MobileMe Takes Reins as .Mac Packs It In

With Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) new MobileMe Internet service launching Wednesday evening -- and replacing its similar .Mac service -- there's a bit of trepidation in the air. What if MobileMe is as dorky as the name implies? What if Apple simply removes a .Mac feature and replaces it with ... nothing? What might happen to posted iWeb pages and sites? To data stored on iDisk? And what's this "Exchange for the rest of us" all about? Will it cost extra?

Fortunately, MobileMe is more about increasing the functionality of the existing .Mac applications than it is about running roughshod over Apple's former online service. Better yet, based on the all the materials Apple has provided so far, MobileMe is shaping up to be a compelling upgrade to .Mac.

What Not to Worry About

First, Apple isn't killing any .Mac e-mail addresses. For example, youremail@mac.com will continue to work indefinitely. At the same time, Apple will create the "upgraded" version: youremail@me.com. Similarly, iChat-related IM handles will continue to work as-is, but they'll also get upgraded versions to reflect me.com.

Customers will still keep all the .Mac services they love -- they'll be able to publish their iWeb sites, share photos and movies from iLife, sync their Macs, access their iDisk from the Finder in Mac OS X, and find their Macs remotely by using Back to My Mac, according to Apple.

Possible Problems

By far the biggest problem for .Mac customers is its limitation with Mac OS X. Due to the new technologies used, Apple says, MobileMe will only work correctly with Mac OS X 10.4.11 (fully updated Tiger) or later. Even so, Apple strongly recommends that users run Mac OS X Leopard, currently 10.5.x. First, if a .Mac user only has an aging Mac, MobileMe might very well break the service entirely -- Apple hasn't offered any details about older Macs, nor has it made any assurances that these customers will be able to use .Mac-based services as-is at all after the upgrade to MobileMe. It's hard to say what MobileMe features will work correctly with older Macs.

There have been some reports that Apple's .Mac iCards feature -- basically electronic postcards by e-mail -- will be discontinued entirely.

Some customers may also lose Web bookmarks if they stored them on .Mac and didn't sync them -- MobileMe will still sync bookmarks with customer computers, iPhones and iPod touches, but the standalone .Mac Web application, Bookmarks, will disappear.

Better Organization, Better Interface

The most worrisome -- and potentially useful -- change for existing .Mac customers is the switch in the Web-based interface. The good news is that the new interface looks much improved, at least in the QuickTime clips Apple has provided. If it's half as good as the videos show, it could possibly increase the overall usage of (formerly) .Mac features.

MobileMe runs in a Web page -- Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer -- on both Macs and PCs. As a Web-based application, it looks astoundingly robust, almost as good as a native application. A toolbar at the top lists application icons horizontally: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photo Gallery, iDisk and Account Settings. Contacts is basically Address Book in Mac OS X and Calendar is basically iCal -- ever since the launch of the iPhone, Apple has been using Contacts over Address Book, presumably to better fit phone conventions. Either way, Address Book in .Mac will be replaced with Contacts in MobileMe, and the pathetic calendar in .Mac will be transformed -- with steroids -- into Calendar with a capital C in MobileMe. In fact, it looks as if Calendar in MobileMe will function much like iCal in Mac OS X. For instance, in MobileMe, a user can drag and drop an event from one day to another -- pretty cool for an application that runs in a browser.

MobileMe also sets up a slick way of using Mail, Contacts and Calendar: The organization of the MobileMe page puts them in close proximity to one another so that they are almost the same application -- the buttons allow fast switching between them in the same browser window. It's not exactly an integrated all-in-one application, but it might be better than using three entirely different windows for Mail, Address Book and iCal in Mac OS X.

Plus, there are new features, like the ability to quickly reply to an e-mail message via a small pop-up box -- no need to "open" the entire message just to jot off a "Thanks!"

Exchange for the Rest of Us?

The most hyped feature of MobileMe is its ability to act as a remote server that can not only sync mail, events and contacts, but also as a "cloud" service that can push any changes out to any computer or iPhone or iPod touch. Obviously, this ability will be most appreciated by iPhone users, who sometimes enter new contacts on their iPhones but not on their computers, or vice versa. With MobileMe, the changes get pushed immediately. For example, if a person adds an iCal event on their Mac while working, that person can pick up their iPhone and walk away from the computer, secure in the knowledge that the iCal event will get pushed to their iPhone without the need to plug in anything. It should be quite handy. Of course, this push capability requires an Internet connection via WiFi or a cellular service signal via EDGE or 3G.

While MobileMe might reduce the need for direct syncing with a user's Mac, iPhones and iPod touches will still need to dock to sync music, movies or television shows.

The New Gallery and iDisk

While users could upload and share photos via .Mac, Gallery promises to make photo sharing much more intuitive. Users can more easily upload, rearrange and set sharing preferences.

Similarly, iDisk has been revamped with a new Web interface that more closely aligns itself with the Mac OS X Finder. Like Calendar, users can drag and drop files within iDisk, making organization faster and easier.

Cost Still in the Clouds

As most any Apple customer knows, the company is a stickler for keeping its prices high, and MobileMe is no different. Not much has changed significantly. Individuals will pay US$99 a year with 20 GB of included storage (up from 10 GB), and a five-user Family Pack will cost $149 (down from $179) for a 20 GB master account and four 5 GB user accounts. An additional 20 GB costs $49, while another 40 GB costs $99.

Other services offer some of MobileMe's features for free, but Apple's offering is balanced by one important fact: None of Apple's .Mac or MobileMe services have advertisements cluttering up the browser or e-mail experience.