Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 8:04PM Multiple reports have surfaced indicating the end of MobileMe as we know it is near. If you search for the MobileMe part number on the Apple Store, you get a page not found error. Although if you head to the MobileMe product page, you can still sign up for a free trial. Here's hoping a shiny new (and hopefully free) MobileMe will be revealed soon.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 8:37AM 
Apple is ready to setup shop with a data center in North Carolina. Sure, it could be to simply add capacity to existing services, but let's look at some of the more exotic, yet within the realm of possibility, uses for it:
1. Mobile Me For Everyone
The internet has changed a lot since Apple first offered .mac/iTools, the predecessors to MobileMe. For one thing, there are more free online options for just about everything. Apple has re-positioned MobileMe, but the true advantage of it would come from Apple returning to its roots, and making MobileMe a free component of owning a Mac, or iPhone (since it has that Find My iPhone feature, etc.) Apple actually has a tremendous advantage here due to the size of its marketshare. Microsoft would be hard-pressed to offer a similar service to 90% of the computers on the planet. Then again, they seem to ok with hotmail/msn. Imagine an online version of time machine. Sure things like bandwidth limits could get in the way, but wouldn't be great to know you had offsite backup without another utility?
2. Live Video Streaming
One of the "missing pieces" in making Apple's living room "hobby" a full-fledged profit generator is live sports and entertainment. Think about the possibilities if Apple could give you the live programming you see now on broadcast television, and bring fresh new offerings as well. Like what? Oh, perhaps the yearly WWDC keynote and other Apple events for starters. Apple has been a big customer of Akamai through the years, but a full-on live video push would most likely require a new, proprietary approach.
3. TV subscription model
Of course along with live programming, Apple needs to find a way to offer a wide variety of content at an affordable price. Rumblings this week point to a $30/month price point for something. Whether that's to get one network's programming, or replicate your entire cable lineup, makes a big difference, but either move would bring Apple directly into the cable/satellite company's business.
4. Cloud Apps
The days of apps on the desktop are numbered. At least that's what we've been hearing for years. Apple is great at letting others go first, learn from those mistakes, then offering something uniquely different, and often successful. (iPhone or iPod, anyone?) If a tablet device is in the works, it won't have the hard drive of your desktop, but it could have a decent processor, video card, etc. What if programs like iPhoto ran "in the cloud", allowing you to run the app on the tablet, seeing/editing your photos from your desktop (or online storage) in the same room, or across the globe.
5. Push Servers/Gaming
Given the success of the app store, it wouldn't be too surprising to see Apple add more capacity for push servers for apps. A more exciting move would be the development of games for a new tablet (are we getting ahead of ourselves?) and/or the AppleTV. AppleTV could become a cable box and game console challenger, all in one package.
Friday, September 18, 2009 at 8:30AM 
If you had told me five years ago that within an hour I would see two commercials on TV for two different online backup systems, I would have laughed heartily, yet that's just what I saw last week, as backup as become the newest (and one of the biggest) turf wars in computing today.
Carbonite and Mozy both took their pitches to TV, which comes as a bit of a surprise given the relatively small size of both companies, although that might also speak to the low price of TV ads right now. This growing market even has a relatively consistent $50-60/year price point. With so many companies in this space right now, (iDrive, Apple's MobileMe, SOS on PC, and Dropbox to mention a few more) look for some sort of consolidation. With the pricing for most of these services already in the same ballpark, online backup is already headed towards commodity status.
Kudos to both Mozy and Carbonite for their aggressive plans to attract more users. This market could practically disappear overnight if Apple and Microsoft decided to integrate large, online backup as part of the OS. If Apple were to make MobileMe free, and beef up the backup tools, would there be any need for another service? Time Machine already gives them a decent backup mechanism that could have an online component added to it.
In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the biggest computer turf war since the great browser wars of the 90's. Oh, and don't be surprised if this one has a similar outcome. Then again, 15 years later, the new browser war probably takes the cake as the second biggest battleground.
Friday, February 27, 2009 at 7:04AM 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:
Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 7:38PM 
After all the posts this week about the new google mobile sync I figured I'd see what the hub-ub was about. Here's my first impressions:
The good: Setup is simple with the instructions provided by google. These instructions can be found here. After setup the sync with my 1st generation iPhone went smoothly and quickly. Important to note it will overwrite your contacts and calendars so please take their advise and backup everything before syncing . . . better safe than sorry.
The bad: For some reason I got some double entires and sync wanted to resolve all conflicts like a good data moderator which took some time. The double entries were a bit annoying and took about an hour to deal with (that's for about a 200 contact list . . . actual results may vary).
The bottom line: After initial setup everything seems to be working nicely. Even the images I've added to the google contacts have synced to the iPhone. Push updates seem to be as quick as MobileMe. If google can get exchange working for gmail it will certainly be a great alternative to MobileMe. As web apps become more powerful and cost effective (the google suite is free) it will become more difficult to sell MobileMe UNLESS Apple enriches the offering . . . I hope they do. For now, enjoy the new google sync and let us know how your migration went.