MobileMe packages disappear from Apple's shelves

Re: Why pay?

What ads? Just logged onto my gmail account, no spam, no advert emails, in fact, I had to look all over for the advert, there is one, a single line of text, no pictures, no flash, no gif's, just text. one line of it.

of course, you have seen all the ads, haven't you, being a google customer? you have, haven't you?

Err, what?

Oh, well done. You thus blithely assume Apple does NOT scan anything passing through their servers.. As for anything Apple provided, you will have to accept that you're paying 30% more for everything because Apple wants a take of that too, not just of its overpriced hardware..

I like Apple kit, but that doesn't turn me into fanboy - and neither has it rendered me naïve..

not psychology

it's that apple consumers understand 2 things:

- its about TCO, not purchase price

- good support is worth what small difference there might be.

no worries

because it;s a subscription service, if they lower the price or radically change the service, you will be automatically refunded. They've done that once before already (not to mention they have to by law, not that anyone forced them to).

iDisk

I wish iDisk played nice with our corporate firewall. For reasons that no one is entirely sure of, sometimes iDisk just doesn't work.

But Dropbox does. And it's faster.

It was free

The original service that morphed into MobileMe *was* free to begin with (over 10 years ago I think - don't recall when it started). I had years of free use (it goes back a long way). When it became a paid service, Apple initially gave away some stuff as a sweetener for those who stuck with it.

It's been worth the money. Many other 'free' services have come and gone (often with advertising slipped in somewhere), but mac.com/MobileMe has been reliable, consistent, and maintained my privacy. It would have cost me more if I'd spent time researching and testing 'free' alternatives (to discover the downside) or moving stuff around as services come and go (or become intolerable).

It's naive to think that companies will give something away without expecting a return somewhere. It might be tied to advertising, mining your messages/contacts, or tracking your preferences and location. It might be a loss leader with a view to charging once users are hooked in. Or it might be foundational to a wider, profitable ecosystem. But no business can afford to run at a loss indefinitely, and I'm more concerned about services that don't reveal the real source of income.

lack of understanding

That's about finance law, not apple choice.

Same reason the iTouches had a fee to update and iPhones didn't.

that law has since changed, but while in effect, Apple was REQUIRED to charge a fee for enabling services post-sale.

Free service

Will they call it iTools?

They've been good in the past

I've had the occasional freebie or webstore credit from Apple for when things have either been made free or there's been a price drop. My subscription only just renewed so I will be a bit irked if they don't either give me something over the free version or some money back.