[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

So yes, sync is useful, but all my Macs are on a local network. I feel ripped off by Apple, because I think that sync should work without their service on the Internet. Sync with my cell phone already works fine without .Mac/mobileme.

Not on the road, though.

I could see this as extremely useful, except my wife *insists* on using a paper filo for calendaring...

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay 

Online bookmarks are dead according to the FAQ. No mention of HomePage though, but it's not mentioned in the list of discontinued services.

.Mac to MobileMe transition FAQ

VERY interesting, thank you.

[RAILhead]

I'd drop Verizon and move to AT&T if Apple would have released a 32GB model (or more than 16GB, at least). I have 15GB of data in iTunes alone, and I like to have all my stuff with me as I'm too lazy to mess with swapping playlists, etc.

Maybe next year.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Not on the road, though.

Not on the road, but when I'm on the road, I'm not going to change anything in my calendar on my desktop, right? So synching when I come home would be perfectly fine for 99% of the situations (for almost all consumers). It would be faster to do it over the LAN instead of the Internet and it would be technically possible to implement. The only reason why we don't have this is so that Apple can charge us for mobileme. That's why sync via .Mac/mobileme feels like a rip-off.

[kman42]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Not on the road, but when I'm on the road, I'm not going to change anything in my calendar on my desktop, right? So synching when I come home would be perfectly fine for 99% of the situations (for almost all consumers). It would be faster to do it over the LAN instead of the Internet and it would be technically possible to implement. The only reason why we don't have this is so that Apple can charge us for mobileme. That's why sync via .Mac/mobileme feels like a rip-off.

You are right that if you travel with just your iPhone, then having over-the-air syncing isn't useful, but many people travel with a laptop as well. Or they have access to a friend's computer or a shared computer where it would be helpful to have an up-to-date calendar and contact list.

Furthermore, it's not just about traveling. Most people update their calendars and contacts throughout the day on their mobile device. What if you are at lunch or a meeting? It sucks to have to sync your iPhone every time you get back to your desk. What if you sync your iPhone with your computer at home rather than your work computer? Then your work computer is always out of sync until you get home and sync your iphone to your home computer and .mac then syncs your work computer.

And it wouldn't be faster to do it over a LAN. That would require you to physically dock your phone, launch iTunes and sync, just like you do now. That is not a fast process. .mac doesn't use a dedicated server, making it slow and prone to conflicts. That is also why you can't edit calendars at Apple - .Mac. MobileMe will use a proper server-based system. To accomplish something similar on your LAN would require you to have a dedicated server that is always on. Most people don't have that, which is why .mac used the other method.

And most people have computers on more than just a LAN (like a work computer) and have access to many more computers (friends, family, hotels, etc) where it would be nice to have updated information.

Apple is providing every customer with a dedicated mail, calendar, and contact server with instant updating for every device/computer that the customer owns, whether connected by the internet or the cell network. That is not cheap for Apple to do.

[Mastrap]

I love the idea of not having to worry about whether or not any of my machines is/is not synced up. That's why currently I use online apps.

[nonhuman]

If I could use this for hosting my business email ike I do with Google Apps, this would be awesome. Either that or if iCal could sync with Google Calendar the way Address Book does with your Gmail contacts (also if Address Book groups carried over...). Basically, I just want an easy to use, cross-platform way of getting at all my data. Though at least I can use my .Mac account for my calendar now (my wife already had one so I just upgraded to a family pack) even if it won't integrate with my email nicely.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

I think that if I didn't already have IMAP mail I would be blown away by mobileme but because I do I'm not.

[Jawbone54]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

I love the idea of not having to worry about whether or not any of my machines is/is not synced up. That's why currently I use online apps.

I still don't feel comfortable using a calendar that Google hosts on its servers.

Maybe that's unfounded, but I just can't...
And it's not unfounded.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by driven 

ME = Mobile Experience.

So that would make it Mobile Mobile Experience?

Edit - freaking zombie posts...

[driven]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

.mac was a way better name than .me if you are not a native speaker of english.

- dot mac?, what's Mac?
- your new & friendly computer
- ha, nice

- dot me?, what's me?
- english for 'yo'
- oh, it's english… doesn't come in spanish?

ME = Mobile Experience.

