MobileMe was first launched in January 2000 by Apple as a service called iTools and then relaunched in July 2008 by the name “MobileMe”.
The application provides “an easy way to keep your iPhone,iPad, Mac and PC in sync”.
The features are :
- Calendar
- Contacts
- Find my iPhone
- Gallery
- iDisk (store and share your files online)
- Me.com (your own space on the web, access to all the features for Mobile Me online)
The most interesting feature I must say has to be “Find my iPhone”. You also can lock it and put it back to factory settings if someone has stolen it.
The pattern for today is “Software Above the Level of a Single Device“ and
Bill O’Reilly categorized the pattern this way :
Apple’s MobileMe is the perfect example and is in complete notion with the new era that has embraced ubiquitous computing to the fullest! More and more people are using their smart phones on the go and need the same information on hand as they had on their desktop computer or their laptop. With MobileMe people can update their email, contacts, pictures and calendars on every device they have synced MobileMe with. It is cloud computing put in motion. Every time you sync for example your calendar it will update on every single mobile or desktop device you have registered.
The advantage Apple has is that they have designed the different mobile devices MobileMe will be used on from the core. By controlling the progress all the way from the hardware to the operating system makes it far more reliable than many other services. They also market MobileMe as an application that the customers also can use if they have a PC.
A guided tour of the application
Since Apple take 99$ a year for the application it is safe to say that they have to make it extra special for people to pay that amount for it, but after reading some reviews online about the service it seems like people just as well can use various free services like DropBox instead of the service iDisk(that gives you storage space online) and Google's services such as mail and calendars.
One of the issues with MobileMe has to be the walled garden and the compatibility issue. With Apple controlling the development it can only be used with iTunes and you have to have an iPhone or iPad as your mobile device. This makes it impossible to use it if you do not have an Apple-product.
The application uses especially the practice “Extend Web 2.0 to devices” very well by making email, contacts, gallery and calendars sync with every device, but the problem is here is that the service is not free and the application is not good enough so people are willing to pay the price.
But no one can deny that Apple really knows how to make a simple and easy application to use.
Oh no, you've got spam,need some security plugins:)
ReplyDeleteI’ve never heard of Mobieme before maybe because I’m an android user…LOL
I guess is pretty good for Apple users, but I tried Me.com website you need a Apple ID to login, so I guess it’s not for users other than using Apple products.
Very good example for the pattern:)
Thanks for the comment! And the heads up on the spam ;)
ReplyDeleteI have not tried MobileMe myself, since I have not heard so much positive things about it. I started the registering process, but quickly it became clear that you have to give your credit card information before you can start. I am not interested in that so I stopped.
And about the Apple-ID, that is just an account you make to for example use iTunes, it has nothing to do if you run Windows or Mac. You can use MobileMe on both PC's and MAC's. But for now I think we are well off using Google's services :)
Hi!
ReplyDeleteWe've reviewed the same app :)
I agree with you, it is a walled garden with MobileMe or with Apple I should say.If you do not own any Apple products, there is not much point in getting one (since it is so expensive!). I am a user, but not sure if I will continue to use. Well... I am too lazy to switch so might stick with it, but I've just tried few other service like dropbox and sugarsync, and I am impressed!