Apple's MobileMe problems are now well-documented, most recently by Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. So much promise...so little delivery. A great idea that could be a great product, if it just worked. (I am a longtime Apple .Mac customer and am certainly not happy to see the service prove so incorrigible.)
So, what's the alternative? As you might imagine, open source provides a compelling answer.
Funambol has been offering its open-source "MobileMe" service for a wide variety of devices, not just the iPhone. In fact, Funambol now supports over 1.5 billion devices worldwide. It's called myFunambol and it's a great example of what open source can do. It's true push, works over-the-air (OTA), and doesn't require an "@me.com" email address.
In other words, Funambol brings MobileMe-esque sync that actually works, and works on a huge array of devices and services. It's a way for Yahoo! or any other service provider to create a valuable, connected experience with its customers.
Funambol is a also great way for service providers to build out their own MobileMe experience, without hitching a wagon to Apple. I love Apple, but I also love choice. You can get a glimpse of what Funambol is like by giving myFunambol a spin. If you're a service provider, download the source code and start building your own service.
Apple is the master of hype. Normally, it lives up to that hype. But in its 3G iPhone launch and now with its MobileMe synchronization service, Apple has fallen down. Flat.
Billed as an upgrade to Apple's .Mac service (to which I have subscribed for years), MobileMe is anything but. In fact, as The Register reports, it's not even the push email service that it purports to be. It's IMAP, just as .Mac was.
Email is managed through IMAP, and strictly speaking is pulled by polling the IMAP servers every minute, though that gives a reasonable impression of being pushed....
[C]hanges made using the desktop application are not instantly or automatically reflected on the iPhone or within The Cloud. Such changes need to wait for a synchronisation process, a lag of up to 15 minutes, before they are propagated between the platforms. Not only that but anyone trying to use some of the more advanced IMAP capabilities, such as the APPEND command, will find the MobileMe service unaware that any changes have been made to their e-mail account, at least until a good-old SMTP delivery triggers notification.
Is it really that big of a deal? Perhaps not. But it's also false advertising on Apple's part, and an unworthy "upgrade" on a service that for years has only had one major benefit: The name ".mac." I don't want a lame ".me" email address, and I'm finding that I don't really benefit from the changes to the .Mac service.
Are you getting more mileage from MobileMe?
UPDATE: I just received this from Apple:
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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:
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