Eight months later, Apple delivers promised MobileMe file-delivery service

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 February 2009 07:18

IT Industry - Market

Having transferred the file to iDisk, you navigate to it and then click the Share File button.

MobileMe generates a seemingly random URL for the file and lets you enter a list of destination addresses and an explanatory message.

A video demonstration of the process is available here.

The link can be expired in as many days, weeks or months as you choose, and there's the option of putting a password on the file to reduce the risk of someone else finding it through a brute force search of your MobileMe file space.

I know that MobileMe is targeted at Windows users as well as the Mac community and therefore cross-platform support is an important consideration, but this does seem a clunky way of implementing the function.

Yes, it works well enough for files that are already in the iDisk, but when the document is currently on the Mac or PC, wouldn't it be better to make the upload an automatic part of sending the file?

The only reason you need to know that it's on the iDisk at all is so you know it's taking up storage space. And that could be worked around by having the file automatically deleted from the server once the link expires.

While Apple's delivered what it said it would, is it what customers actually want? Share your opinion on this point in our forum.