As my seventh and final day in my one-week experiment with MobileMe draws to a close, I find myself wondering why Apple would have set themselves up for failure like this. My week using the service has been anything but pleasant, and in fact I’ve found it to be a huge hindrance in my day to day activities.
This isn’t to say I don’t think MobileMe is a great idea. I’m a big fan of synchronization between my machines, and if I can expand that to my phone or other devices then all the better. The fundamental concept of MobileMe is sound, and I think it’s an idea that’s long overdue. One, integrated solution for keeping all your important stuff synced up and working. Great. I love it. Just make it work, and if you’re going to charge me for it, make it work better than the free services already out there.
I love the look of the web UI. It’s sleek and sexy, and it really looks like a desktop app being rendered inside your browser. With some fine tuning and elbow grease, I think Apple can certainly fix the issues it’s users a facing with it. It’s a new service, and bugs are to be expected; I just wish Apple would have spent a little less time making the UI pretty and a little more time adding useful features and making the ones already there, you know, work.
Another big concern I have with MobileMe is security. Nowhere on Apple’s site does it state how secure my data is in the cloud. Are they encrypting my bookmarks? How are they storing my settings? How about my mail? The fact that they don’t immediately recommend Outlook users enable SSL when they set up their account (as Gmail does) and the fact that the me.com web UI doesn’t support on HTTPS is truly frightening. iPhone and iPod Touch users aren’t able to tweak the security settings of their MobileMe configuration, so I question how secure that data is as it’s being passed over the airwaves as well.
Another issue that bugs me is Apple’s treating of Windows users as second class citizens. It markets MobileMe as a service perfect for Windows PCs, but it doesn’t bother to hook into any of the OS to really make it useful to us. We can’t set MobileMe Mail as our default email provider. We don’t get desktop mail notifications unless we use Outlook or another desktop email client, which kind of defeats the purpose of web mail. Don’t get me started on the fact that MobileMe syncs Internet Explorer bookmarks, but it’s web UI doesn’t support Internet Explorer; and the fact that they recommend Firefox instead, but it doesn’t sync Firefox bookmarks.
So; show-stopping UI bugs, lost mail, synchronization issues, an (apparent) lack of security, limited Windows functionality and no Firefox support. Needless to say, I’m so happy this challenge is over so I can go back to Gmail and Foxmarks.
Note: My Contacts list on my iPod Touch finally fixed itself today; I’m guessing Apple tracked down the issue and patched it in during maintenance last night.
I give MobileMe a very generous 2/5 — 
Good idea, shit implementation. Give it a year or two to mature before even considering moving your data to it.
Update — So, just a note to those of you thinking about trying MobileMe as well, be warned that your contacts and calendars will be wiped from your iPod Touch or iPhone when you start your account, and again if you cancel it. No way to get them back. What’s more, unsubscribing from MobileMe completely wiped out all my music on my iPod for one final kick in the balls. It’s okay, I love to resync 7.5GB worth of music. Good times.
Read my thoughts from day one, two three, four, five, six or seven.
Tags: apple, experiment, mobileme, one week
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why dont you people try exchange? You can have a hosted exchange account for around if not less money
I’m not sure what the “you people” means, but yes, you can obviously get a hosted Exchange account for less. However, MobileMe has a lot of other features that aren’t found in Exchange- bookmark synchronization, cloud storage, a web UI that isn’t hideous. Whether it turns out to be worth it or not, I think it’s worthwhile to try out new products and services, which is why I did this review.
Evan, I actually think you're being unduly harsh. MobileMe is much more powerful for Mac users than WIndows users. But have you ever reflected on what it is like using Exchange (which is the only competitor around) on a Mac? It means using Entourage which is basically a second-rate version of Outlook and is completely obsolete in a huge number of ways.You seem to have used MobileMe primarily on the web, with a heavy focus on email, and view the choice as being either Gmail or MobileMe. In reality, Mobile is primarily designed, like Exchange, to be used with a desktop or mobile client, ideally the Apple Mail/iCal/Address Book and iPhone combo, with data being synced seamlessly to the cloud and the web interface being used as a backup when you aren't actually using your own machine. Far from ruling out Gmail or any other IMAP-compatible mail server, it actually makes a lot of sense to use MobileMe in combination with Gmail, which is exactly what I do. See a record of my experience here.
Thanks for your comment, astrog. I appreciate your opinion, but I have to disagree. I own several Macs, and am painfully familiar with Entourage. However, for the purposes of this experiment I decided to approach the product from a Windows users perspective. Apple markets MobileMe as a powerful tool for Windows users just as much as it does Mac users, so it seems logical to approach it as such. The very fact that it has considerably more features under Mac than Windows was one the points I tried to bring into perspective.Also, Apple has heavily touted MobileMe's “next generation Web 2.0″ UI, which is why I approached that side of things so strongly in this series. I did test it under Outlook as well, but with luke-warm (at best) results. The problem with MobileMe's Web UI is that it flat out does not work in many regards, and Apple has yet to admit or face that problem.I certainly understand where you're coming from with your opinions, but I think you're missing my problem with MobileMe as a service. I love Apple products. I'm not a hater by any means. But they let me down terribly with MobileMe, and given the press it's gotten elsewhere I don't think I'm alone there.Out of curiosity, how do you use Gmail and MobileMe together? I was hoping to do this myself when I started this experiment, but MobileMe Mail does not support SSL nor IMAP importing, so I was unable to connect the services.
@Evan: Regarding the Windows/webmail/Mac issue, I guess we just have differing perspectives, not incompatible ones. I can easily believe that MobileMe is less than satisfactory for WIndows users, although that's something I can live with!. I still suspect it isn't as unsatisfactory as using Exchange is for a Mac user…Regarding using Gmail with MobileMe, I have been doing so from the start: of course, you can't use Gmail on the webmail interface, which is probably what you would have wanted to do… but you can use it with the MobileMe clients (Apple Mail, iPhone). They support SSL and IMAP. I use Google Apps with my own domain fro email, and MobileMe for calendar and contact items. Integration is perfect since all the mail is on IMAP and on the rare occasion when I need to access my email on the web… well, I just use the Gmail web interface.Apart from (1) poor spam control and (2) lack of support for personalized domains (I find it unacceptable being tied to a generic email address), MobileMe mail is actually pretty reliable (plus it offers push for those who need it). When those two major flaws are corrected, which I suspect they will in a future release, the product in my view will justify switching away from Google altogether.
I was able to run MobileMe under Prism using the standalone version of Prism and not the firefox plugin. Details in http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?thread....
I didn't think to try it under the standalone version, Opcao. Great tip, thanks!