Will you get Mobileme?

[Quillz]

Since I'm already a .Mac subscriber, I technically already use MobileMe.

[CPressland]

Well, i'm a .Mac user and I love it, the integration with Mail is just brilliant, it's the only feature I use and the push e-mail is an excellent idea, I will however still hand out my @mac.com address, not my @me.com address.

[HellScream63]

Already a dotMac member, so just waiting for the switch. I've been a member for almost three years now and this is a long overdue update so I'm excited to see how it works out.

[Blackice]

I'm probably not going to get it. I'm a bit unsure.

Firstly, Google offers most of these services for free.

- Gmail. Has IMAP. Not push, but they've been pretty active in improvements so far. Hopefully push is coming soon. Mail.App and iPhone Mail need better support for it.

- Google Calendar. I don't use it, but I understand that it has some sort of standard interface (webDAV?) for keeping things in sync. iPhone needs webDAV support.

- No photo sharing service, but I can mail the pictures to Flickr for that (from iPhone too)

- No contact sync, but iTunes sync does that. I don't need it OTA, and there'll probably be a 3rd party app to do it soon.

I'd prefer MobileMe for the better Mail.App and iPhone support (I'm a mac user), but it's far too expensive. And I don't like the fact that my mail address isn't guaranteed if I don't like the service and stop paying. If Apple guaranteed some minimal storage or redirection service, I'd do it. It also means I'm safe from getting anybody's recycled address, and wrong emails or spam. On the whole, Google seems much better to me.

I won't use things like the iDisk, so if Apple would release an ad-supported version of MobileMe with Mail, Calendar, Contacts, I'd switch from Google instantly. Then things like iDisk or photos could be added for a fee. Maybe make the core features free to Mac/iPhone customers only. And that fee should be lower than the ?60 ($120) it is now. I'm not show how much of a margin is on that tag, but I'd bet they could make it a fair amount smaller.

[CPressland]

Now that I've got a DropBox account i'm thinking the other way.. DropBox is free and gives me 2GB of Space, so now my only used feature of .mac/mobileme is the E-Mail

[Virtual Epiphany]

Now that I've got a DropBox account i'm thinking the other way.. DropBox is free and gives me 2GB of Space, so now my only used feature of .mac/mobileme is the E-Mail

Since Gmail made the switch to imap I can't see why anyone would pay for email service anymore. I was paying for .mac to use the icards......... ;)

[Cara Veteran]

Since Gmail made the switch to imap I can't see why anyone would pay for email service anymore. I was paying for .mac to use the icards......... ;)

iCards was a free service for all. ;)

[Cadium]

Since Gmail made the switch to imap I can't see why anyone would pay for email service anymore. I was paying for .mac to use the icards......... ;)

I find that Gmail's IMAP implementation is buggy with Apple Mail and does not integrate as well as .Mac Mail, with Gmail there are too many duplicate messages and issues with deleting messages which become annoying after a while.

[Cara Veteran]

I find that Gmail's IMAP implementation is buggy with Apple Mail and does not integrate as well as .Mac Mail, with Gmail there are too many duplicate messages and issues with deleting messages which become annoying after a while.

Hrm, I don't have this issue on my iPhone or my Macs... Any common elements in the messages being duplicated? Attachments or anything along those lines?

[Marcel T]

I find that Gmail's IMAP implementation is buggy with Apple Mail and does not integrate as well as .Mac Mail, with Gmail there are too many duplicate messages and issues with deleting messages which become annoying after a while.

Like Cara, I don't have any problems with Gmail and Apple Mail using IMAP, however I'm still keen to subscribe to MobileMe.

[Cadium]

Hrm, I don't have this issue on my iPhone or my Macs... Any common elements in the messages being duplicated? Attachments or anything along those lines?

It seems to be related to the All Mail folder, and when I try to delete a message Mail will remove it but if you go to the Gmail web interface the message hasn't been touched, and then the next time you open Mail it shows duplicates.

[PyX]

No, I don't have money to spend for an email account in my bank. There are free services around that are enough for me.

Mobile Me looks like it's owning everything though, or at least the interface does. I've just seen it quickly in the keynote, but hey, it was rather good.

