Apple gives MobileMe a makeover

Argh!

So, if an iPhone4 is $199, and MobileMe is $99 per year, then that 2 year contract means that an iPhone owner will pay as much for online service as he pays for the phone. And a total 2-year cost of ownership of more like $400.

Wow that's some serious spending. Then add on the cost of all those apps......

The iPhone really is a serious money-making machine for Apple.

rubbish

no new features -- they've been trickling out new features for a while now. i'm in the Beta and it is so unresponsive, GUI unstable, and just hangs intermittently I've downgraded to the old version out of disgust.

Shame it costs so much...

If it were £10-£20 I'd probably go for it.

Mobile Meh

As for the webspace, the code that iWeb generates and uploads to it has great difficulty working in any browser that isn't Safari. It either looks wrong or loads very... slowly... And http authentication doesn't work in IE.

back in the halcyon days of .mac

It was free.

Not that it matters now.

Odd, to think about it, it probably stopped being free right around the time that the first iPhone was unveiled.

As far as other's spying on you, isn't that what encryption+steganography, etc are for?

I'll get my coat, with some banned cookbook in it's pocket, my work is done here.

Usual overpricing

If you are mental enough to pay for Mobileme then it can easily be picked up for £40 on ebay - but still, the question is why would you bother at those over inflated prices.

I did use it for a year but there are better alternatives for free and I didn't see the need to keep funding Steve's stylish outfit's.

Stability and superior functionality at last!

When I decided to become homeless for a season and wander the world I took full advantage of iTools, then .Mac and the webmail was simple but worked beautifully wherever I went.

Then came MobileMe and the webmail interface was one giant FAIL. The damn thing would refresh at odd times and I lost more than one e-mail draft. People who used my iDisk reported random access problems and the whole thing looked pretty but insanely useless.

The stability improved over the past six months (though the Mail beta was tres buggy).

But this morning I'm happy to see the web-based MobileMe services rock-solid in Safari and Firefox. The interface is lovely, responsive and intelligently laid-out.

Huzzah!

Too expensive.

MyPhone offers enough service for anyone, and you can opt-out of the advertising if you want. Likewise the OVI store stuff, and Blackberry is binging out Blackberry Shield at some point soonish.

All of the already released ones are free if you have the right handsets. Google I wouldn't use, because I prefer not to give them ALL of my information. Blackberry Haven't announced a price for their service yet, but it's unlikely to be expensive, if they even charge for it at all. Plus the features I personally am more concerned about are remote wipe, phone location and OTA backup anyway, these aren't charged for unless you're Apple.

Expensive phone, expensive contracts, vendor lock-in and even the OTA backup being charged? You're having a laugh! I like the iPhone as a media and browsing handset, there is NOTHING to touch it in those areas, but for e-mail and actually making calls on it leaves an awful lot to be desired.

"Mobile Meh" <- I like

And I like Apple's stuff usually, it lets me get my work done (or goof off, as required) without a lot of grief. But I have yet to be convinced that Mobile Meh is worth $99/yr. I'd consider it at $29/yr. Or not… I'm kind of allergic to having my data held ransom.

It is worth about $70

It is better than free apps. Plus you can download all of your data that you put on it. In fact, that's pretty much where you start. The calendar and address book on your computer gets synced to the cloud and your phone. iDisk can do the same as well, you just need to tell it to. I'm not sure if the codes are country dependent, but you can pick up the US family pack on Ebay for about $70. The find my iPhone is especially good if you want to find out who your mate is rogering whilst you are at work.

Facebook

Apple have totally stolen The Facebook UI.