MobileMe, a Price Breakdown

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://theappleblog.com/2009/12/18/mobileme-is-it-worth-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheAppleBlog+(TheAppleBlog)' target='_blank'>http://theappleblog.com/2009/12/18/...+(TheAppleBlog)</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"If you believe the marketing hype, you aren't really a true Mac user unless you have MobileMe. MobileMe is pushed heavily in the Mac and iPhone UI as well as the Apple retail environment. Fancy terms like "beyond the box sales" are a clever way of saying "high profit" for Apple."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1261413870.usr105634.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Single license roughly $8.25 USD per month, before discounts if you buy direct from Amazon.com, so is it really worth that much a month? For me it is, and I'm on the family plan, but it is mainly worth it because everything I need to do in order to keep my family organized and in sync is in one nice package. If I was just doing this for myself, I'm not sure I would keep it. What are your thoughts?</p>

[Dyvim]

Totally worth it to me. Be sure to buy the discounted version from Amazon or another retailer. I got hooked for the Contact, Calendar, and Bookmark sync (which works great with XMarks to sync bookmarks with all your browsers on all your PCs and Macs). In our family we have 2 active iPhones, 2 more inactive iPhones (used as media players) plus a bunch of PCs and 2 Macs to keep synced- a MobileMe family pack works great for this.

Added bonus is the Mac sync features which are awesome if you have more than 1 Mac. I started off with a 5-month free trial (extensions due to the rocky MobileMe launch) and have been hooked since then.

The big thing for me, is that this allows iPhone users to have independent, simultaneous push sync eMail + PIM for work (via Exchange) and personal (via MobileMe).

[Michael Knutson]

Although the price could (and should) be lower, I use it (MobileMe) for Two Macs, Two PCs and an iPhone. Syncing is a no-brainer, and adding a new computer is as simple as syncing to/with my account (and replacing data on the new device). Windows has the MobileMe control panel, so all my major devices play nicely together in the sandbox, even with Windows 7 and Outlook. Add a bookmark, calendar or address book entry, and it appears everywhere. And iDisk on my iPhone allows me to easily access stored files. I'm also using DropBox just to have some redundancy for that "just in case" moment. I also use FoxMarks (XMarks) for Firefox, another nice freebie.

I'm still waiting and hoping for "universal translator" applications to translate -anything- to -anything-.

Michael

[SHC]

The price is a bit steep but having used it now for 8 months I couldn't do without it. It keeps my Mac Mini, MacBook and iPhone all in sync.
One wish? I wish the web portal would play nice with IE 6, thats what all work computers use.

[Deslock]

I wish the web portal would play nice with IE 6, thats what all work computers use.
F that; your IT staff should be fired. http://www.ie6nomore.com/

As far as mobileme goes, my wife likes it but I have no need for it.

[Michael Knutson]

In an ideal world, the mess that is IE6 would be long gone. The reality is that MANY enterprises still are standardized on IE6, Office 2003, and some flavor of XP (or even NT or OS/2). My previous employer is still in that group: with 25,000+ users to upgrade in 40+ countries, there is no such thing as a quick upgrade. to anything. And, HR & IT policies often prohibit user upgrades. So, despite MobileMe being immediately useful, getting fired because of it is not a good outcome. And so we improvise, devise work arounds, and tweak 'til it hurts.

I do like the future direction where the cloud will be the unifying component (the 'glue'), and we can access our data independently of device. Of course, being a security guy, there will be gigantic challenges, but bring it on! Apple does seem to be amongst the vendors in the forefront of this movement ...

[SHC]

I work for a large NHS trust / hospital and every PC, even the newer ones have IE 6 and Win XP. My workaround is to use a USB flash drive with a copy of Portable Firefox on it. Having said that, mostly I can get by with my iPhone.
(They are going to stop us using USB flash drives soon too):(

[Deslock]

In an ideal world, the mess that is IE6 would be long gone. The reality is that MANY enterprises still are standardized on IE6, Office 2003, and some flavor of XP (or even NT or OS/2). My previous employer is still in that group: with 25,000+ users to upgrade in 40+ countries, there is no such thing as a quick upgrade. to anything.Yeah, we still use XP where I work. However, at this point moving away from IE6 in a properly setup AD environment should not be a big deal (unless the company was foolish enough to write apps to work only on a proprietary, non-standards-compliant browser).

despite MobileMe being immediately useful, getting fired because of it is not a good outcome.My rant about them needing to be fired was tongue-in-cheek.