[fukachu]

the fact that i will lose my email address if i stop subscribing is a bit of a concern but then i guess that is to be expected.

the reason im thinking of going mobileme is that as i live far from my family (japan and they are in australia) having a blog to keep them and my friends up to date with thins happening in my life is good. I could go an ad based blog system but i like the ability to do things my own way, have my own design etc. so my own webspace is needed. paying $6-7 USD a month for services is nice, but adding an extra couple of dollars to get the extra benefits of mobile me seem really worth while. i could then make a website through rapidweaver (more freedom with design etc) or a plain old iWeb theme and sync it all with mobileme. making everything easy.

mobileme might also motivate me to be a lot more organised. which is certainly not a bad thing at all.

apparently yahoo mail offers push email so that is a free alternative for people wanting push service on their phone without the mobileme service. I'll be trying it out first for free before i completely make the move to a paid service.

a question to .mac uses with photo galleries.. can you have more than one gallery and keep them separate from each other? i'd like to have some photo albums free from my family's eyes haha. so have separate galleries would be awesome..

Edited June 29, 2008 by fukachu

[togerland]

It sounds nice.... but over 100 dollars a year... its crazy

[Cormier6083]

No, because I don't really need of the features listed.

[Quillz]

It sounds nice.... but over 100 dollars a year... its crazy

It's $99/year. That's not quite over a hundred a year.

[FOOOD]

I already have .Mac so will continue with MobileMe (will keep my @mac.com email address though :) ).

I was using Gmail email accounts even though I have .Mac, but have recently switched over to .Mac because of the problems most people are complaining about (searching returns duplicates, deleting problems etc.). Can't really complain though as it's free. But .Mac IMAP is much better than Gmail.

a question to .mac uses with photo galleries.. can you have more than one gallery and keep them separate from each other? i'd like to have some photo albums free from my family's eyes haha. so have separate galleries would be awesome..

You can have (pretty much) as many galleries as you like but they're all displayed on 1 page. You can password protect photo galleries & movies though & they display a lock instead of the first picture, so I guess if you didn't want people to know what they were you give them 'cover names' (e.g. rename 'wild pool orgy' to 'best friends pet photos' ;)

[LTD]

I'm not sure why people are talking about "switching" to MobileMe or upgrading to it.

In early July your .Mac account will automatically be upgraded to MobileMe anyway.

[Digitalx]

may look at it for business mobility... on that note does this support emails outside of apples me.com like can you use your own domain for emails and stuff ? and does it support multiple users on one account ?

we currently use drop box for pc to pc sharing and file storage of development stuff.

[Chad]

It sounds nice.... but over 100 dollars a year... its crazy

It's $99/year. That's not quite over a hundred a year.

You can find it pretty easily for around $70. I paid $80 for a family license.

I already have .Mac so will continue with MobileMe (will keep my @mac.com email address though :) ).

I was using Gmail email accounts even though I have .Mac, but have recently switched over to .Mac because of the problems most people are complaining about (searching returns duplicates, deleting problems etc.). Can't really complain though as it's free. But .Mac IMAP is much better than Gmail.

Pretty much my stance as well. Gmail's implementation of IMAP just isn't very good. I hate knowing that if I delete something out of my inbox, it will still be in the All Mail box.

[dysmatik]

I'm already a .mac user, so yes I'll be using mobileme.

The new webmail interface looks promising.

[Argi]

The service sounds really great but lacks a few critical points for me. First is Windows support is limited to Outlook - no Windows Mail or Desktop Live Mail support. The next is that I already use Google Calendar and so this has no way to synchronise with it (I'd be giving it so many bonus points if it synced Windows Calendar, with Google Calendar, with my iPhone, etc for me). Ultimately the service is great if you're not using something else currently, but if you are support is very limited.

[dysmatik]

The service sounds really great but lacks a few critical points for me. First is Windows support is limited to Outlook - no Windows Mail or Desktop Live Mail support. The next is that I already use Google Calendar and so this has no way to synchronise with it (I'd be giving it so many bonus points if it synced Windows Calendar, with Google Calendar, with my iPhone, etc for me). Ultimately the service is great if you're not using something else currently, but if you are support is very limited.

But if you can access all your email & calendar via the web with mobileme, why have it sync elsewhere (other service providers like Live, Google, Yahoo, etc)?

[Blackice]

I wonder if the IMAP problems are because of Google's implementation of it, or Apple's Mail.App (on OSX and iPhone) not really being built for anything other than .Mac/MobileMe?

I suspect it may be a Google problem. But it is a real problem. For example, I have 4 folders now for Sent Mail. I don't know what the difference between any of them are. I've also got two junk folders, one of them with 1000 unread messages (probably the server one). This really wasn't made to be easy for your average user. I've also got loads of folders inside the [Gmail] folder. Oh, and then there are the duplicate email problems.

[FOOOD]

It's Gmail's IMAP that's the problem I think. I have a few other IMAP email accounts that aren't .Mac & they're fine. I only had trouble with Gmail's.

Having said that I never had problems with multiple mailboxes showing up.