mobileME

jester77

This sounds potentially interesting with its push technology. I've never used a .mac account so maybe someone can answer me something, is a pure closed shop in regards to what accounts you can use or could I use it to sync gmail, google calendar and google contacts and then push those to the iphone?

babypink

its closed

Sad Professor

What happens to @mac.com email addy? Is it no more now?

SP

jester77

Does look like a good service but I'm sure most people don't want to be changing their email address.

jpfahy

you keep your @mac but get a @me with the same name. I'm sure they'll phase @macs out after a couple of years though

johnk123

I personally never had .mac myself but i can definitely see myself signing up to MobileMe. I already use iCal and Address Book apps so the syncing process should be fine for me.

kevmac

.mac has been a brilliant for me with a mac at work, two macs at home and my iPhone.

All my info is always the same on all devices: Address Book, Bookmarks, iCal, Mail.

Worth the €100 a year alone.

I know that Google has apps that can do it all that but it's the OS X integration that clinches it for me.

dubmick

anyone know can you pay $100 a year if you are in the States (on holiday) ?

silvine

MobileMe looks interesting but Gmail can do a lot of those things.

Granted, Gmail has only 6GB+ of storage versus Mobile Me's 20GB but you can sync Google's calendar and address book with iCal and the Leopard address book using third party apps.

Can someone explain to me why the Mobile Me service is worth paying for or who it is being aimed at? USD100 is not cheap.

Chardee MacDennis

ye but mobile me is push which is way easier on users, also i would see a use for backing up my documents folder and having all those files available to me on the go.

its something i will be investigating more anyway..

jester77

silvine wrote: »

MobileMe looks interesting but Gmail can do a lot of those things.

Granted, Gmail has only 6GB+ of storage versus Mobile Me's 20GB but you can sync Google's calendar and address book with iCal and the Leopard address book using third party apps.

Can someone explain to me why the Mobile Me service is worth paying for or who it is being aimed at? USD100 is not cheap.

I have to agree with you there, 100$ is a lot for what they are offering when you compare it to Google, which is always improving.

The latest Apple update allows you to sync directly with the Google address book without third party apps so it's just the calendar that requires a third party app.

silvine

Yeah I'm curious about it. I like the Apple apps but the price is off putting.

Gerard_Smith

Heres my question, will it work with phones other than the iphone? If you have a Blackberry will you be able to get push email and calendar events from mobile me? Heck if you have a phone that doesn't support push email will you be able to get your mail at all?

silvine

That's a good question. I had a look at the videos on the Apple website and they gave no indication as to whether it will work with other phones. It does work with PCs though.

If it doesn't (and it looks that way), you'll need a Mac and an iPhone to really get the full benefit out of MobileMe. And considering the expensive iPhone tarrifs that makes MobileMe a more expensive package.

Google range of applications does a lot that this does already, although it's a lot clumsier about it. All the same, the convenience of MobileMe looks great. I'll definately be giving the trial version of it a go.

Who do you think it's aimed at? Business people, home users?

johnk123

I think it's being aimed at both to be honest. Personally i will need to investigate it further but for the like of school/college/work etc it would be very handy to be able to access all of your documents, presentations etc on the go. The whole updating all devices at once(demonstrated using the new contact and iCal entry examplt), it probably wont be much use to me, as when i update a contact on the go, it'll update address book itself when i next sync my iphone to my mac anyway.

unklerosco

dubmick wrote: »

anyone know can you pay $100 a year if you are in the States (on holiday) ?

Yep, well with .mac you could.. I bought a family pack while I was over there. Using it to host 3 websites at the mo n sync docs, contacts etc between work n home

Red Alert

I think I might go for it, I'm planning of getting an iPhone 3G and the mail server I run for my personal email has given me nothing only hassle in the past while.

Cabaal

Seems like a good idea but I don't see the BIG attracxtion over google's services which I can already sync and use on a number of PCs, macs etc already using ical with google cal and IMAP for mail, sure file backup would be handy but not worth 100 a year tbh

I can just use mozy or my own webspace for that if need be,

SouperComputer

I'm pretty diasspaointed with MobileME, or at least with what has been said about it.

Its far from "exchange for the rest of us" for a start, you cannot point the mx records for your domain to mobileme account. You have to use your silly .me address. Fine if you are a student, but most business worth their salt these days have a web identity and domain.

Sure, you can forward mails and add one account for IMAP, but the outgoing server is still wrong. Call it .mac v2, "exchange for the rest of us" its not.

Ill be using hosted exchange thanks very much. Probably keep iDisk for the sake of convienience, but everything else is moving to exchange.

aidan_walsh

Its not intended for business users. "Exchage for the rest of us" means OTA capability for home users.

chrislad

I'm probably going to get it, but I want a decent mail address. I'm sick of using pseudonyms etc.

randombar

jester77 wrote: »

I have to agree with you there, 100$ is a lot for what they are offering when you compare it to Google, which is always improving.

The latest Apple update allows you to sync directly with the Google address book without third party apps so it's just the calendar that requires a third party app.

Lads that's the best app ever, sorts out my contacts nicely! How did ye here about this? Any more handy ones?

Simon201

Hey people it seems to have taken Apple a while but they've finally copped on to the exchange rates. Mobile Me(.Mac) is now €79 on the ie site! Ok it's still not quite the €45 or €50 that you could get it on eBay but it's a step in the right direction.

