MobileMe is Apple’s $99 per year service (it can be purchased for less) that keeps your email, contacts, and calendar information in the “cloud” and uses push technology to keep everything in sync across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, and the web automatically. MobileMe also offers MobileMe Gallery for sharing your photos, Find My iPhone and Find my iPad, which helps you locate your lost (or stolen) device, Remote Wipe, which allows you to remotely delete your personal information and restore devices to their to the factory settings, iDisk, for storing, accessing, and sharing files online (starts at 20GB), Me.com, a suite of ad-free web applications — Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk, and Find My iPhone — all accessible from a browser on any Mac or PC, Back to My Mac puts any Mac OS X Leopard- or Snow Leopard-based Mac you use within easy reach from anywhere, Secure iChat, which lets you protect your chats with robust, 128-bit encryption, the free iDisk app which lets you view files on your iDisk right on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, share content from iPhoto, iMovie, QuickTime, and Aperture, seamless iWeb integration, personal domain name hosting, and more.
MobileMe was originally launched on January 5, 2000, as “iTools,” a free collection of Internet-based services for users of Mac OS 9. iTools was relaunched as “.Mac” on July 17, 2002, when it became a $99 per year subscription service. .Mac was relaunched as “MobileMe” at WWDC 2008 on July 9, 2008.
No timeframe was given for MobileMe to go free, other than: “sooner than later… depends on certain facilities going operational.”
That’s all we have at this time.
Again, this is an unconfirmed RUMOR.
I love MobileMe, we’ve had the family pack for years. I’d be willing to pay a reduced price. But in this economy, free is always exta good.
If they made accessing my iDisk not feel like AOL dial-up circa 1990, it would be nice. I’m debating whether or not I’ll bother renewing in the Fall. When I can access DropBox for free, why renew?
A lower price would be good.
$50 for the year? Okay.
A Family Plan like Apple offers for iWork/iLife/Mac OS X?
I think Windows users who have free Safari and iTunes are probably the only people daft enough to think that everything else Apple does should be free – you only have to look at disastrously hard to use Windows Live to see what happens if you make cloud computing free (don’t point to Dropbox, that’s just an online hard drive) and don’t pour non-customer-obtained funds into making it work. However… A cheaper solution would be good.
That would be much appreciated I had it from day one until a year ago.
I felt like I was getting less and less each year for what I was paying for.
If Apple is going to truly move to the “cloud” they’ll have a hard time if they continue to charge access to it when other services are free, can be shared, and offer more robust services.
Is there such a thing as a ‘confirmed’ rumor?
Wouldn’t that be a ‘fact’?
Basic Mobile Me free, pay for increased storage. It would be a smart thing to do.
Another feature I like and use is direct Web site publishing from iWeb.
@Thunderdome – “The original .mac was free.”
That may stop some old timers from going with a free service from Apple based on the way that was handled.
I’ve just renewed my acc. – excellent value, in the UK = 16p (?10c) per day – getting it free would be a bonus…but I won’t hold my breath or make a major purchase on the possibility.
At that “price” I’d reconsider it as a replacement or companion to Dropbox which–RULES!
(I’m not in any way affiliated with DropBox but here goes the commercial: DropBox.com
Files sync seemlesly by their mere placement in a folder across as many computers as you designate, the DropBox web interface, your iPhone, iTouch, iPad.
And get this–ulimited restore of deleted files!
If you have a dead battery on an iPad, Apple is going to give you a new one for $99. When I read that, I thought about all the first generation iPads that will be used for a VERY long time even if relegated to book readers. This sounds like Apple would apply MobileMe usage to the same “warranty”. As long as you’ve got an iPad, you’ve got MobileMe.
If they sell a TON of iPads and the driving factor is being able to sync for free… without having to pay for a service, it could pay for itself in the volume if iPads and other cloud devices easily.
Don’t make it free!!!!
Although free would be good for people that just want FindTheiriPhone, it would encourage people to get accounts just for the sake of it.
Make it cheaper, $9, $19 or even $29, but not free, not $99
@ron,
I think the term “unconfirmed rumor” indicates the information has come from a single source, and has not been corroborated by any other sources (yet). Thus, there is such a thing as a “confirmed rumor” when one gets the same (or sufficiently similar) information from different unrelated sources. These sources might include employees of the mothership (but they are placing their continued employment in jeopardy, unless it is a planned leak). Of course, the original rumor will remain a rumor until the mothership makes an announcement either way. And we all know the sometimes the mothership makes an announcement denying the rumor, only to release a product later that confirms the original rumor.
Thank you Uncle Kevin.
“At $99 still a bargain! It ties everything together so seamlessly that it’s an integral part of the Apple platform. With the new server farm, Apple should be able to offer more and faster.”
It may be a super bargain, but that price (actually not that price — any price) has kept me from trying it. It’s a psychological barrier.
If Apple gives it away it’s the best billion dollars they ever spent to improve the experience for all iPhone users. Definitely puts them way out ahead of the competition once again. Combine that with the new iAd (here), a home-grown mapping app (soon), and a search engine (hopefully), and Apple has just sidelines Google in the mobile space forever.
The type of service that MobileMe is would be more than welcome as a value-add to the purchase of an Apple. Bottom-line time. Yes, Apple, make it free if it’s break-even.
I don’t see this happening. I actually think they will start offering more features instead, like this article talks about http://www.macdaddynews.com/?p=3008
Glad to help you, young man.
@jtc
lol!! I wish. I hear this morning that all trades made between 2:40 and 3:00 will be “undone.”
It’s a silly rumor that makes no sense once you look at what would be necessary. I manage several Websites using a Family Pack, and I point several domain names to them. Along with all the other things mentioned above, MobileMe is just too complex and multi-faceted as a cloud-based computing service to give away for free.
As others have said, it’s possible that once the South Carolina facility goes operational this summer there will be new features and services made available. I predict this will happen this fall some time, after Apple has had time to test things at the new server farm.
If they did this, i would instantly stop using gmail. If there’s a reason to do this, it might be to help break people off from googles clutches.
Used to use .mac, but stopped after a couple of years, because of cost. I’ve have never used MobileMe because of the cost. I’d use it if were free, and I’d pay if the cost were in the region of 20$.
That is not going to happen. I bet that Apple will improve iDisk to compete with DropBox.
One word: iAds. Of course MobileMe will be free; like Google and Yahoo, Apple will be able to search through email, uploads, etc to track comments and purchasing habits so as to offer even better targeted advertising. Making it free will ensure that virtually every person who uses an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch is using MobileMe to feed more info into iAd. With the Lala acquisition, they can offer cross-platform syncing via MobileMe and get even more users’ info. All of this is completely independent of what OS the home computer uses- Mac OS X or Windows.
The paltry sum that Apple makes off MobileMe now is nothing compared to what they will make off of iAd by linking the two together.
(and is nothing compared to the power of the force
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@keithbporter
Break people off from googles clutches? So they can be trapped in Apple’s ecosystem?
I prefer my cloud to be around Google. They are good at it. I’ll use my Macs, my iPod touch and my iPad to access this data I have stored in Google. With Google Sync, its all seamless.