What's in Apple's MobileMe for me?

By Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 11 June 2008 08:26

Opinion and Analysis

If you already subscribe to Apple's .Mac service (a bundle of online storage and other services that are closely integrated with the Finder and Apple software such as Mail, iCal and iPhoto), what will its reincarnation as MobileMe bring?

Perhaps the biggest difference is a big increase in storage allocation - 10G goes to 20G. As far as the change of name is concerned, don't worry: your existing mac.com email address will continue to work in parallel with its me.com counterpart for the foreseeable future.

If you want to keep all your emails on the server or maintain large photo or video albums online, you'll appreciate the extra space. Whether it's worth the cost of a MobileMe subscription when a fair chunk of online storage can be put together from other providers at less or no cost is a separate question.

My take is that you need to look at the service as a whole, and consider how much the integration is worth to you. A web-based version of Mail is still an central part of the offering. Apple's claiming a "refined interface" but I'll wait until I see it before passing judgement. The .Mac webmail always struck me as being almost right, so I'm hopeful that the MobileMe version will hit the spot.

The .Mac online Address Book was decidedly pedestrian, but the promise of an improved interface, (Google?) maps integration and photo support should help things along. The Gallery is also being given a facelift to provide greater control via the web rather than from Apple's desktop apps.

What else is changing? You'll find more details on the next page.