Crooks.net

Apple offers a set of web services they dub MobileMe.

It’s a nice set of services for which they want $99/year. As a full-fledged geek, I have to admit I’m intrigued by MobileMe because it sounds like a fun set of things to play with, and it’s even possible I’ll cave someday and try it. But $99 is a lot of money to spend every year. I’m going to tell you why I really have no need of this, and maybe why you don’t either.

I’ll cover the services one-by-one:

• Email

  MobileMe: With MobileMe you get a new email account with an “@me.com” extension. They have a very nice web interface to access your email, and it also has an IMAP interface so you can use any email client such as Apple Mail on your Mac or email on your iPhone/Touch. Setup on an Apple device is particularly easy.

  

  My Solution: I have my own web host with Dreamhost, and with that I get total and complete control over my email. I have several domains so I can have addresses that end in “@crooks.net” or “@scrooks.net” or a few others. Because of that, I can give individual web businesses a unique email address, and if they start spamming me I can then just send any email to that address to the trash. When email comes in it’s easy for me to automatically check it for spam, send it to multiple locations, put it in a specific folder, or anything else. There’s also a way to access my email on the web, although the interface is not nearly as slick as the MobileMe email web app. I’ve already got email thoroughly covered.

  

  Solution For Others: Gmail seems to give you about the same thing as MobileMe mail, and a lot of people are happy with that. It’s free. I personally don’t like the idea of leaving all my email eggs in Google’s or Apple’s basket, but that’s just me.

  

• Contacts

  MobileMe: MobileMe will keep your contacts in sync between your iPhone/Touch, Apple Mail on the Mac, and Outlook on a Windows PC. They also provide a very nice web app to access your contacts.

  

  My Solution: To be honest, I don’t really have that big of a set of contacts, and I don’t really need to access them that often. I keep the Contacts app on my Mac up-to-date and it gets synced to my Touch whenever I plug it in. Good enough. In addition, Spanning Sync, a solution I use for my calendars (see below), syncs all of my contacts to GMail. I’ve never once looked at them there, but it’s easy so I do it anyway.

  

  Solution For Others: If you use GMail for your email, you might as well use it for your contacts also. Like me, you could use Spanning Sync to keep your computer contacts in sync with GMail if you have that need.

• Calendar

  MobileMe: With MobileMe you can create multiple calendars for whatever groupings you want. They have a very nice web interface to access your email, and it also syncs nicely with either the Apple Calendar app or Outlook. The calendar syncs wirelessly and fairly immediately with an iPhone or Touch.

  

  My Solution: Our whole family lives in Google Calendar. It offers up as many different calendars as you want, it’s free, and it’s got a very nice web interface. I also use Spanning Sync to keep the Google calendars in sync with the Calendar app on my Mac. From there my Touch is also kept in sync whenever I plug it in. I can make changes anywhere and the change gets synced everywhere. I would still have to use Google Calendar and Spanning Sync even if I used MobileMe, simply because the rest of my family is on Google Calendar. I have no real need for changes on my Mac to be pushed wirelessly to my Touch.

  

  Solution For Others: Google Calendar is the way to go. It’s great.

• Gallery

  MobileMe: MobileMe makes it easy to put photo collections on the web in a very nice interface to share with others. You can post pictures directly from your iPhone, and if you use iPhoto on a Mac syncing the pictures is a snap.

  

  My Solution: I really have two solutions for this. For personal family photos I use our family web site where I’ve installed a few pieces of software. It’s not nearly as easy as the MobileMe stuff, but I’m in full control and I like that. I also have a SmugMug account that I use for all other photos. It’s got a terrific interface and many, many features. There’s also a nifty iPhone app that lets you directly post your iPhoto shots. I may eventually punt on putting pictures on our family web site and just use SmugMug since it’s so nice.

  

  Solution For Others: There are numerous photo hosting sites out there, but I still recommend SmugMug even though they charge a small yearly fee. Their service is just too good.

• iDisk

  MobileMe: MobileMe provides 10GB of synced file storage. You can have these files sync to your Mac and Windows PCs. Files can be put in a public area so anyone can get to them if you want. Bookmarks and some system preferences can also be synced between Macs.

  

  My Solution: I recently discovered Dropbox. Dropbox works much the same as MobileMe sync, with files automatically syncing as they’re changed on any Windows or Mac PC. There’s also access from the web, along with public access and a decent interface for sharing photos if you want. They are working on an iPhone/Touch app, but it’s not out yet. With Dropbox you get 2GB free, and can pay a monthly fee for much more space if you want it. I personally sync all of my documents (no media files) and still only use 10% of 2GB, so the free version works great for me. One thing I’m still missing is syncing of browser bookmarks and Mac preferences. I’ve looked a long time for a good cross-browser syncing tool and haven’t found one, but I think foxmarks, a tool for syncing Firefox bookmarks, will soon support multiple browsers. And it’s really not that hard to live without Mac preferences syncing — I don’t have that many Macs.

  

  Solution For Others: There are a few file sharing options out there, but I’m going to have to recommend Dropbox.

It really doesn’t seem like I’d get much added value for $99/year, and that’s why I’ve never signed up. Apple seems to keep tweaking and adding things to MobileMe, so maybe someday they’ll do something that really grabs me. Until then I’ll do without.