Apple's suite of online services made headlines last year when it changed its name from .Mac to MobileMe. Not because anyone cared what it was called, but because the revamp went so badly that the internet resounded for months with the caterwauls of dissatisfied users.
To cut a long story short, MobileMe is now fixed and does all the things it was supposed to – syncing your email, contacts and calendars between devices; hosting websites; storing and transferring files, and creating online photo galleries – without falling over. Which is nice.
But are those things enough to justify the asking price of £59 a year? Let's take a closer look at what you get for your cash.
Mail bonding
MobileMe's best trick is 'push'. When someone sends you an email, it pops up immediately on your iPhone or iPod touch, wherever you may be (that's if you've got a Wi-Fi connection or, with the iPhone, O2 reception) cutting out the need to waste time and battery checking every few minutes just in case.
Any changes to Address Book or iCal are also transferred. It all works the other way round as well, so contacts and appointments you add on the move are immediately reflected on your Mac. Emails appear on the iPhone faster than texts, sometimes within one second of being sent.
In fact, syncing can be almost too fast: click the To Do icon in OS X Mail, and the new item appears on your iPhone before you've even typed what it is you have to do.
The only limitation is, as far as we can establish and despite claims to the contrary, that MobileMe doesn't push to your Mac – Mail still has to check the server at preset intervals, set in Mail > Preferences > General.
It's incredibly convenient to know you'll see the same messages, contacts and calendars on your main Mac and iPhone or iPod touch, any other Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later and PCs: MobileMe can also sync Microsoft Outlook and Windows Address Book, and a MobileMe Control Panel is installed in Windows as part of the iTunes download (the latest version is 1.4).
LOTS OF OPTIONS: With MobileMe you can see the same mail, contacts and calendars on your main Mac in OS X Leopard, an older Mac running Tiger, an iPhone or iPod touch, or on a PC via Safari for Windows
MobileMe isn't the only way to sync, though. Google Mail, for example, can also sync and push to Macs, PCs and iPhones, and Google Calendar and Contacts can join the fun too. However, while setting up MobileMe is as easy as entering your member name and password, Google's tools take a bit more effort if you want to get them to sync.
It's not impossible, but there's a fair bit of headscratching involved before it typically runs smoothly. If you get your work email from a Microsoft Exchange server, you can get email pushed to your iPhone or iPod touch by setting up an Exchange ActiveSync account, as explained here.
However, you can't have it both ways: mail can only be synced from MobileMe or Exchange, not both. (With contacts and calendars, both systems can coexist but won't merge with each other.) If you use, say, Exchange for work and MobileMe for personal email, a solution is to sync one and set the other to forward all mail to that account.
Your comments (14) Click to add a new comment
alex102
August 23rd 2010
14. If you want all your digital data accessible wherever you go then there is no better solution than Livedrive.com . Livedrive provides unlimited online storage space for a low monthly fee. Files uploaded to Livedrive such as music, photos, documents and videos ect can then be accessed from any computer with an internet connection or any mobile device such as a iPhone and iPad. I hope you found this post helpful.
Alex
Livedrive Team
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lovlid
October 13th 2009
13. @ ghostshadow.
"When you shop at the supermarket, do you ask the manager to "justify" the price of an item?"
YES you DO. If the apple costs too much and tastes funny, of course you do.
@ jragosta.
Of course the journalists get it. As you say in your post, "if enough people buy it, its a success". But if you didn't read about it first, you wouldn't buy it, therefor, not a success.
And come on, would you buy an M6 without taking it for a test drive?
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marktyers
October 11th 2009
12. I have not renewed my MobileMe account. I bought a family pack but decided I could get most of what I wanted for free! The family now use Gmail and google calendars which provide Exchange push. For cloud storage I replaced my iDisk with DropBox which provides 2GB plus up to another 3GB if you recommend friends, which means I now have 5GB for free! It also syncs far better than MobileMe.
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ghostshadow
October 11th 2009
11. What makes MobileMe worth £59 a year?
If you don't think that it's worth it, then don't pay. It's that simple. Apple doesn't have to "justify" anything.
When you shop at the supermarket, do you ask the manager to "justify" the price of an item? Of course not. Either you pay or you don't.
So I guess I don't get the point.
BTW--why make site registration so difficult at TechRadar?