[driven]

It looks like web-bookmarks and iCards are going to be discontinued as well. Oddly I liked iCards. They were simple and to the point without all the tacky noise and animation that ruins the Hallmark cards.

[driven]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

So that would make it Mobile Mobile Experience?

Edit - freaking zombie posts...

What zombie post?

Actually I was joking around when I posted that, but now that you mention it is that any different than Microsoft saying "Based on Windows NT Technology". (New Technology Technology) ?

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by driven 

It looks like web-bookmarks and iCards are going to be discontinued as well. Oddly I liked iCards. They were simple and to the point without all the tacky noise and animation that ruins the Hallmark cards.

Do we know these things are going to be discontinued, or have they just not mentioned that they'll still be around?

Also, didn't they explicitly mention that bookmarks will be synced? Seems unlikely that if everything else that is synced is available on the web that bookmarks won't also be.

[Stogieman]

From the link Art Vandelay posted:

Are any other .Mac features affected?
As part of this transition to MobileMe, some features are being discontinued: Web access to bookmarks (bookmark sync between your Macs and/or PCs is still supported), iCards, .Mac slides, and support for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther sync.

How do I get my bookmarks that I’ve stored on .Mac?
MobileMe will continue to sync bookmarks across computers as well as push them to your iPhone and iPod touch. However, after MobileMe goes live you will no longer be able to access the Bookmarks application on the web. If you have any bookmarks stored on .Mac, please be sure to sync your bookmarks with your Mac before this date to avoid losing them.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Mrjinglesusa 

Really, have you used it? In fact, have you used .Mac, because .Mac is not "constantly down" as you put it.

Oh dear God an apologist...

Yes, I have tried it. I subscribed to that POS for two years always hoping that it would become acceptable as a paid service tomorrow, or the next week or the next month until I realized that it's awful reliability and incredibly limited speed made dotmac a really lousy value for money and wasn't about to improve.

Even if it were offered for free, paid by ads, dotmac would not necessarily be worth my time. It's that bad.

Features were skimp and still are, promises made about 'constantly making dotmac better' were not fulfilled and one the service was sporadic.

So yeah, I tried dotmac extensively for more than two years.

Nice apoligism though

(hope Apple pays you a little something)

[RAILhead]

Well, you're wrong, Voodoo. I'm sorry, but you just are. I've been using it since inception, and I've been using it all day, every day, as my primary email, document exchange, file server, etc., and it has around 98% uptime -- for me, at least. We're not apologists, you're just on the "Hate .Mac Bandwagon"

[driven]

I'll have to jump on with Railhead here as well. I agree about the 98% (maybe more) uptime. Even when things are down for that <2% of the time it's nearly always a partial outage. (Webmail down, but IMAP still working or vice-versa). I've never seen everything on .mac go down and I've been a member since day 1.

[Mastrap]

I use .mac frequently to move documents around (yes I know there are cheaper ways out there to achieve the same thing) and it has always been available when I needed it, with decent speed.

[Eriamjh]

Coincidence?

[cwosigns]

Probably. Do you think Apple would INTENTIONALLY associate themselves with the worst OS to come out of Redmond?

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Well, you're wrong, Voodoo. I'm sorry, but you just are. I've been using it since inception, and I've been using it all day, every day, as my primary email, document exchange, file server, etc., and it has around 98% uptime -- for me, at least. We're not apologists, you're just on the "Hate .Mac Bandwagon"

While not perfect I echo your sentiments I've been a member since the iTools days and I really haven't tracked it uptime but I do think its within the 98% time frame that you mention.

.Mac (as an overall package) is not perfect. I found that iDisk performance is a little slow but all in all email has been available just about all of the time. Additionally performance of the email servers have been good as well. I think last week was the first time I noticed a major downtime in a couple of years.

I signed up to dreamhost briefly and found that their email to be pitifully slow, so while people may knock .mac, uptime and performance is excellent.

the more I read about .me the more I think this is a big step in the right direction for apple. .Mac has been languishing for a couple of years without a major update and releasing the original iPhone w/o push email to it was a major faux pas on their part but all in all they've now tied both together rather neatly and reposition .mac to appeal to PC users as well without seemingly risking any cannibalizing their mac sales.

