After more than a month of waiting, Apple has finally brought its MobileMe iDisk application to iPod and iPhone users. Originally announced during Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in early July, the free iDisk app offers users of Apple's MobileMe service a way to access files they, or their MobileMe contacts have stored on Apple's servers.
Some of the nicer features include being able to view and send any native file types. This includes music, so if you've got a bunch of tracks stored on iDisk, you can stream them from the app. Movies work as well, although they have to be formatted to play on an iPod or iPhone.
Apple says that some files over 20MB won't load, although I successfully managed to get a 198MB MPEG4 movie file to stream in. Things that require downloading, however, such as documents and photos, are capped at 30MB--even when you're on a Wi-Fi connection. The application must first download those types of files to your device before you can even see what they are. This process is made faster by a cache you can adjust to allow for more local storage, all the way up to 200MB. Not included in that cache are audio and video files, which are simply streamed, meaning that you'll need to be on a solid connection for the entire listen or watch.
As nice as the local cache is, it's a long ways off from offering users the chance to manage files locally as some other iPhone storage apps have done. You cannot download anything back to your device from the app, save for photos, which can only be saved using the iPhone's screenshot feature--not the superior copy and paste. There are also no previews before or after you've downloaded something to view locally, which means you better have named your files properly.
I applaud Apple's efforts for giving users a first party way to access their files, it's just too bad it offers so much less than third parties have provided. Besides local file downloading, I would love to see omissions like copy and paste, and quick visual previews offered. It would also be fantastic to let users copy a file from the app into a mail message without having to use the built-in e-mailer, which wraps each file in MobileMe branding.
MobileMe iDisk for the iPhone weighs in at 2.2MB and requires users to have an active subscription to MobileMe, along with an iPod Touch or iPhone running OS 3.0.
The good:
• Lets you quickly access files you have stored on your iDisk in a native application.
• Streams in audio and video, letting you bypass file size restrictions.
• You can view files in portrait and landscape modes.
• Your log-in is saved between sessions, so you don't need to re-enter your user name and password.
•You can view files your friends have stored online if you know their MobileMe user names.
The bad:
• Certain files are capped at 30MB--even over Wi-Fi.
• There are no visual previews of what photos, videos, and docs contain.
• No way to save files for offline viewing. There's a local cache, but as soon as a newer file needs some space, old files are removed.
•Copy and paste doesn't work.
Apple's Find My iPhone feature is helpful, but can be thwarted by tech-savvy thieves.
(Credit: CNET)Over the weekend, Livejournal blogger HappyWaffle (real name Kevin), posted a great story about how he purportedly used Apple's MobileMe service to track down his iPhone, which was stolen while he was at a bar. By using a laptop with a Sprint EVDO wireless data card, he and his friends figured out where it was and managed to get it back from the person who had taken it. They even used Google Translate to alert the thief (in multiple languages) that they would call the police if the device was not returned.
As good as the story is, a lot of it relies on iPhone owners having certain settings flipped on, as well as the person who has the phone not knowing the right ones to turn off. For one, they can disable all of the MobileMe features by simply yanking the SIM card out or deleting the MobileMe account from the phone. They can also perform a software wipe right on the phone, which means your data gets erased, however that means you can no longer track where it is without carrier intervention.
This isn't the main thing to worry about though; it's that... Read more
Let me begin this by saying that I'm a stingy guy. In high school, I bought a hair clipper and adopted a buzz cut largely to save cash by not having to go to the barber. I will also stop dead in my tracks to pick up a penny.
So for me, spending $99 a year on Apple's MobileMe, a service that basically does Web e-mail, contact syncing, photo hosting, and file storage, was a hard sell--especially after its bad start. This week, however, Apple finally got me to take the plunge. Why? It's starting to add genuinely useful tools for Apple hardware owners, with the promise of more to come.
On Monday, the company demoed a new tool for MobileMe subscribers called "Find My iPhone" that lets you both find a lost (or stolen) iPhone, as well as remotely wipe its contents. You can also get it to ring and vibrate for two minutes straight, which can be a huge help if it's stuck between couch cushions or buried deep within a bag. Anyone who's been late to work, or had a near-heart attack from trying to find a lost phone can appreciate how this service alone may be worth a Benjamin.
