Why Apple's MobileMe May Be Pushed to the Trash

Recently, I visited Apple's site and saw an advertisement for MobileMe, essentially a slick upgrade of Apple's Mac online service.

Let me say it upfront: this MobileMe is nothing new. Other companies have been offering services shown in MobileMe; and they're much better (individually) than Apple is, collectively. If you're impressed by Apple's demonstration and MobileMe's capabilities, you've clearly been living in a rut.

Apple's slogan for MobileMe is "Push e-mail, Push contacts, and Push calendar," and touts that unless we live in the business world, MobileMe is "Exchange for the rest of us."

Now I don't know what Exchange is, but I'm assuming it's some sort of synchronization for businesspeople so their devices stay up to date. Hey, if you're a businessman or woman and need integrated devices - that's great - switch over to MobileMe if you want. It'll probably sleeker and user-friendlier than what you use now. But really, the rest of us don't need this; and if we do, we don't need to go to Apple to enjoy it.

In the guided tour for MobileMe, we meet Jon (or is it John?) who you might recognize from the Macbook Air tour. Jon does his best to try and sell MobileMe, but to an astute guy like myself, his words just come up short. Jon starts off by trying to convince us that we have a lot of devices that are hard to keep "up to date." Now, it's true that I have a lot of devices. I don't have an iPhone, but let's pretend that I do; and I also have two computers, say a Mac and a PC. Now, I'm not sure what Jon means by keeping all my devices "up to date," but I see not reason to integrate my calendar onto two computers and an iPhone. I mean serious, the iPhone is going to be on your body at all times, or at least a lot more frequently than your Macbook will be. Why not just keep one calendar on the device you use most? There's no reason a casual computer/iPhone user should keep all their devices integrated.

Let's entertain for a moment the thought that you DO need integration. Sure, I know that there must be some crazy people out there even if I'm not one of them. You can still have a synchronized calendar available to you without using MobileMe or that Exchange thing. Simply use Google calendar. Google calendar looks a lot like iCal (although now that I think about it, how different can you make a calendar look?) and it's just as easy to use. Features shown in iCal (MobileMe) such as dragging and dropping events from one day to another are easily achievable in Google calendar as well. Best of all, Google calendar seamlessly synchronizes with iCal. Now you might be thinking "don't you need to log into Google to change or add an appointment?" Sure you do. But the same is required for iCal and MobileMe. You may be able to update your calendar on your iPhone or computer, but in order for it to update all your other devices, you need an Internet connection. So what's the different from logging into Google? Basically just convenience I guess. Oh, let me back up and explain how MobileMe works.

MobileMe integrates all your devices so seamlessly because it interacts with a central server, what Jon calls a Cloud. When you update an event, or e-mail someone, or change some contact information, this change is pushed up to the cloud, and the cloud pushes the change back down to all your other devices. Neat, huh? NO. I mean, YES. I'll admit, that is pretty cool, but the need for that is non-existent if you use (gasp!) Google calendar.

Ok, I might have convinced you on that, but odds are you're pretty smart too (otherwise why are you still reading?) and you're pointing out that MobileMe is more than just a fancy calendar.

MobileMe is an entire integrated system that combines your calendar, e-mail, general contacts, and photo disk management into one smooth online application. It all comes together at Me.com (http://www.me.com), and incidentally, whoever noted that Apple was buying up me related web domains about a month ago - good call. But back to business, me.com offers integrated e-mail services, contact management, calendar, and photo management all in one. There's also 20, or 40 GB of online storage. Again, Google, if you include the Picasa software, does all of this (except the online storage, I think); it's just not integrated onto your devices so... obviously. But really, Google doesn't have to develop something stupid like MobileMe and try to seduce people into using it. Since Google develops everything, you can reach anything (through a web browser - that was nothing new, Jon!) easily off of any of Google's services, Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Photo. MobileMe is like a sleeker, sexier, sluttier version of Google's varied services.

Two things I'd like to address directly are iDisk and MobileMe Photo Gallery. First, iDisk. Who needs 20 - 40GB of online storage? Most of us do not, not even for photos. And guess what, to send files of large size, Gmail has no problems - we don't need a separate place to link to in order to send large files. And if it turns out you do need massive online storage, 20 - 40GB is not going to be enough, and you'll end up paying for it anyway. So what's the different from Apple? (oh, right, it's all in one place... easier to get hacked...)

Now, the one thing I do think Apple did well with MobileMe (wait, what's left? I bashed everything with Google?) is the Photo Gallery. The seamless integration between iPhoto, Front Row, and MobileMe comes as a welcome relief to someone who has tried various online photo album services. Flickr is bad because you're limited by bandwidth, Yahoo! has a God - awful user interface, and Google's Picasa isn't friendly for online sharing (to be honest, I haven't really tried that very much). On the other hand, not only is uploading and sharing photos literally one-touch using MobileMe, I can view these albums easily through Front Row, which, admit it, gives a really professional presentation with 0 effort.

I think, however, that MobileMe tries to do too much too fast, and although it is nice, and honestly, very easy to use, I can't see many people fully utilizing the MobileMe platform to its fullest extent. Perhaps if it were free it would be a different story. Apple products that require monthly or yearly subscriptions do not interest me in general, and the steep yearly price ($100) is a major turn-off. Unless Apple has some hidden feature up its proverbial sleeves, I think I'll PUSH MobileMe into the trash for now. (Hey, I can always Time-Machine it back, later!)

Sources:

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/
http://www.apple.com/mobileme/guidedtour/