What's in Apple's MobileMe for me?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 11 June 2008 09:26

Opinion and Analysis

It's always worked for me on the few occasions that I've needed to restore files, but others report less happy experiences. In some cases, my suspicion is that people have used an incremental backup strategy (Backup's normal operation) but subsequently deleted old backups to save space. If you do that, it's hardly surprising that Backup may not be able to restore every file.

My strategy - which has yet to let me down - is to do a full backup of a selected subset of my files every night, with less frequent backups of other items such as my iTunes and iPhoto libraries.

A few .Mac facilities are being dropped. From my point of view, web access to bookmarks is the most significant. It was convenient to use my normal set of bookmarks on a borrowed computer (especially in public or semi-public facilities), regardless of operating system and browser. Syncing bookmarks between browsers is useful, but isn't a substitute.

The demise of iCards (email greeting cards) and .Mac slides is no great loss, although confirmation that support for syncing with Mac OS X 10.3 is a slight nuisance as I'm still battling on with my old 'Lombard' PowerBook G3 when I need to take a computer with me. Perhaps it's time for a change - as much as I'd like a MacBook Air, I suspect an Eee will be more in my price range.

There's one more change coming with MobileMe that could prove a trap for the unwary: while both mac.com and me.com IDs can be used for iChat, they refer to separate identities and the latter will only work for as long as your MobileMe account is maintained. It's still possible to sign up for a free .Mac trial account, so now's the time to do so if you want a permanent mac.com ID for iChatting.

But what about the cost? Or to put it in the vernacular, Emma Chizzit? The final page is just a click away, and with it comes your chance to say what you think about MobileMe.