MobileMe to go free?

Sad Professor

From MacDailyNews:

We have received a tip that we cannot confirm, hence our "RUMOR" designation, that nonetheless has at least an air of credibility about it that says, "Apple is planning to make MobileMe free."

No timeframe was given for MobileMe to go free, other than: "sooner than later... depends on certain facilities going operational."

That's all we have at this time.

Just a rumour of course, but very likely to be true. See this story from last year about Apple constructing a 500k square-foot data-centre. Apple will have to become a contender in cloud computing to stay ahead of Google. I'd rather they just buy DropBox though.

I miss the early days of iTools when it was free. Even after they introduced subscription, it would have been nice if they had included a free .Mac address with each Mac sold.

Iomega Man

Oh that would be so great, I wonder about hosting though?
Would they charge seperately?

Dorsanty

It would no doubt be a system of give a basic level of service for free and then start charging for greater storage for e-mail, idisk and other services. Once you have people on your service they are more likely to upgrade with you than venture off to another service and pay there.

projectmayhem

Hope to god they offer those of us that pay for it something as a compensation. Not only do I have my yearly sub, I also have one or two .Mac boxes to redeem in the future...

Hobbes

There are a lot of free hosting/cloud drives out there. So the only real thing of interest to me is the iPhone location device.

Pixelcraft

betafrog wrote: »

Yes but iDisk integrates with the OS quite nicely so would be good to have, especially if free.

As a mobileme and dropbox user, idisk doesn't compare. It's rubbish, really disappointed with it, and I don't usually say that about apple things.

brav

Well the new beta is up and running for current members, no mention of being free yet...

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/news/2010/05/the-next-mobileme-mail-now-in-beta.html

* Widescreen and compact views
* Rules to keep your email organized everywhere
* Single-click archiving
* Message formatting toolbar
* Improved performance
* Increased security with SSL

440Hz

It would be fantastic if they made it free, or at least cheaper... €80/year isn't peanuts!! lol

projectmayhem

Must say I am enjoying the beta of me.com... it's basically the UI from the iPad mail.app - so it's quite slick. Certainly more slick then any webmail apps out there. Could well be a sign of the future for both the Mac mail app and perhaps a launch to provide it free...

Hobbes

Pixelcraft wrote: »

As a mobileme and dropbox user, idisk doesn't compare. It's rubbish, really disappointed with it, and I don't usually say that about apple things.

I would have to agree. Dropbox is so much easier and faster.

cornbb

What would free MobileMe mean? It means it would have to be ad-supported, with Apple leveraging every little thing they can learn about you to make a buck, a la Google. No thanks. My main reason for moving to MobileMe was to get away from all of that.