“‘Cloud computing’ is a white-hot buzzword these days. It basically means working with files and programs that reside on the Internet, beyond your company’s walls — out there in the ‘cloud,'” David Pogue repots for The New York Times. “Apple is the latest company to find a silver lining in the cloud. Its new MobileMe service ($100 a year) is an overhaul of a suite of Internet features that used to be called .Mac.”
Apple’s new MobileMe service “works by storing the master copy of [your e-mail, calendars, address books, Web bookmarks, passwords, and preferences] information in the cloud. Whenever your machines are online, they connect to the mother ship and update themselves. When you edit an address on your iPhone, you’ll find the same change in Address Book (on your Mac) and Outlook (on your PC). If you send an e-mail reply from your PC at the office, you’ll find it in your Sent Mail folder on the Mac at home,” Pogue reports.
“Once everything’s ready, the magic is impressive. Make a change on your Mac, watch it appear on your iPhone and your PC. Add a new friend to the address book in Outlook Express on your Windows XP machine, and watch it appear in Windows Contacts on your Vista PC. Change an appointment in iCal on the kitchen Mac, and know that it will wirelessly sprout onto your traveling spouse’s iPhone four states away. And your Web bookmarks are the same everywhere,” Pogue reports.
“On Macs, MobileMe can keep even more stuff synched, including your passwords and preference settings… [and] there’s a fourth place where you can work with your data: on the Web. At Me.com… There’s actually a lot more to MobileMe than sync, since it also retains most of the features of the old .Mac service,” Pogue reports.
“MobileMe is the usual Apple value proposition: you might be able to find less expensive versions of its features online — various sync, backup and file-transfer sites — but none have the integration, polish and automation of Apple’s offering. Besides, the MobileMe price isn’t bad: for $100 a year, you get 20 gigabytes of online storage; the family pack costs $150 and gives you five accounts (40 gigabytes of storage total),” Pogue reports.
Much more in the full review – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Citymark” for the heads up.]