Then there's the upcoming iDisk iPhone and iPod Touch application that lets you access files you've stored in your MobileMe online storage. This in itself is not groundbreaking, but if you're an iPhone or iPod Touch user who is already using MobileMe's online storage, it's a nice bonus. Apple is advertising this as a way to show off presentations and get at important business documents, but I'd argue that it's a great way to extend the limited storage on the iPhone by keeping some of your music and videos on MobileMe instead. If you've got a Wi-Fi connection, you can stream both.
But let's get back to the basics. Is the rest of the service worth the cash? Not in my mind--and a big, fat no if you're using it for the Web apps alone. Let's break it down:
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Apple)
For Web e-mail: No
On the iPhone and iPod Touch, you get messages as soon as they're sent. On the browser, however, it's missing a lot of features that competitors like Yahoo and Google have had for years. Both of those services are free, and between Gmail's labs, and Yahoo's just-introduced apps platform, MobileMe's Web mail feels rudimentary. It also drives me nuts that the service logs you out after 15 minutes of activity. This isn't my bank account, it's my e-mail. (Note: readers wrote in to let me know that you can avoid having this happen if you check off the "keep me logged in for two weeks" option when first signing on).
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CNET)
Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.
According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to the MobileMe Gallery.
In addition to these new sharing options, iTunes also will offer ways to convert and export your video files to work on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. All of these options will be available to you from the same convenient location and will automatically be imported to iTunes before being synced to your supported devices.
With this latest discovery, Apple will effectively offer built-in support for YouTube across all of its main products. Both the iPhone and Apple TV already offer YouTube support, along with some of Apple's other software including recent releases of iMovie. With the addition of direct uploads through QuickTime, Apple is providing support for desktop and laptop Macs.
Here at the CTIA Wireless conference in San Francisco, Quickoffice, historically a mobile documents viewer for Nokia phones, is showing off demos for four new iPhone and iPod Touch apps aimed at Apple's contingent of MobileMe users.
The first, called MobileFiles, will let you view e-mail attachments, including Google and Box.net documents from your iPhone, something that iPhones don't currently allow. Quickoffice is expected to launch MobileFiles as a free, view-only app in November.
Following that, Quickoffice plans to release three more applications for reading and editing spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations, respectively. Called Quicksheet, Quickpoint, and Quickword, the three editors will likely go for $10 apiece. On the performance end, Quicksheet and Quickword clearly displayed MobileMe attachments as multipage files and allowed users two ways to edit by tapping the screen. $30 seems like a hefty surcharge for the privilege of editing and saving all three document types back to the MobileMe account from the iPhone, especially when the viewing documents alone will be free. Not all users will need all three editors, but those who do should receive a markdown for purchasing the entire suite.
Unless a competitor steps up to challenge the pricing and app layout, by the time Quickoffice's premium applications launch in Q1, Quickoffice will have the market advantage. We haven't heard much from DataViz, the likeliest contender, about an iPhone play, though with the company fresh off releasing new versions of its flagship viewer, Documents To Go, for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and BlackBerry, iPhone is their next logical platform to conquer.
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CNET Networks)
Apple's MobileMe suite of Web services suffered another outage Monday that affected an unknown number of its users.
Of the included services, Mail was inaccessible for approximately two hours. Earlier in the day we had received scattered reports from users who were unable to access their mail. Those reports were later confirmed both through Apple's MobileMe status ticker and Twitter's real-time search tool. For those affected, all other aspects of MobileMe were reportedly up and running.
Monday's problems centered on a lack of access to Mail on three fronts: through the Web, on the iPhone, and on IMAP for use on desktop e-mail applications. The same thing happened in mid July, with enough blowback to cause Apple to offer a 30-day extension to both free trial and paying users.
Despite the known outage, there hasn't been an update to the MobileMe Status Blog since July 29. The blog was provisioned specifically to address any known issues with the service. For now, most of the chatter has been on Apple's support discussions with dozens of threads from users frustrated by the lack of communication and lost productivity.
As a reminder, if you're a MobileMe subscriber with continuing issues, Apple has a special customer service chat tool for you access.
Related: Gmail is down, Twitter sizzling with the news
Update: corrected customer service chat reference from a call-in service.
Amid the shaky launch of the iPhone 3G, Apple's new MobileMe service--a juiced-up revamp of its .Mac offering--also took a blow. Apple has consequently opted to entitle eligible members to 30 days free as a we're-sorry gift.
