Root Access: Mobile Me Rage

There's one topic that causes people to get angrier than anything else on the blog. It's not Microsoft. It's not Apple TV. It's not even the long, slow death of firewire. No, it's Mobile Me. In this segment of Root Access, Jamie and I look at why people are so passionate on both sides of the issue, and why it causes such a response:

Out of Sync - gmail and Apple not on the same page

There's all this talk about sync these days . . . you'd think people are trying to keep a dozen machines on the same page.  Google announced it's sync this week which prompted a heated discussion about the merits of MobileMe.

Here's my question . . . what ever happened to IMAP just working as advertised?  I've had gmail running on my iPhone since IMAP became available for gmail.  Up until a few weeks ago I never had a problem with gmail and the Mail app being in sync.  Read a message on the iPhone, it's marked as read in Mail.  Read an email in Mail . . . well, you get the idea.

I'm not sure if the new sync release is related to IMAP, but I can tell you this . . . gmail and Mail are NEVER in sync now.  I get home from a long day at work and need to mark my messages as open.  Even a refresh of mail on the iPhone doesn't seem to push the changes back to the IMAP server to action the emails accordingly.

I haven't tried the iPhone sync released this week, but I'm disapointed IMAP seems to have stopped working as it should.  Have you experienced this problem?  Let us know

It's a Beta

Before Web 2.0, beta tags were reserved for software apps that were under development and served as a use-at-your-own-risk notification to would be users.

Seems like the IN thing these days in web software. It's a free pass for things not to work . . . can't be mad because it's a beta. Some really popular and well used apps are classified as a beta, Gmail is one of them. Google this past week removed the coveted beta tag from its new browser just 100-ish days after it's public release.

So here's my question . . . why isn't the browser available for the Mac?!? If it's far enough along to shed the beta classification surely it's far enough along to have a Mac counterpart. I thought perhaps I just missed the Chrome debut for the Mac so I went back to the Chrome download site and sure enough the email me button is still there for Mac users. Does this mean Chrome will get it's beta tag back when [if] the Mac version comes out? We'll all have to wait and see.....

Update to Mobile Me Still NOT Fixed

I posted a little while ago about Mobile Me still not being fixed and I provide you an update here:

Mobile Me is Still not fixed.

Mobile Me made it's debut on July 9th, 2008. Here we are, approaching the 2 month threshold and I am still getting email messages hours after they were sent. Granted, this is an improvement over the days delayed emails I was experiencing (see previous post), but it's far from a reliable service.

The phone also seems to be inconsistent with it's "push" features. Sometimes mail is delivered instantly, but other times the iPhone seems to forget about my MobileMe account leaving it up to me to manually fetch new messages.

With just about everything linked to your email address, it's concerning to think that messages won't be delivered. Until Apple hammers out this service (and I think they will . . . it might take giving away a free year to current customers) I've transferred over important email notifications to my gmail service.

Perhaps it's perception, but gmail seems to have a greater uptime and reliability than the new MobileMe service. To further research I went out looking for the gmail and MobileMe SLA's (Service Level Agreements). Google makes it clear that for a free service they're not going to lock into any SLA. For their pay service at $50 / user / year you get a 99.9% up time guarantee. Apple's $99 / year service comes with no SLA, so Apple really isn't obligated to a particular uptime. That being said I think it's great that Apple posts it's service issues for all to see, Google could take some notes here.

I'm certain that Apple will clean up the service, but for now you might want to use a different email address . . . it has me feeling more confident even if I'm not truly getting better uptime.

Why buy .Mac these days?

I’ve been a user of .Mac for several years now. I originally was onboard because Apple gives it to it’s employees free. Now that I’m no longer employed by Apple I need to justify spending $99/year or $0.27/day on this service. Surely there must be something this product has to offer that I can’t get elsewhere for less money. I mean $0.27 a day isn’t all that much.

Email:
.Mac gives you an email account ending in @mac.com. There is a web portal for viewing your email on the road, and native integration with Leopard Mail app. That search giant google gives you web access to email and now offers IMAP and step by step instructions to integrate it with the Mail app or Thunderbird if you’re a Mozilla fan. Gmail is FREE.

Webhosting:
iWeb easily allows you to create basic web sites that look great. Upload your photos easily to share with others, or start a basic blog if you have something to talk about. You can even now use your own custom domain name with this service (modification to your CNAME entries necessary).

As far as web hosting is concerned, $99/year isn’t a great deal. Godaddy hosting is anywhere from $4-$12 a month or $48-$144 a year. Now, the simple WISIWIG (what you see is what you get) editor that godaddy offers isn’t as fancy, but it does do the trick for a simple page.

If you don’t care about a custom domain name you can get a free website with google pages. This is a WISIWIG platform and it hosts your page for free. Picasa or Flicker will allow you to share your photos and this is also free. Blogger is free (also a google property) for your blogging needs.

Online Storage:
Ah iDisk, this must be the saving grace of the .Mac service. With 10GB of shared storage across all of your apps (mail, iweb, and iDisk) you can sure store a good amount of stuff, plus you can access it from anywhere . . . cool. If you do the math this is $9.90 per gig of storage!!! YIKES!!

How does that match up in the industry? Not well as it turns out. There are many offerings out there with a range of storage capacity as well as features (sharing, Web 2.0, etc.) and pricing. If we’re completely interested in pricing then I suggest Xdrive by AOL. I think this is the first time I’ve ever endorsed an AOL product, but with only a screen name you can have 5GB of online storage for free. That’s a pretty generous amount of storage and it costs nothing. Xdrive is a web based application so you can access your files anywhere you have internet access AND you have the ability to share files on your Xdrvie with others that you grant permission to. Xdrive has a desktop, running on the Adobe Air platform, that you can install making transferring files as easy as drag and drop. Did I mention this is FREE as well.

Back to my Mac (remote desktop):
This might be a difficult one to recreate with a budget of $99 /year. WRONG! Completely free solution called LogMeIn. Works great. Only the machine you want to take control of needs the software installed. Taking control of the machine remotely is done through your favorite web browser. This service is Mac and PC compatible so you can take control of your Mac from a PC or the other way around. The service was a bit choppy over cable broadband, but it’s FREE and it works.

Sync & Backup:
These two features almost don’t deserve any attention. Backup has been replaced by Time Machine or just an external HD. Sync is not worth any part of the $99 price tag and thus deserves none of our attention or yours.

There you have it. You can replicate .Mac for FREE. I see no compelling reason to shell out $99 a year for this service.