As was widely speculated before Steve Jobs’ keynote address today, Apple is relaunching its .Mac service as MobileMe. The service syncs emails, photos, contacts, calendars, and other information between your iPhone and different computers. It works not only on Macs, but also on Windows. It will cost $99 a year, with 20 Gigabytes of online storage. The service, which will replace .Mac, will be available in early July.
Apple calls it “Exchange for the rest of us.” Interesting positioning. Usually Apple does not aspire to be like Microsoft. Video is above.
Why charge?
Usually Apple does not aspire to be like Microsoft.
A good idea, is a good idea - there are just so many different directions one can take
I like the idea. But I want to run that service on my own computer. I don’t want it hosted by Apple. Eventually, that service will hold my medical records, all my music, all my videos, all my other important identity information. I want to run it myself, or on a device in my living room on top of my TV — like my set top box, or at the minimum, hosted by a very trusted service that I know has a very good security practice. Not sure about apple as a trusted service.
Others have already done this, but push integration with the iphone will definitely help their floundering .mac property.
Microsoft’s solutions is called LiveMesh.com which just came out recently. I think it is free but you only get about 5GB storage.
“Usually Apple does not aspire to be like Microsoft.” Uh, no, that’s why it says “for the rest of us”. As in “Exchange for the rest of us who are not satisfied with Exchange.” They’ve use the slogan before as in “The computer for the rest of us.”
I guess that leaves google app syncing to 3rd parties
I wonder if Steve Gillmor sees gesture affinities manifesting in the personal synchronized mesh fabric for individuals who are willing to pay 99 buckaroonies.
@ Fidel:
on LiveMesh.com, I see this:
So, I can have all my devices working together as long as they’re all PCs running Windows. No thanks.
Looks like with .Mac/Mobileme, I can sync Contacts, Docs, Files, and I can use a PC or a Mac or a smartphone. .Mac’s been around awhile. Every so often, I’m envious of a particular feature or two, but never enough to sign up for Yet Another Email address and for-pay service.
Address Sync and Doc Sync alone - coupled with the ease with which I’m confident this will work - will be worth $99 / annum.
Let’s see.
I wonders if this will affect companies like sugarsync. Since I can already sync iCal and Mail with Google apps, why should I pay a massive $99 for just 20 gig, when SugarSync offers 60 gig for $99. Sugarsync also offer photo sync.
Well that pretty much screws Plaxo’s business within the Apple ecosystem…
>Apple does not aspire to be like Microsoft. Video is above.
Then why are they using the Windows Me logo here? Terrible job.
if this thing works anything like the demo i will never leave the mac platform.syncing across machines is the biggest problem right now.
Yet another proprietary protocol and service! Remote push and syncing should be implemented using OPEN protocols. Specifically, this is the sort of thing that should be done with XMPP. When are we going to learn to “Just say NO!” to these people who try to build competitive advantage by foisting proprietary protocols on the community?
bob wyman
Sounds good. And not too expensive.
I think this is going to save the Web 2.0 movement. Why? Because most Web 2.0 companies are strongly influenced by Apple, and Apple has now made it cool to charge $99/year for web services. I hope we see a flood of companies building new services based not on the idea of whether these will generate enough ad click-throughs to make money, but whether they can provide enough substance that people will pull out their credit cards and pay a yearly fee.
…in other words, it does everything you can already do in using the web (like w/ OpenID) or under a free Google account. I guess the audience is just amazed that a closed service functions with less fuss or something?
I can understand wanting no fuss, which is the reason many people stick with Apple. However, the openness of Google’s Android will retain the simplicity and likely blow the Apple/iPhone platform away.
Great buy on the Me.com domain though, buying it from the previous owners (Snapville, where they had their old social network). I would think a lot of top companies would want that name. So unless Snapville screwed themselves and didn’t shop it around, Apple probably paid a ton of cash & stock for it. 2 letters, established, a word that powerful of a concept for a personal/life service even better than live.com… I’m going to guess ~ $50-75 million for me.com.
$99/year when I can get most online storage service for free. Why should I pay an expensive price for this?
MobileMe seems to be a good complement to SugarSync.
SugarSync = syncs files (including photos)
MobileMe = syncs Photos Mail, Contacts, Calendar (but no ToDo List still!???)
synching is good, but theres another functionality that is important from a business context, sharing contacts, tasks, calendars and documents etc. What about that?
smcnally - LiveMesh is supposed to be platform independent. They definitely called out OS X at least — I don’t know about the iPhone, though…
I think I’d prefer to have RT sync with Google calendar & contacts, but if I can move things over to Apple’s web UI seamlessly, it might well be worth $99/year. That said, someone will almost certainly come out with real iPhone sync for the Google apps as well, right? I don’t really care about desktop sync (Outlook, feh!) since I just use the online UI there too.
#20 I suposse they will be launching a widget soon to integrate social networking to the device.
All the features of webmail exists right now in .Mac so what is new?
It seems cool but expensive.