Apple's MobileMe vs. Funambol's myFUNAMBOL: An open sync?

Apple introduced a successor to its .Mac product which looks interesting, though not revolutionary: MobileMe. Dubbed "Exchange for the rest of us," MobileMe offers "push e-mail, calendars, and contacts for users, keeping that information up-to-date whether they're viewing it at a computer or an iPhone."

In other words, exactly what Funambol already offers for free (as in cost and as in source code), except Apple is charging $99 per year. What a bargain!

Even worse, Apple inexplicably opted to use closed standards to offer the MobileMe service, as Fabrizio laments:

...[W]hy is Apple not using an open protocol such as SyncML? Why do they have to do everything closed? It is just too sad. Apple could be 10 times bigger but they choose not to. Everyone has its limits.

I think it comes down to control. Apple wants control. I don't understand why Apple can't have control and provide its users/partners flexibility to adapt and integrate the MobileMe service, which is what open standards (and open source) would afford, but Apple seems to want to stick to its traditional playbook: Control everything, and meter out the utility in a guarded fashion.

I'm a big Apple fan, but would have preferred syncing to remain open. It's one of those services that becomes more useful the more widely adapted and adopted it is. Apple has ensured that the MobileMe service will be useful for precisely and only what it has time and resources to do itself. That's a pity.

[j101j]

Let me just say that if I had written an article like this for work I would be fired. You make it sound as if mobileme only offers email syncing, calendars, and blah blah blah. But you forget to mention that .mac comes with 20G and free software for doing lots of other things, and an idisk which I use A LOT for my family and friends getting large files to me they are unable to email. And mobileme can be used to host your own website also. Please do your job and actually learn something about what you are writing.

[Matt Asay]

I've been using .Mac for years. It's OK. MobileMe promises to be better. It still could have been built using an open standard. That's all.

[phereinheight]

Anyone who considers posting all of their personal info on a opensource site, with no obligation to safe guard or not sell your info, is a heads up the bum newbee noob

[jrepenning]

Interestingly, myFUNAMBOL (the open-source site) has a privacy policy that accepts some obligation to safeguard your info, though it could be better. Meanwhile, .Mac (the un-open-source site) has a "membership agreement", and Apple has a general Privacy Policy, which together commit to considerably less (and the membership agreement appears to exclude the privacy policy from applicability). So in this case, your legal protections appear to be _beter_ at the open-source site.

[jrepenning]

Well, MobileMe also will let me sync my Mac applications to my iPhone, which Funambol doesn't seem to offer, so I'm very likely to pay Apple rather than use Funambol. It's not "exactly what Funambol already offers."

But, had Apple used an open protocol standard, then Funambol would probably have added that capability in about a nanosecond, and then I wouldn't be paying them $99, because I've got free on-line storage coming out of my ears, not to mention already too many email addresses, cool or otherwise.

It's a shame, most especially because synchronization is actually a Really Hard Problem. Apple's been making dramatic advances in this area lately, and I was looking forward to comparing them to Funambol. I suspect that the open protocol standard SyncML would not have been enough to make them interoperate successfully; the format of the messages is the very least of the problems.

[jimmyed2000]

Matt, MobileMe is just the next rev of the .Mac service. They have added some syncing features to it but it is not a 'new' thing. If they used any licensed components they may not be able to open source it even if they wanted to.