Apple's MobileMe Cloud Service

On August 19, 2010, I activated my MobileMe account. I knew MobileMe when I got my Mac. However, I have been not sure if I need MobileMe or not. For email, I have several free emails such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail. For cloud space or disk, I have Dropbox free account. I have also heard a lot about asking Apple to provide MobileMe for fee for Mac users from my subscribed podcasts. I have been expecting Apple to give this free offer for a while.

Finally I decided to get this subscription services and give it a try after I have done some research on web and watching some YouTube shows. The attractions are mainly MobileMe's integration with iLife and iWork, and FindMe for my iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. With MobileMe, I can create my personal Galleries and share my photo albums with my friends and family members. I can also create my personal web pages and blogs. MobileMe single person account has following features:

• Mail. In mail, you can create five aliases. I think it is good time right now to create aliases otherwise those aliases may be taken by other people.


• Contact and Calendar. It is good way to access to my contacts and calendar and I'll use them more with this clouding service.


• Gallery. The default gallery web URL is www.gallery.com/[accountName]. I tried to upload photos to my account from Windows. It works fine, but you cannot set security settings from Windows. From my iLife on my iMac, I can submit my albums to MobileMe. You can add multiple user/password settings from iPhoto.<.li>
  
• iDisk. From iMac, you can set up iDisk to back up some files from Mac's system preference. From Finder, you can also move or copy files to the iDisk as a way to save files on cloud


• FindMe. You can add multiple mobile devices to FindMe. All have the same interface: from Settings | Mail, Contacts, Calenders. Just add MobileMe account and enable FindMe. With this cool feature, you can locate the device, send messages, lock device and remove data on the device


• Web Personal Site Hosting. To create personal web sites, it is recommended to use iWorks' iWeb. From there, you just select a template to create a web page or blog. I tried to create two web sites: one for web page and another for blog. I can add security settings, however, it seems that only one user/password can be set. I tried to set difference ones but only the last one takes effect. I also notice that I can see my web files from iDisk on my Mac. I think that I may be able add additional css to my blog or web pages from there.

This is my first impression of MobileMe. It is very good. I think it is worth to try. With $109.00CAN annual subscription fee, I think it is actually much cost competitive to other web cloud services. For example, with 50GB space in Dropbox, the monthly cost is $9.99US. Personally, I don't think that Apple would offer this service for free. I don't think that Apple makes money on this service neither. I am expecting Apple will add more features to MobileMe. For the time being, I really enjoy the service.