe.

    It would be great to see you document your switchover.

    Thanks.

  • http://jimmerish.com theguycalledtom

    Alas, I pay for it but I sometimes don’t know why. It’s far more buggy than the majority of free software out there.

    I can’t search my mobileme email inbox from my iPhone because the iPhone app doesn’t support it and mobileme won’t let me log in to the web app from my iPhone’s safari client (unlike gmail).

    The mobileme calendar doesn’t seem to support daylight savings so all my appointments are displayed at the wrong time.

    The iDisk regularily times out when I’m trying to upload important files. The list goes on and on.

    My bookmarks will only occasionally sync between my devices and they have removed the feature to view them online.

    However, that being said, the media seems to only focus on the problems that the service had for a couple of days last july. Get over it! It started working again just a few days later and they gave me a 3 month extension. There are many more issues that can be complained about!

    It would be cool if they included the iWork web apps as part of your mobile me subscription, but i bet they will try and create an extra fee for that.

  • Slagheap

    They STILL(!) haven’t fixed the photo gallery rearrangement thing. If you have photo galleries published from Aperture, they show up on the page in alphabetical order. No matter what rearranging you do when logged in to me.com, the changes are always forgotten, and they always show the same way on the actual gallery page.

  • Danny

    Is it worth $70? That’s what I paid for the service, by going to products.google.com and shopping around. Same price for the yearly update too. It’s just a box with a number in it. Why pay more?

  • Sonia

    I originally bought a .Mac account to do websites for myself. It only cost me $70 the first year. Now with the automatic sync for various apps, I don’t know if I can do without it! I hated to see some of the things go with the transition from .mac to MobileMe but I think it’s still totally worth it! I have decided to take a 90 break from my websites. For other apps I use it ALL THE TIME! It’s definitely worth the money for me! I am not sure I can give up my MobileMe. For me, it’s tightly integrated between MobileMe and iLife (iPhoto, iWeb,) and other apps [Safari Bookmarks, Keychain, Mail (rules, signatures & Smart Mailboxes), Address Book, and iCal]. I am constantly uploading pics to my MobileMe gallery, can Google Sync do that or will I have to use Picasa? Will Google support uploading my websites from iWeb?

    I’m in IT and I own more than one Mac, use Windows sometime and my daughter has an iPhone also. I also agree as someone pointed out you can replicate most of the features using free services but that takes time to setup, different logins, setup on each computer, and is less integrated with other Apple apps like iLife. It really comes down to the simple question of if $150 now that I use the family pack (much less, in fact) is worth the amount of time you save by using a pre-fab solution.

    I am usually at one or the other so no matter where I am I can just use my mac, iPhone or the website and everything will stay synced. Did I mention I love my iDisk too?!

    Like someone else stated: It’s also an under looked feature that some (all?) of Apple’s pro-apps support it also. I use MM to sync my Logic stuff between my two audio workstations. I don’t use the pro apps but I am glad they work with each other just in case I ever do.