5 Ways to Take MobileMe To the Next Level
I've been a .mac/MobileMe member for the last five years. I use the service because it's an easy way to maintain my business website, upload business and family related photos, and back-up personal data. But if I really wanted to, I could manage to get all these services for a lot less than $99/yr.
But while I think .mac/MobileMe is an attractive service, I hope Apple has some ideas for improving it in the near future. Here's some features that come to mind for me.
1. First off, really simple. Just straight up copy what others have already done in the Web 2.0 community. Bring more web apps to the MobileMe service. An online text editor, notebook (Evernote.com can give Apple lots of good ideas in this area, as well Google), speadsheet, and an online iWeb interface could easily be incorporated.
2. Allow developers to create stuff for MobileMe just as it's being done with iPhone apps and on Facebook. This will bring both fun and increased productivity to the service. As it stands now, the service is, well, boring.
3. An online image editor would also be nice; if nothing else but to do the some quick fixes to iPhone snapshots.
4. Expand the web gallery service, already. It could easily be a multimedia platform whereby photos, video and music could be used in a single presentation. Onetruemedia.com is already off and running with this type of presentation. And for Applesakes, let us MobileMe users get access to our iTunes library online. Simplifymedia.com has done all the code work for this type of connection, so make it official on MobileMe.
5. Find a way for MobileMe members to socialize with one another. I know my fellow MobileMe users are producing some great content on their iWeb sites, so it would be great if Apple could help us all connect with one another. Apple related forums, websites, and groups are great, but networking should be right within the MobileMe structure. MyAppleSpace.com has great ideas for this.
I know I might be asking a lot here. And yes, Apple, thanks for the 20 gigs of storage we get with our membership. That's a serious plus. But for Applesakes, please improve the iDisk interface so it can be more graphic in orientation, rather just a bunch of generic folders and files. The public folder is embarrassing. I reluctantly invite others to download from it. It just doesn't have that Apple feel to it. I want to be able to custom design my public folder so it can be a nice extension of my iWeb pages and photo galleries. (Note: this could be done using iWeb, but I think a more direct method should be used.)
Finally, it would also be worth $99/year if Apple could throw a few little extra goodies to MobileMe members like it used to. Some extra Garageband loops, a few simple productivity apps, maybe a couple of online games. Nothing major. Just show a little more love, Apple.
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Comments
I don’t want Mobile Me. I’m not a mobile computer user. Apple doesn’t want me as an iPhone customer (wrong cell phone service), I don’t have a laptop - so all I want is .Mac service. Maybe they should have two products instead of one.
with google’s android and chrome, apple is going to have to do something re online apps.
This is all great, but what I would really like is for MobileMe to just work. iDisk isn’t competitive with Sugar Sync or Dropbox, the ability to add events to the web calendar is very limited, some people are still loosing address entries. The whole service is very slow. In other words shouldn’t the MobileMe team be working on the basics (which they still don’t have right after four years of .Mac) rather than adding slick new services?
Emaco8, I was going to include your point in my article, but I knew someone like you would do that for me. Thanks.
I love Mobile Me. As an original dot mac member, I was afraid that the Mobile Me service would not be as useful, but my experience has been great and I just love Mobile Me.
I don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch, but I do have a PC laptop and I travel from time to time. It’s great to have my Safari bookmarks from my Mac at home sync with my Safari bookmarks on my laptop anywhere I go. I don’t sync my personal E-mail or calendars with Outlook on my PC (separation of home and work), but I do love the web applications that allow me to manage my E-mail, calendars, address book, and iDisk from my PC from anywhere that I can get to the internet. I think it’s worth every penny of that I pay for this great seamless service.
Seriously, the new Mobile Me service looks beautiful… and it dies in the whole it’s beauty. It’s just too heavy and too comprehensive - everybody is complaining about performance, especially Windows users. Maybe it makes sense to consider making it little bit simpler? Maybe not that simple as Google, but Facebook and Plaxo seem to look and feel just about right? Fully agree with the author’s strategy remarks
I want to love MobileMe. I have been a .Mac subscriber for years. The unfortunately incompetent reps on the support chat keep saying it is a connection issue on my end. No, it is not.
Also, this weekend, over 100 emails disappeared from my inbox spontaneously. I did not delete them. In fact, I have items in my trash folder from that morning.
Apple is spread too thin. They do not have the staff to diagnose and take care of the issues.
In addition, the power port on my MacBook Air that I purchased in April shorts out the power cord after a few days. After going through 4 power cords, Apple wanted to repair it. They did not actually listen to what was the problem, so the battery was replaced and everything else you could think of was done. After 3 tries, I think it might actually be fixed.
I think they have so much going on that they are unable to take on repairs and service.
I am still an Apple fan, but something has to give.