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Nil illegitimi carborundum : Don’t let the bastards grind you down
10/18/08
Apple’s Shame: MobileMe
I am a fairly faithful Apple fan and I think that for the most part, Apple’s products are far superior to that of any other companies’. The MacBooks and the MacBook Pros have been given a major overhaul and look and work better than they ever have (yeah, I love the aluminum/glass look that Apple gave to the iMac in it’s most recent update. The iPhone is getting better, albeit it still requires you to have AT&T service so I would have to wait Apple out or wait until I move to Canada. But there is still one service that Apple sells that is not worth the money and I would highly advise against. It is a service that was once called .mac, but now is called MobileMe. For the uninitiated, MobileMe is an online service from Apple that offers synchronization between Macs (very useful if you have multiple macs), PCs and your iPhone. However, it’s web offerings leave much to be desired and the synchronization benefits are hardly worth the price.
I initially bought the .mac service because I thought the synchronization benefits were worth it. Heh, well if you leave your computer without an internet connection for a month or so, it doesn’t sync well with the .mac servers. You can try to reconcile it but it wil all go back to the same thing – it will annoy you to make a decision on HOW to synchronize, not follow your decision and will ask you again in a few minutes. This is annoying and it is totally uncalled for. I finally had to say enough was enough and turned off the synchronization option on my MacBook Pro. The warnings stopped but any time I decided that I wanted the synchronization benefits and turned the MacBook Pro on, I started to get harassed again. It came up while I was in Photoshop, while I was trying to code, hell it even came up when I started my computer. This is one of the most annoying features with MobileMe and I assure you that when SpyMac was much better and had their Club programme, their sync options were MUCH better.
The Web Hosting is only good for one of two things. Hosting eBay images and other stuff that you don’t want to start your FTP programme for but you have an application that will store them on .mac space. That’s it. The Web space sucks, has no scripting language support and is only tightly integrated with two web editors: iWeb and RapidWeaver. I do not like iWeb because of the fact that the web pages it produces are horribly crappy and the programme itself is not extensible at all. While RapidWeaver has extensibility, it still produces horribly crappy pages. Bothy also have blog programmes that you cannot access through a web interface and you cannot control commenting if you have it enabled. Also, there is no master template option in iWeb, so you pretty much have to modify each page individually if you want to change something other than the menu. It’s tedious, it’s annoying and it just plain sucks.
Now that I have kvetched about the web space, let’s go on to e-mail. This complaint is probably the longest, so you might want to go get a drink – this might take a while. I am going to first address the issue of spam and mail filters. While the Mac OS Mail programme had excellent spam filters and controls that were very intuitive and helpful, .mac mail did not. I would see all the spam and all the e-mail that was supposed to be filtered into different boxes, right in my inbox. And until I would logon to my computer, pull up mail and have it download and sort all of my .mac messages, that is where they would sit – in the inbox. I cannot tell you how annoying it was to have to drag all the appropriate listserv messages to the appropriate box because the .mac mail client was not intuitive enough to do it by itself. I mean, it syncs mail filters – this should be an integrated feature!
I would also like to add that the .mac web client has always been horribly slow. The first .mac webmail client was AJAX powered and seriously half baked. It froze up your browser, it handled folders wrong, looked absolutely horrible when you had a window too small for it. Basically, it was a walking accessibility flaw. I can understand it not being slow if you have a T1 connection and the latest Mac Pro, but on any other computer – it crawled like an earthworm.
This is not to say that the MobileMe client was much better. It still had the same common outages as .mac and it still took a while to load your inbox. But now, you can’t even get into the mail client unless you have the latest version of Firefox or Safari. When I am stuck using other people’s computers and my only option is Internet Explorer, where does that leave me? Honestly, Apple could have rigged up a basic HTML webmail client, like it did when it had .mac. If you logged on to .mac and your browser wasn’t up to snuff, it would ask you if you wanted to use the HTML client. You do not have such an option with MobileMe.
I would also like to say that the features in MobileMe are not impressive enough to even start denying people access if they don’t use the right web browser. You cannot compose beautiful messages using Apple’s new stationery (or any stationery for that matter) nor with any sort of HTML formatting at all.
