Currently MobileMe subscribers dish out $99 per year for what can be basically broken down to a Dropbox account and the ability to remote wipe your iPhone/iPad, so having it go free will be a big deal for folks who either said $99 per year is steep or couldn't justify the cost by not having an iPhone to remote wipe. It will be interesting to see if/how Apple will sweeten the pot for folks who've been paying the $99.
Also, lost (buried) in the original article, is mention of Apple's streaming music service which may or may not be ready in time for the MobileMe announcement. Gotta love those anonymous sources.
WSJ Online via TUAW
Depending on your expectations from a service like this, MobileMe can be extremely useful:
ReplyDeleteI heavily use the PIM part, which is worth €79,- per anno in my opinion — a good paid email account costs almost as much.
Then there's MobileMe Gallery and iDisk functionality that get at least weekly use.
There are free alternatives, many of them coming from Google, but I don't like to give all my data to a company that doesn't regard me as a customer, but as a data mine.
Let me say it this way: If I encounter a problem with MobileMe, I can contact Apple via support chat — which has worked excellently the few times I had to use it. With Google and most other free services I can pray that somebody answers my email in less than five days.
But more importantly: Should Apple screw-up, resulting in any kind of problem for me, I HAVE THEM BY THEIR BALLS, because I'm a paying customer. When Google screws up, I can't do shit.
Don't get me wrong, I like free stuff as much as the next guy, but should these rumours be true, I hope that at least parts of MobileMe remain on a paid model; namely email, calendar, address book and the gallery.
@mangochutney: There's no way that Apple would move to a free only model. It would seem spiteful to paying customers such as yourself but more importantly, gallery, remote wipe, and the implied media locker would justify a subscription fee.
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