[driven]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

While not perfect I echo your sentiments I've been a member since the iTools days and I really haven't tracked it uptime but I do think its within the 98% time frame that you mention.

.Mac (as an overall package) is not perfect. I found that iDisk performance is a little slow but all in all email has been available just about all of the time. Additionally performance of the email servers have been good as well. I think last week was the first time I noticed a major downtime in a couple of years.

I signed up to dreamhost briefly and found that their email to be pitifully slow, so while people may knock .mac, uptime and performance is excellent.

the more I read about .me the more I think this is a big step in the right direction for apple. .Mac has been languishing for a couple of years without a major update and releasing the original iPhone w/o push email to it was a major faux pas on their part but all in all they've now tied both together rather neatly and reposition .mac to appeal to PC users as well without seemingly risking any cannibalizing their mac sales.

... and even with THAT e-mail outage you could have gotten it up if you just turned off SSL. (Granted it took me a while to figure out that the outage was related to the SSL server and not the mail server.) ... and web-mail kept working throughout.

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

I use .mac frequently to move documents around (yes I know there are cheaper ways out there to achieve the same thing) and it has always been available when I needed it, with decent speed.

Yes it works well, 4 cities 2 continents, no problems. Looked into cancelling and changing to free services but never found a decent solution. Never had any downtime that I noticed.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Not on the road, but when I'm on the road, I'm not going to change anything in my calendar on my desktop, right? So synching when I come home would be perfectly fine for 99% of the situations (for almost all consumers).

SINGLE customers.

Adding a date while on the road and having it *immediately* sync with the home machine, or vice versa, with mrs analogika adding one the home machine, would easily be worth the money.

Coordinating a family takes considerably more effort than I would've thought.

Hence my bitterness about her insistence on a paper filofax.

[TETENAL]

That's all nice and well, and it explains why synching over the Internet is handy at times. But it does not explain why synching over the local network is missing. Synching over the local network is missing because Apple wants to push customers who don't need to sync on the road to buy .Mac. That's a rip-off.

In .Mac you can't subscribe to calendars by the way with a password. If you want Mrs. Analogika to be able to read your calendar, the whole world can read your calendar. Hopefully that changes with mobileme.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

Considering nobody has actually tried the service, which includes a number of web apps to rival google's free offering, I am tempted to reserve judgment.

Fixed

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

No one has mentioned over-the-air syncing (with push) for the iPhone. It seems to me that's the big deal with it.

There's already over-the-air syncing for the iPhone with Google Calendar ... again, for free.

[mattyb]

I like it, and I'll sign up. Hopefully they'll have ME servers in Europe.

[cwosigns]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

There's already over-the-air syncing for the iPhone with Google Calendar ... again, for free.

Do you mind explaining the set up, because it's not explicit to me.

And even then...if I want push email I have to change to a Yahoo account...then I have a Google calendar. I LIKE having my native Mac apps sync with my iPhone over-the-air and I'm willing to pay for it.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Well, you're wrong, Voodoo. I'm sorry, but you just are. I've been using it since inception, and I've been using it all day, every day, as my primary email, document exchange, file server, etc., and it has around 98% uptime -- for me, at least. We're not apologists, you're just on the "Hate .Mac Bandwagon"

You could claim that until you are blue, I used dotmac for more than two years. I wanted to like it, but there just wasn't anything to like.

My primary email service, my webspace, my file server etc has 100% uptime. That's what I expect from a paid service. I can get that, but not from Apple. Simple as that.

Which of course makes you an apologist and me just a "can't recommend dotmac over the myriad of better free or cheaper but above all more reliable services available" bandwagon.

That's a pretty good bandwagon.

[RAILhead]

Dude, NO ONE has 100% uptime. PERIOD.

[- - e r i k - -]

Voodoo, you are wrong. I've used .Mac along my own servers, and third party servers both personal and at work since iTools as well, and for reliability and speed of e-mail, .Mac has always won hands down. In fact our high cost hosting solution at MediaTemple (we have since switched to Rackspace) has more downtime than .Mac.

Now the iDisk on the other hand…

[kman42]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

But it does not explain why synching over the local network is missing. Synching over the local network is missing because Apple wants to push customers who don't need to sync on the road to buy .Mac. That's a rip-off.
[/i].