And cheek of them! they're still looking for €99 if I renew through system preferences!

jpfahy

I read somewhere that mobileme will be $69 for iPhone 3G purchasers

Red Alert

I wonder will that offer be the case in Ireland? 50 yoyo's makes it a lot more palatable.

babypink

so i just signed up for the free trial.........lets see how it goes!

the webUI is down at the minute, teething troubles i'd say - it was up for about 15 mins but not anymore, but the native syncing and idisk work lovely. And for those behind nasty proxies in work - it plays nicely with Authoxy.

silvine

Tried logging in there. It's down.

punchdrunk

haven't been able to get into my .mac account all day,i need reports off it for feckin work
so tomorrow i'll be working from home in the morning before i go to ******, doing work i could have done today...
nice one apple!

Gerard_Smith

Any news on whether the email, push or otherwise, can be used with phones other than the iphone?

chrislad

The website only says Mac, PC, iPod Touch and iPhone.

Gerard_Smith

Thats going to be a serious limitation.

babypink

not really........ they're aiming to have a completely integrated solution for their product, not deal with everyone else's inability to do something like this.

babypink

was up briefly for about 15 mins.....now back down again!

unklerosco

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/apple-fesses-up-to-mobileme-transition-difficulties/

silvine

not really........ they're aiming to have a completely integrated solution for their product, not deal with everyone else's inability to do something like this.

That's Apple for you - proprietary, proprietary, proprietary.

maniac101

punchdrunk wrote: »

haven't been able to get into my .mac account all day,i need reports off it for feckin work
so tomorrow i'll be working from home in the morning before i go to ******, doing work i could have done today...
nice one apple!

I've been trying to access my .mac account via a web browser for two days now, without success. (The Mail app on OSX appears to be working???) As a long-standing .mac subscriber, I can't believe the poor level of service being provided from a subsrciption services provider. The web page says that "We are currently performing scheduled maintenance". Well if it's "scheduled", why didn't they tell anyone? If never experienced anything like it from free email service providers. I don't want mobileme, please give me my old .mac back!

I'M HOPPING MAD. :mad: VERY POOR SHOW APPLE!! (/now shouting at the top of my voice)

viperirl

Cant access my .mac email from a web browser either. As you said, I'd have expected better service from a subscription based provider. Really p*ssed off.

maniac101

Update: I managed to call up the mobileMe homepage once this afternoon. It informed me that mobileMe doesn't support IE7. It suggested an install of Safari (eh no thanks!) or Firefox. So, thinking this was progress after two days of no service, I installed Firefox, and guess what? Yep, same old message: "This service is temporarily unavailable.We are currently performing scheduled maintenance.
Normal service will be restored soon."

What a load of c**p.

viperirl

seems to be working now. Very slow though.

Red Alert

I'm disappointed. Think I'll be sticking with Google apps.

chrislad

If I see that maintainence message one more time.......

Type 17

Go to www.me.com and log in there instead (it's a bit slow, probably due to heavy traffic, but looks good so far)

chrislad

Working. Keep declining my Credit Card though even though a) there's enough on it and b) it's not being charged for 2 months.

atgate

chrislad wrote: »

Working. Keep declining my Credit Card though even though a) there's enough on it and b) it's not being charged for 2 months.

Mine was declined too - but just as well, there's word going around on apple support forums of people being charged £121 straight away on the free trial.....

chrislad

Worked with my fathers card. Odd.

Anywho, price is 79e for the year, which isn't bad. I really just need to get into the habit of using calender now as I could do with it.

chrislad

Pretty much up and running. Can't login via the website yet, but I can login through iDisk on OS X and I have everything syncing.

Gerard_Smith

Interesting that in the online video demonstrations they use Firefox rather than Safari on the windows end of things.

babypink

So i found this support note about push from mac to mobile me.....

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1155

it seems that it only goes every 15 minutes from your computer to the cloud.....this is clearly NOT push, this is NOT what people have signed up for. While things do actually push from the cloud to iphone......15 minutes from your desktop is not the "instant" they promise.

On the off chance that someone from Apple reads this - push doesn't mean once every 15 minutes, that's just normal syncing. Push means instantly, push means monitoring for changes and making the changes when made. A bit of clarity and correct advertising is what's needed here - there is some seriously misleading information going around about mobileMe.

Gerard_Smith

babypink wrote: »

So i found this support note about push from mac to mobile me.....

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1155

it seems that it only goes every 15 minutes from your computer to the cloud.....this is clearly NOT push, this is NOT what people have signed up for. While things do actually push from the cloud to iphone......15 minutes from your desktop is not the "instant" they promise.

On the off chance that someone from Apple reads this - push doesn't mean once every 15 minutes, that's just normal syncing. Push means instantly, push means monitoring for changes and making the changes when made. A bit of clarity and correct advertising is what's needed here - there is some seriously misleading information going around about mobileMe.

So let me see if I understand this, when being pushed from the cloud to a persons iPhone mac or PC that is actually instantaneous but pushing from an iphone mac or PC to the cloud takes 15 minutes?

Type 17

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

...pushing from an iphone mac or PC to the cloud takes 15 minutes?

It doesn't take 15 minutes, it happens every 15 minutes. This is not unreasonable, as making your Mac constantly chat to the cloud would slow it down and erode your available bandwidth. If you are using your Mac (making changes) then you aren't going to be using your other devices for a few (15?) minutes.
Anyway, if you have made a change on your Mac that you do want to see across the other devices immediately, just drop your Sync icon in the menubar and click on "sync now" - the cloud will push it down to the other devices almost immediately.

babypink

thats not the point......the point is that its being promoted as an instant (or close to) service that's automatic. People don't want to have to manually sync if they're paying for the service.

Pushing 10/15k with every change is not going to consume bandwith...we're talking about text here, not images.