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ctwise
October 11th 2009
10. "The article states you cannot push to a MobileMe account and an Exchange account both. This is incorrect. You can not activesync more than one Exchange account. You can however use activesync for one exchange account and still receive push mail for MobileMe."
You can get push mail from multiple accounts but you can't get push calendars and contacts. If you push sync calendars and contacts with Exchange you can't also push sync them with MobileMe. You have to choose.
You can get MobileMe for less then what Apple charges for it. Amazon.co.uk charges £53.29 for it. That works for renewals as well as initial purchases.
It's worth it for me and I really only use one service - the syncing of mail, contacts and calendars. That's because it works seamlessly with both the Mac and the iPhone. Easy enough for my wife to use so we can share calendars. I can locate the phones if I need to as well. That's enough for me to justify it.
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jragosta
October 11th 2009
9. @munkstar: "2. Oh no another fanboy response ..."
That's the kind of mindless response that establishes your inability to think logically.
My response was not that of a 'fanboy' of any time. I would have made the same response if someone had asked Microsoft to justify their price for Windows 7 Ultimate or BMW to justify the price of an M6. It's a simple matter of how capitalism works. Vendors set prices and customers can choose to buy, not buy, or (in some cases), negotiate. Expecting a vendor to every whining blogger who comes along just because that blogger doesn't like the price is inane.
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roberto
October 11th 2009
8. I've used this service for years,.mac before it became mobile me,and its a great service and at just over £1 p.w its pretty good value!!
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boybunny
October 10th 2009
7. If I want to hear drivel from a Mac fanatic, I will go to Macformat and read it. At very least, if techradar is going to republish biased content from other sources, there should be a WARNING at the start of the article letting us know that the following content is not necessarily the view of techradar.
I would not trust the opinion of MacFormat writers as far as I could push them uphill with a stream of my own urine. Mac Fanatics are propagandists and NEVER criticize mother. So why put your readers through it?! I have just left the Apple hardware for life because of **** hardware, **** software, **** OS and **** service from Apple, not to mention the BS lies that mac fanatics spout about how great their crappy OS is.... I DO NOT want to be put through more of their lies!
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dbkguy
October 10th 2009
6. As a MobileMe subscriber I found it very hard to renew recently. I've had trouble with double even quadruple contacts, double notes, trouble getting things done in the photo album on a regular basis. The worse in my opinion is the web mail program. Do your research and you will find lots of people having trouble still with MobileMe.
The web mail program is very frustrating to use. It constantly reconnects, takes forever to do anything, and is just plain irratating to use. It worked find at one time, but now it's hardly usable.
I will give them one more year to fix this and if it's not better I'm bolting.
As far as the price goes, you can get the price down by searching for it on Amazon.com.
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mohai
October 10th 2009
5. Hey, if it gets your iPhone back from being stolen its worth it xD
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skruggs
October 10th 2009
4. As a Mobile Me subscriber in the US, I can tell you how I got my full value in one day.
My iPhone was stolen along with my wallet and passport. Using Mobile Me I was able to locate the phone and provide the police with a Google Map to its location.
I was then able to remotely wipe the contents of the phone before the thief was able to figure out the unlocking PIN. Mobile Me emailed me to confirm that the iPhone had received the wipe request and a what exact time the wipe had started.
This feature alone has made the service invaluable to me.
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linuxone
October 10th 2009
3. The article states you cannot push to a MobileMe account and an Exchange account both. This is incorrect. You can not activesync more than one Exchange account. You can however use activesync for one exchange account and still receive push mail for MobileMe.
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munkstar
October 10th 2009
2. Oh no another fanboy response .... me? i want subjective journalism please, so keep it up. If like, you know, you want, like, pandering, like, why not just go to another website. you just dont get it etc
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jragosta
October 10th 2009
1. You journalists just don't get it.
Apple doesn't have to justify anything to anybody. They offer a service. If you don't like it, you don't buy it. If you like it, you buy it. If enough people buy it, it's a success. If not enough people buy it, Apple will drop it or change it.
For me, MobileMe is a great deal and I'm very happy with it. It saves me a HUGE amount of time and effort. If it's not suitable for you, there's nothing wrong with that, but at the same time, Apple has no obligation to justify the price to you or to anyone else.
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