“‘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.]
I have verified on my XP laptop that “MobileMe Prefererences” is indeed in the Control Panel.
Here again I’m grasping at straws but does it not have something to do with your iTunes version? I have 7.7.0.43
@t: Sounds like you don’t have the latest version of iTunes on you PC at work.
I’ve had no problems through the entire MobileMe/iPhone 3G/Apps Store launch. That’s not to downplay the obvious troubles, but I have enjoyed the benefits. I am using a Macbook Pro (2.16 GHz) with a 1st-gen iPhone and the syncing is flawless with calendars, mail, addresses, bookmarks, & iDisk on my iPhone, Mac, & the website. While acknowledging the kinks, I think in short time most users will find the system running smoothly. There are legitimate issues, but I do wonder about the various configurations for many of those with troubles (i.e. firewalls, networks, syncing, etc.). Anybody asks me – MobileMe and the iPhone are superb.
Note: I was an Apple user (Apple IIe was my first), sadly switched to MS, and, finally, woke from that coma and switched back to Apple. So, I don’t feel that my praise of Apple is fanboy-ism. My EXPERIENCE says that MS is an inferior product. I prefer to spend my time and money on something that works. If that makes me a fanboy, then so be it.
@DanielM & Banjo
Got it working!! After updating everything and rebooting twice, again windos it finally worked..God I hate my work PC!!
I am using iTunes 7.7.0.43 on my Win XP PC at work. I click Check for Updates and it said I had the latest version. So that’s not the problem.
I am still unable to sync the stuff on my work PC to MobileMe. The sync btw my Mac at home and MobileMe works fine. I’m going to check with the network admin here and see if there are any firewall or other issues blocking the update. But I don’t get an error message saying that it couldn’t reach the MobileMe servers. It shows my account info; it’s definitely connected.
I don’t see why everyone is having so many problems… the only issue I had was the contacts wouldn’t sync to my iPhone… I told it not to push them… left settings and went back in and told it to push and within a minute I had all my contacts on my phone… which was a solution that was on Apple’s website
Small GPS Antenna makes MobileMe hard to use….