Cult of Mac absolutely panned Apple’s new MobileMe service; the replacement for the .Mac service. Their article more or less describes what most of the Apple community thinks about the new service, which can be summed up as Meh.
Is MobileMe good? Yeah, it is if you want to use nothing but Apple services. But what if you want to use Gmail or Flickr? Sorry, you’re going to have to do it Apple’s way with MobileMe – and it’s not better. And by the way, you’ll have to change your e-mail address too.
This is how to keep your digital life connected? This is convenient?
No, this is decidedly inconvenient. As a matter of fact it’s outright frustrating. And you have to pay for it.
Present and future mobile computing is all about using what you want when you want to connect how you want. Using the MobileMe service simply denies you that privilege.
Read more about the frustrations of MobileMe via the link below.
[More info: Cult of Mac]
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dig
16. Jun, 2008
considering nobody’s actually had a chance to actually use mobileme yet, how can anyone be so certain it sucks? consider perhaps apple’s target audience for mobileme is not the person who is willing to struggle to get free services all talking with eachother properly, more likely it the person who does not want to be bothered and would rather have a solution that gives them 90% of what they need and works out of the box. this just might be worth $8.25 a month, no?
Wayne
16. Jun, 2008
First, the Cult of Mac website certainly doesn’t represent “most of the Apple community”. Not by a long shot. Nor, as far as I can tell, does it claim to.
Second, the article is stupid. It assumes that all users are power users who enjoy having 3 or 4 different services that mostly inter-operate with the right tricks. And assumes that Apple’s job was to take this piecemeal approach and add a nice shine to it.
Third, you’ll note that the article dismisses MobileMe’s push technology in a single sentence. Ummm… isn’t that THE point? Web 2.0 with push that works with all of your devices.
MobileMe’s not cutting edge in any particular application, but it provides multiple applications that “just work” and just work with each other, along with push, storage and backup all in a single package. For many users, that’s more useful than “power user” cobbled-together alternatives.
Hammer
16. Jun, 2008
Hey Rich,
Do you do any research before your write your column?
You don’t have to change your email address from .mac, it will be intact along with a mobileme address as stated on Apples website.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1932
As the two other posts imply, it’s too early to tell whether mobileme will suck or not.
CM
16. Jun, 2008
You might want to wait until the service is actually launched before judging it.
Also, you don’t actually have to change your email address. If you have an existing .Mac address, it will continue to work. MobileMe can also be easily configured to work with your custom domain name which is especially nice for small business.
Push email, calendars and contacts plus slick, drag and drop enabled web applications are going to make for quite a nice service I think.
Jim
16. Jun, 2008
Freetard.
Partners in Grime
16. Jun, 2008
Yeah, I’d say it’s worth $8.25 a month just to keep my computers in sync, let alone all the other stuff included. I’ll be signing up for the first time since iTools was discontinued.
Robert Robb Livingston
17. Jun, 2008
I do not like ads.
I like simplicity.
MobileMe sounds great to me.
David Risley
17. Jun, 2008
Looks to me like the overriding point here was that it sucks because you have to go all Apple to use it. Which, from my reading, appears to be true. If you are using any other email service except for an Apple service, you can’t use this. Sure, you can forward all your Gmail to .mac, but that is a half-ass solution.
MobileMe seems OK for a niche audience of people. But, for anyone even mildly knowledgeable about the Internet, MobileMe and .Mac aren’t worth the money.
R
17. Jun, 2008
If you want to use yahoo, use yahoo!
If you want to use google, use google!
They are both free and both have great services that work well. If you are happy with them MobileMe doesn’t make sense. The fact is that MobileMe has a few things that differentiate it that people might like. Although it isn’t really mentioned I like the fact that .mac (nobody knows about MobileMe) has no advertisements. I’ll pay for that. And to echo Partners in Grime $8.25/month to make sure your machines (PC’s too) are synced is worth it to me.
Richard
16. Jul, 2008
it sucks, been using it, push never pushes, syncing problems constantly, the calendar is totally buggy in SAFARI!
Andrei Ivanoff
09. Mar, 2009
I actually installed all the updates on my computer and since I did it, MOBILE refuses to sync…
NOW IT REALLY SUCKS!!!!!!!