Well I have to say the new iPhone and its pricing looks sweet. However, there's no way in heck I'm going to be signing up for MobileMe (nor did I ever sign up for .mac, but that's a different story).
So why am I so against MobileMe? Well, it's a wolf in sheeps clothing. There are several bits to MobileMe that I'd like to discuss:
- The push technology behind the iPhone
- The Web 2.0 browser interface
- The pricing
So to begin with, the good - the push technology behind the new iPhones is a great idea. They dramatize how 'bad' background processes are and then they go and run one themselves.. fair enough, I can get over their rhetoric on that one because they're providing a very nice solution for developers - a unified push service. Cool, I like it.
However, this technology is, specifically, open to all developers on the iPhone, which makes a very important statement about the whole MobileMe and its technology.
Okay, so on to MobileMe and what it does - it hooks up all your commonly used office like apps on MacOSX and Windows with your iPhone and keeps all those environments synced. Neato. I'd almost go for that.. it seems like a good idea. But then the presentation on MobileMe took an unexpected turn for me.... the web browser.
So, let me get this straight for a moment. Emails and pictures can flow between my Mac, Windows and my iPhone - all of which have specific -software- to let me browser my pictures and emails, reply to emails, edit pictures, so on and so forth. Good software, highly useable software, desirable, plugable software.
If there's one reason to hate the web browser it's because we've yet to really see full desktop like applications shine in its environment. So, if I have the option of using real apps.. why would I suddenly switch to the web browser at me.com to access my MobileMe? I'm mobile right? .. I have an iPhone right? .. so why would I need this web application?
It's an anachronism - but I think I know why it exists. Enterprise users have one from Microsoft, so they told Apple, they need to have one too. Why? Well, some users may have trouble accessing their corporate VPN. Which is pretty funny, considering that Apple went to the trouble of including significant VPN support in the iPhone and in the Mac.... yet, some companies have VPNs that are incompatible with the standard secure protocols - I should know, my company is one of them. So the Web interface for mobile me exists for two reasons:
- Enterprises told Apple they need it - even though they really don't
- Not all VPNs are created equal
Which brings me to my final grievance with mobile me - the pricing. $90 a year for a measily 20gb of storage and a maximum of 200gb of data transfer a month. Hello - have you seen what Google offers and what Amazon offers? Why the hell would I pay -$90- for this. Especially when you've left all the APIs to talk to the iPhone via push open for any smart developer to hook in to, such as google and amazon?
Apple, you're off your rocker. The only people who will pay for this service are total Apple fans who already use .mac and don't realize their alternatives and corporations who are being sold this stuff on bulk.
No sir, this service is not for me. I'll take the fantastic iPhone, but you can keep your over priced MobileMe for yourself. Oh, and while you're at it - get a better name.
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