I did explain this to you in my post above. MobileMe will use a client/server model. This is inherently more efficient than shuttling information back and forth between many computers on a LAN. This latter system is how .mac works and syncing is slow and prone to conflicts. That's because information is stored on multiple machines.

MobileMe will store information in one location, on the server. This means that any changes on any device can be compared to the server. It will be faster and less prone to conflicts.

The model you suggest has already been tried in the form of .mac and it was fraught with difficulties. It is time for a new system and it has nothing to do with Apple wanting to charge you $99. It's just that a client/server system is a better technological choice.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Dude, NO ONE has 100% uptime. PERIOD.

Well, .Mac had significantly more downtime than most comparable services, including the free ones from Google and Yahoo. There's no denying that.
If you're content with paying more for a less reliable service, that's your own decision.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Dude, NO ONE has 100% uptime. PERIOD.

Close enough though. If dotmac has 98% uptime (which I'm sure it aspired to when I subscribed) then once every fifty times I logged on it would be down.

I wouldn't pay for that. You have pretty low expectations, I must say.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Dude, NO ONE has 100% uptime. PERIOD.

My hosting company is 99% uptime and in the 7 years that I have had them only once has it gone down for 15 min late at night.

.Mac is notorious for constantly going down.

[kman42]

I signed up for iTools at the convention hall when Steve announced it. I've had a total of about 4 hours since then when I couldn't receive/send email.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by kman42 

I signed up for iTools at the convention hall when Steve announced it. I've had a total of about 4 hours since then when I couldn't receive/send email.

I was a .Mac subscriber the first year it switched over from iTools. There were MANY times that first year it went down. In fact, that is what caused me to cancel.

[kman42]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

I was a .Mac subscriber the first year it switched over from iTools. There were MANY times that first year it went down. In fact, that is what caused me to cancel.

Obviously, different people have had different experiences. My .mac email has been very robust.

Syncing is a very different story and wasn't at all reliable until 10.5.3, which is why I am excited about the new MobileMe client/server model.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

That's all nice and well, and it explains why synching over the Internet is handy at times. But it does not explain why synching over the local network is missing. Synching over the local network is missing because Apple wants to push customers who don't need to sync on the road to buy .Mac. That's a rip-off.

No, that's a business model. But you've done an excellent job of explaining it.

In any case, I saw the sync potential in Leopard's e-mail and the iPhone, and was willing to sit it out as somebody who's got a LOT of use out of my .Mac account over the years, with no configuration hassle (and fairly little downtime, though I remember a brief spell last year when a handful of e-mails didn't go through, which pissed me off quite a bit), and as far as I'm concerned, Apple's just won out on this one.

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

In .Mac you can't subscribe to calendars by the way with a password. If you want Mrs. Analogika to be able to read your calendar, the whole world can read your calendar. Hopefully that changes with mobileme.

1.) Actually, using iCal, I can publish my calendars online on a PRIVATE server of my choice, requiring a username and a password, all WITHOUT .Mac.

2.) And anybody who wants to see my .mac-published calendars still needs to know the exact URL, since it's not linked anywhere.

3.) Publishing a calendar has NOTHING to do with synching. IIRC, I never had to publish anything in order for .Mac sync to work.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Nice apoligism though

(hope Apple pays you a little something)

I wish you wouldn't do this.

Some of us are just satisfied customers, with experiences that possibly differed from yours - possibly even just in the time since you gave up on the service.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by analogika 

1.) Actually, using iCal, I can publish my calendars online on a PRIVATE server of my choice, requiring a username and a password, all WITHOUT .Mac.

But not with a web interface. An iCalendar file is an insurmountable obstacle for my better half. And I would have to give away my password to my WebDAV server. That rules out everybody else but my better half. You can forget about me giving anybody else my WebDAV password (which with Strato is also the e-mail account and password).

I can invite (and individually password protect) people to .Mac picture galleries, so why not to published calendars? There's lot of room for improvement here. I don't understand why you can't see this.

[analogika]

Oh, I do.

I just prefer to keep separate issues separate. I was talking about over the air, instant push syncing, not web access to a calendar, which needs to be a) web-editable by others (including non-MobileMe customers), and b) password-protected.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Oh dear God an apologist...

