Mobile Me

[JC86]

I just started on my 60 day trial so I can't really say for sure if it is worth the $99/yr fee but as far as I can tell, it's working pretty well for me. Here's a very preliminary list that I came up with from my two days of playing around with it.

Pro:
1) Allows you to keep your computer contacts, appointments and emails synced between your phone and computer. I love how I can edit and add info to my contacts now and just sync it with my phone over the air, with my PC it just got convuluted between outlook and outlook express and what not that I just never bothered. now with my macbook and iphone it works surprisingly well.
2) online storage for files, pics etc. No more mailing papers to myself to print in the library.

Cons:
1) $99/yr for what is essentially the luxury of convenience.
2) I might be wrong here but when I put an appointment down on ical, I can't seem to figure out how set alerts/repeats like I can with my iphone 3g, is there anyway to do that so i don't have to edit the appointment/reminder again on my phone after they've synced?
3) what's the point of another email address? between hotmail, yahoo, gmail and school email, I really have no need for another email address .. . what do you guys do with it?

 

[aphex]

Mobile Me, like with many things Apple, is fantastic on one hand, and PISSES me off on the other First off, let me say it can be found for SIGNIFICANTLY less than $99/yr, in fact I've seen many sell on eBay for ~ $35. Inside the box is just a code you enter to add a year to your account. So factor that into your decision. You can also use an older .Mac box if you can find it, they can sometimes be found even cheaper.

Now, onto the service. I've been using Mobile Me since just before it launched back in August. There was some major stability problems at first, but it has improved remarkably since it first launched. I find the ability to add/edit/access my iCal Appointments and Contacts, on the fly, over the air, and from anywhere to be absolutely superb. It really does make life easy and you don't have to worry about data being different in different locations. That alone was what drew me in and I have to say, it works well.

Now to the downsides (some which may not apply to you unless you use an iPhone, but i'll mention them nevertheless) Mobile Me is NOT 'exchange for the rest of us' as Apple originally advertised it. Push is half-assed and well, not really push. First off, it doesn't push read/unread status to the iPhone. For example, if you get 3 new messages, they get pushed to both my iPhone and Mail.app on my MacBook. Both show the little status indicator that I have 3 new messages. If I check the messages on my MacBook, the fact that the messages have now been read doesn't push to the iPhone, so if I go pick up my iPhone later, it will STILL show that I have 3 new e-mails. Only when I open the Mail application on my iPhone will the status update. I didn't think it would annoy me at first but it really has. Second, along the same 'push' lines, its not really push in any variation of OSX, its timed Sync. Not a big deal for everybody, but with the automatic setting there is the real possibility that you would update information in iCal or Contacts and shut off your laptop before the info automatically syncs (again, it was advertised as Push). Leopard automatically sync's with Mobile Me (the cloud) every 15 minutes, while Tiger only syncs automatically once an hour. You can run a terminal command (which I highly recommend) to lower the sync time to 1-2 minutes, but still, its not Push by any stretch of the imagination. Finally, my last complaint involves iDisk. It works, don't get me wrong, but its slow, very slow. In fact, I would call it Slow as Balls. Once in a blue moon it speeds up, but thats very rare. I have a 15 MB up / 2 MB up and uploading to iDisk and even browsing on occasion is painfully slow.

Now, with all that said, ironically I still like the service. My e-mail address is now short as hell and couldn't be easier to remember (XXXX.X@me.com). I wish I had faith that apple would fix my complaints, but knowing how long people went with issues with the previous .Mac, I have no faith that Apple will ever address them. For the time being, I'm sticking with it. The over the air sync is just too beneficial to myself for me to give up.

 

[JC86]

I noticed that whole semi-push as well . . . minor annoyance. . . Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you can just click on the sync icon on the upper tool bar and tell OSX to sync right away. Still, an extra step that shouldn't be necessary with real push.

 

[alevasseur14]

Aphex pretty much nailed it. Same gripes here.

I will share a work around for the additional email address though. I use my gmail account for everything but I want what sort of passes for push with my iPhone. What I did was set up my gmail account to forward all messages to my .me address. Then, once I got all the accounts set up on my respective computers, I went in and manually changed the SMTP servers to my old gmail account. I get all the messages pushed to my phone and if I reply from any or my machines or my iPhone, it still looks as though it's coming from my gmail account. I dig it.