So, I would have to say that MobileMe leaves much to be desired. If you had to ask me whether or not it would be worth it for me to start using MobileMe once again, I would have to say “no, but the second that I own two or more macs, one of which being a desktop, I will change my decision.” Because I believe that the Back to my Mac feature is well worth the price of MobileMe, if you can make good use out of it.
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Tags: .mac, apple, back to my mac, bad design, bad web design, benefits, blog, books, browser compatibility, Canada, change, commenting, compatibility, computer, computers, e-mail, eBay, fair, faith, features, Firefox, hell, help, inbox, initiate, internet, iPhone, language, logo, love, MacBook, macbook pro, mall, men, messages, mobile, MobileMe, money, online, out, People, phone, power, press, rap, Safari, service, shame, sync, using, war, web gallery, web space, ze
To add insult to injury, MobileMe or .Mac were originally known as iTools. The iTools service was a perk that came with the purchase of an Apple computer, it was alleged to be free for life but that only lasted a few years.
In the transition from .Mac to MobileMe, Apple dropped their iCards feature, which is probably no big deal to most people. iCards was something I used for occasions when I wanted someone to know I hadn’t forgotten about them, but they were not someone who played a major role in my life.
I noticed that too. Oh well, I guess. Que sera, sera – whatever will be will be.
Have you tried Sugarsync for syncing, backing up and sharing? Absolute briljant, and MUCH cheaper than MobileMe. Apple should just buy the company, instead of making a fool of itself.
Well, as you can guess by my email address, I too am a MobileMe user. I also teach high school part time and schedule our school labs.
MobileMe / .mac has been absolutely invaluable…I agree for sync alone for quite a while, but also for calendar sharing and I only recently began throwing websites up (people ask me if I can do something for them “in my spare time”)
Yes, the iWeb templates are limited, but they are far from ugly, and they are certainly better than I could come up with.
Point is, MobileMe is for people who don’t know ftp means. Which, surprisingly enough, is still MOST people. It’s for kids to publish school stuff (I have tried using some “free” web hosting sites out there, they do work but boy do they take some fiddling, and often break)
It’s for the non-techies. It’s for people who don’t know the difference between a Yahoo and an Internet (and can’t even tell you what a web “browser” is). Again, sadly, this is MOST people I run into still…and I live in an affluent area of Southern California.
Any tech savy person probably should thumb their nose at MobileMe, but I still like the suite of tools all together, and their simplicity and ease of use, despite the limitations.
And, it means I get to stay in “one” environment (the Mac OS and iLife) rather than hopping through multiple websites to get what I need (again another really big plus when you are already multi-tasking to the max, and something that makes a big deal to people I work with when I do database consulting)
SugarSync looks good in theory, but I found their Mac client to be somewhat lacking, and their tech support to be very slow in responding to queries. Gave up on it, actually. But other people seem to like it…
MobileMe has limited benefit for most Mac users. If a person has multiple Macs that they need to keep synchronized, then MobileMe might be worth the cost. But for others, features like Web mail, calendar, Web space, photo gallery, etc. are all available at no cost through either a user’s ISP or Google.
BTW, I like Jessica Sideways… I also like Jessica Ontop, Jessica Frombehind, and Jessica Underneath
Hrm. Saw this from Macsurfer.com – you don’t really say much about iWeb other than you think it’s “crappy” and puts out crappy web pages. Fact is, you *can* use your own HTML editor. Save it to the Sites folder on your iDisk.
.Mac Mail didn’t sort your mail because those are *client* side filters.
The first client was actually Javascript. AJAX was later. I’ve never had it freeze up, and don’t know anybody that has. Never seen that happen.
It sure works for me so I must be one of the lucky ones that didn’t suffer from server problems as others have. I’m almost at the end of the trial period and have become dependent on mobileme’s features such as back to my mac and flawless iCal/bookmarks/mail/addressbook synchronization between my iPhone3G, home PPC G5 tower and my MacBook Pro. It also synchronizes my keychain, notes, preferences and dock between the G5 and MBP. Apple actually extended my trial period another 2 months but I’m not waiting since I can get a discount now through my work. Though I haven’t look into the web hosting part yet, I’m also hoping that it would save me money if I can have mobileme replace my current $89 web hosting service at fatcow.
I’m going to come off as a huge mac fan boy on this post.