Yes, I have tried it. I subscribed to that POS for two years always hoping that it would become acceptable as a paid service tomorrow, or the next week or the next month until I realized that it's awful reliability and incredibly limited speed made dotmac a really lousy value for money and wasn't about to improve.

Even if it were offered for free, paid by ads, dotmac would not necessarily be worth my time. It's that bad.

Features were skimp and still are, promises made about 'constantly making dotmac better' were not fulfilled and one the service was sporadic.

So yeah, I tried dotmac extensively for more than two years.

Nice apoligism though

(hope Apple pays you a little something)

They don't, but it looks like your opinion of .Mac is in the minority here...

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

Well, you're wrong, Voodoo. I'm sorry, but you just are. I've been using it since inception, and I've been using it all day, every day, as my primary email, document exchange, file server, etc., and it has around 98% uptime -- for me, at least. We're not apologists, you're just on the "Hate .Mac Bandwagon"

Originally Posted by driven 

I'll have to jump on with Railhead here as well. I agree about the 98% (maybe more) uptime. Even when things are down for that <2% of the time it's nearly always a partial outage. (Webmail down, but IMAP still working or vice-versa). I've never seen everything on .mac go down and I've been a member since day 1.

Me either.

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

I use .mac frequently to move documents around (yes I know there are cheaper ways out there to achieve the same thing) and it has always been available when I needed it, with decent speed.

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

While not perfect I echo your sentiments I've been a member since the iTools days and I really haven't tracked it uptime but I do think its within the 98% time frame that you mention.

.Mac (as an overall package) is not perfect. I found that iDisk performance is a little slow but all in all email has been available just about all of the time. Additionally performance of the email servers have been good as well. I think last week was the first time I noticed a major downtime in a couple of years.

I signed up to dreamhost briefly and found that their email to be pitifully slow, so while people may knock .mac, uptime and performance is excellent.

the more I read about .me the more I think this is a big step in the right direction for apple. .Mac has been languishing for a couple of years without a major update and releasing the original iPhone w/o push email to it was a major faux pas on their part but all in all they've now tied both together rather neatly and reposition .mac to appeal to PC users as well without seemingly risking any cannibalizing their mac sales.

Originally Posted by moonmonkey 

Yes it works well, 4 cities 2 continents, no problems. Looked into cancelling and changing to free services but never found a decent solution. Never had any downtime that I noticed.

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Voodoo, you are wrong. I've used .Mac along my own servers, and third party servers both personal and at work since iTools as well, and for reliability and speed of e-mail, .Mac has always won hands down. In fact our high cost hosting solution at MediaTemple (we have since switched to Rackspace) has more downtime than .Mac.

Now the iDisk on the other hand…

Originally Posted by analogika 

I wish you wouldn't do this.

Some of us are just satisfied customers, with experiences that possibly differed from yours - possibly even just in the time since you gave up on the service.

Being a satisfied Apple customer does not make one an apologist. I've used Apple computers for over 10 years and have NEVER had a problem with a single one of them. I've used .Mac since its inception, and have been very satisfied with its ease of use and seamless integration with my computers. Mobile Me looks to be even better than .Mac IMO but we'll have to see once it rolls out.

My only point is that people are rushing to judge and complaining about a service that they haven't even used yet.

BTW, 8,760 hours would be 100% uptime (24 hours/day x 365 days/year). .Mac services would have to be out for a total of an ENTIRE WEEK (7 days = 168 hours) of the year to have 98% uptime. I'm sure uptime is MUCH higher than 98%.

[moep]

For everyone so overly concerned about the .mac/me downtime, sign up for a trial at both .mac and Pingdom and report your findings.
Personally I'm pretty sure the availability of .mac's imap and http servers is >99.7%.

[Salty]

I'm kinda curious. Steve was saying mobile me was the way to get push email. Will this work with gmail? Or is this solely with the @me/@mac email address? I want to have my gmail and any other pop accounts pushed to my iPhone just like I can have with my BlackBerry.

[- - e r i k - -]

Forward your Gmail to your @mac/me.com address and voila: push Gmail.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Forward your Gmail to your @mac/me.com address and voila: push Gmail.

That becomes a problem when you want to reply to someone with your gmail address...

[driven]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

That becomes a problem when you want to reply to someone with your gmail address...

Use the browser to go to www.gmail.com and bingo!