I'm going to have to do some soul searching (and wallet searching!) when my free trial is up, but so far I think I'll stay with it, if only for the contact and calendar syncing.

 

[JC86]

Originally posted by: alevasseur14
Aphex pretty much nailed it. Same gripes here.

I will share a work around for the additional email address though. I use my gmail account for everything but I want what sort of passes for push with my iPhone. What I did was set up my gmail account to forward all messages to my .me address. Then, once I got all the accounts set up on my respective computers, I went in and manually changed the SMTP servers to my old gmail account. I get all the messages pushed to my phone and if I reply from any or my machines or my iPhone, it still looks as though it's coming from my gmail account. I dig it.

I'm going to have to do some soul searching (and wallet searching!) when my free trial is up, but so far I think I'll stay with it, if only for the contact and calendar syncing.

Can you get into a bit more detail on how you did that? right now i have both my .me and gmail emails on my iphone and mac and its getting annoyign switching between the inboxes . .. that seems like a great way to utilize the .me as a push email . . .

 

[alevasseur14]

Well, setting up Gmail to forward your messages is pretty simple.

After you've done that, head into mail settings on your phone. I removed my Gmail account completely after I was sure it worked, but you can also just disable it. Select your .me account and then go into 'Account Info'. Then touch SMTP. Under primary server it should have your .me details already filled in. On my phone, it also had a address for Gmail already there. I just selected that, re-entered my password and was good to go. I even went as far as to delete the SMTP info for .me so I'm sure that all mail sent goes through Gmail.

The process for Mail.app is pretty much the same, it's just the location of the settings that differs.

 

[JC86]

Thanks alevasseu14!, I tested it out and my test email was pushed to my iphone within 2 seconds of sending it and now all my read emails on my Mac will register as read on my phone once i open the mail app, I still have to open the mail app for read mail to register as read but that's just a minor annoyance. Thanks again!

 

[alevasseur14]

Feels good, doesn't it?!?

Glad everything worked out for you. I have a feeling as time goes on, the whole push thing will start to work better. I've been wondering if the background notification service will help the mail app keep up on the phone...?

 

[Wonderful Pork]

I am also on the trial, the main reason I signed up is for push calendar & contacts. Nuevasync.com syncs both with google for free (using exchange I think). I love it! Especially using CalDAV in iCal makes everything seamless as iCal becomes "push" as well. Now if only they could do push gmail. Currently I use the forwarding method for mail only, and it is very doubtful that I'm going to sign up for paid mobile me service. If they indefinitely extend my free subscription I'd keep it.

 

[Parasitic]

MM isn't pushing notifications to my iPhone...I'm actually a little disappointed. When I had a Blackberry Pearl, "push" meant something - new emails arrived to my inbox nearly instantlg even from IMAP boxes that weren't officially on an Exchange server...

Plus with 3G and push on, my iPhone goes down to 1/2 the battery by 5pm after getting fully charged each night. I've so far had to turn it back down to fetch every hour instead.

Oh wells, I did manage to score a really nice email account - too bad MM still won't let me send outgoing messages with a different reply-to address. I'm doing it through GMail these days, although I should probably use a different SMTP server soon.

I did manage to score MM for $70, so I'd probably keep the service for a year, and if it doesn't get much better by the next then it's not much of a loss.

 

[JC86]

Can you guys get into some more detail about where you got the MM subscriptions at discount prices? Is ebay reliable? I'm hesitant to pay somebody for a used registration key or empty box.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: JC86
Can you guys get into some more detail about where you got the MM subscriptions at discount prices? Is ebay reliable? I'm hesitant to pay somebody for a used registration key or empty box.

If you buy from a seller with good references, you shouldn't have to worry.

 

[Parasitic]

Originally posted by: JC86
Can you guys get into some more detail about where you got the MM subscriptions at discount prices? Is ebay reliable? I'm hesitant to pay somebody for a used registration key or empty box.

If you purchased a new Mac you're able to get it for $70.

 

[Tegeril]

The syncing email "new" status issue mentioned above works fine for me. I read it in Apple Mail, my mailbox on my iPhone refreshes and the emails are flagged as read. Not sure why it's not working for people.

 

[alevasseur14]

I think what people are getting at is that we shouldn't have to open the mail app and let it refresh. The read/unread status should be pushed. So if you see the badge telling you there's an unread email and then you read it on your computer, the badge should dissappear.

 

[Parasitic]

I'm turning off push on my iPhone for now. The battery drain is way too much.