Lets start with mail:
You mention the lack of junk mail filtering and you are wrong. It is not on by default but under preferences you can enable OS X style junk mail filters. It is true that Apple does not provide filters or HTML formatting but it does have a very application like interface (which is the reason for newer browser restrictions). It is not like they require you to have downloaded a browser in the last few months IE 7 (which is supported) has been out of beta for over 2 years and IE 8 is in testing. You also mentioned speed, running on a G5 iMac my Gmail account opened in about 7 seconds an my MobileMe account in about 10. After the initial load both were similarly snappy but because of the application style interface I could move through mail more quickly in MobileMe.
Also, I tired to create some folders in Gmail to test filters and manual filing and couldn’t find the feature. Here again MobileMe made making folders both obvious and easy to use. So say what you want about features, but MobileMe has it hands down for interface.
Similarly, your rant about iWeb not supporting more advanced web standards does not speak to who it was created for. My mom can put up a web page on a subject she is interested and have it render the exact same way on all browsers and all OS’s. She can post thousands of photos in hundreds of galleries in one of the best interfaces on the web.
As an iPhone user the sync services alone justify the service. For example, when I upgraded my iPhone at the Apple store. As soon as they activated it, it sync’d with the cloud and I had all my contacts, mail and calendars. Further, if you ever setup a new Mac or restore a failed one with a MobileMe account you will immediately have all you settings, email accounts, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, widgets, and more.
Lastly, and one of my favorite features you have the iDisk which gives you a network attached storage on the internet. You can backup critical projects or even work on the from that network drive.
So as the TV ad’s go..How much would you pay for this service? Well you could pay $99 to apple for a single user or $149 for a family pack. That is 40GB of storage and the sync features for 5 people. But you don’t have to pay that much because it is discounted every day on Amazon and others. Currently, it costs $96 for the family pack and $69 for the individual. For my usage it more than work the cost of admission.
Well, first off – to voice distaste for ONE of Apple’s products does not necessarily make you less of a Mac fan and I still believe that Apple’s computers are technologically superior to PCs, as well as having an aesthetic which makes them pleasurable machines to work with. Having said that, let’s begin.
As for the web mail filters, is this a new feature? Or, like .mac mail, does that require that you have a computer on, connected to the Internet and Mail running to automatically sort out the junk mail that you receive?
Furthermore, I am currently computerless, as I mentioned in a previous post. My MacBook Pro had finally keeled over due to my own habit of dropping the damn thing. Therefore, I am at the mercy of using other computers – public computers – for my day to day business. It sucks immensely, especially since most have some sort of incarnation of Internet Explorer, but not Firefox or Flock. Also, depending on the place, sometimes computers available there are slow and are prone to freeze up if too much javascript is used on a webpage. Crazy, I know, but it’s true. Facebook doesn’t crash these computers, Flickr doesn’t, MobileMe does. I don’t know why, but it does.
As for iWeb and the MobileMe hosting, I can honestly say that I dislike it because it doesn’t offer the advanced services that I, a web maven, would like. I can customize this blog in any way I wish, add new ways to process comments and add new features when I feel like it. I like having a webspace that I can control. True, it might be more expensive than MobileMe’s webhosting, but it provides me a level of control which is acceptable. I wonder why MobileMe doesn’t permit PHP or any other kind of server-side scripting languages.
I don’t know if it is new with MobileMe, but it is there in the preferences. Note: this is only for junk mail. They do not appear to have a way to setup rules beyond what to do with junk. In general, MobileMe is most valuable for people with multiple computers, and normally I’d say having one was a requirement but maybe not. For you having WebDAV access to your iDisk allows you to work on files without moving them to your borrowed system. You can still access your calendars and contacts and they will be ready for you when your system becomes available.
I can’t help that IE has sucked for decades regarding standards compliance. Apple created application class interfaces without flash, activeX or some plugin. Doing so requires a standards compliant browser.
Also, your original statement that it only integrates with iWeb and rapid weaver seems crazy. Sure those programs allow you to work locally and auto publish but because you can mount an iDisk as a server volume, you can use any development system you want.
Regardless, you can see why those of us who get value from the service hardly feel it deserves the title you gave to this article. Maybe, “MobileMe not great for power coders who don’t own a computer”. Thinking about how large a market that is makes it even more baffling how Apple could leave you out in the cold.
[...] about some Apple products where I think that Apple could have seriously done better. The first is about Apple’s web service MobileMe and when I posted about it, it happened to become instantly popular – having received about 500 [...]