.Mac accounts had been scheduled to "migrate" to MobileMe last Wednesday evening, but instead produced an outage in which neither service was available. New subscribers, meanwhile, had experienced issues signing up.
"The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was a lot rockier than we had hoped," a details page from Apple explained. The offer isn't for everyone: only .Mac members whose accounts were active on July 9, and MobileMe members who registered before 7:00 p.m. PDT on Tuesday (i.e., amid the activation chaos) are given the 30 free days.
It's automatically added to eligible accounts, Apple's site explained.
Apple's MobileMe service promises features which, like the release of Mac OS X Leopard, made me regret the recent purchase of another Windows Vista laptop, at least for a moment.
Having lost two laptops and five years of life history to theft several weeks ago, the allure of having precious data pushed automatically from a laptop to the "cloud," coupled with Time Machine backup, feeds my desire for security as well as my laziness (yes, I review software, and I didn't have a third backup). It seemed MobileMe could serve me better than the new iPhone would.
It's all about Me.com not working this week.
(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)The replacement for .Mac subscriptions can synchronize mail, calendars, contacts, photos, Safari bookmarks, Dashboard widgets, and more among Macs, the iPhone, and iPod Touch. It lets you stash 20GB of files on Apple's servers, and it even cooperates with Outlook on Windows computers. Plus, MobileMe's online applications would let you check in on all that from any Web browser.
I tried to find .Mac users to share their cheers and jeers about that $100 annual service, but many colleagues at CNET said they couldn't afford it. However, MobileMe sounds like a better value, with expanded tools that aren't available elsewhere in a cohesive package.
I finally was able to use the calendar at Me.com once. But online e-mail still hasn't worked for me.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)In advance of the release, I wrote a first-take CNET preview of MobileMe, hoping to follow up with a rated review, after exploring the nooks and crannies. However, I've barely been able to skim the surface of the product, and many other subscribers share the frustration.
If Apple's servers are overwhelmed this week, you might blame me a bit for refreshing Me.com for what has felt like every five minutes. Despite wearing out my trigger finger, I was only able to access my MobileMe account twice yesterday, for a total of two minutes. What a tease. I figured things would improve once the company finished .Mac migration.
MobileMe was due to be complete on Friday, with the full "push" synchronization intact. Around noon, I was able to synchronize mail, contacts, calendars, and upload some photos from a MacBook to Me.com. Hooray! Oops, I cheered too soon.
Yet another error message spoiled playing with Me.com, just when it was working for 10 minutes.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)Today I've been logged in and out of Me.com countless times. The service kicks me out against my will, just when I feel that a new feature I hadn't tested must surely be within reach. I haven't been able to stay logged on to Me.com for more than 20 minutes at a time. Attempting to verify my account on an iPhone also failed.
So far, there are more than five dozen comments, most from similarly thwarted .Mac users, on a CNET News story about MobileMe's failed launch. You'll find the same frustrations repeated in this and other publications chronicling the marred release of both Me.com and the iPhone 3G.
I agree with some users who mused that those at Apple must have had their heads in a cloud by scheduling the .Mac migration for a weekday. Between 20 and 25 percent of .Mac subscribers use the service for business purposes, according to Apple. At least I'm not relying on a former .Mac account for a job. A few hours of downtime could kill a potential gig for, say, a freelance photographer.
Nevertheless, I'm withholding judgment of a rated review of MobileMe today until I can give the features more than a cursory glance. If it stops working like an alpha release from a cash-strapped start-up, the service might yet live up to its promise as Microsoft "Exchange for the rest of us." Who knows?
For now, this botched launch highlights both some pitfalls and promises of relying increasingly upon Web 2.0 services for work and play.
Before my computers were stolen, I could have at least uploaded my personal writings to Google Docs, or synchronized my photos with SugarSync, or entrusted everything to online storage, such as Box.net. But I felt wrong in my gut about sending those things to unseen servers, no matter how secure. I never got around to buying a backup drive. Instead, my stuff went out the window, literally, with a thief.
If your own computer crashes or disappears, you might have only yourself to blame. But providers of online applications and remote storage services bear a greater responsibility than makers of desktop software, when they hold the keys to our data. For .Mac users whose pictures and Web galleries were held hostage on remote servers, the epic failure of MobileMe may simply dull Apple's polish. The rocky start drives home the very need for a service that does what MobileMe is supposed to do: keep our data safe and accessible in more than one place.
This post has been updated. See below.
The migration of Apple's .Mac service to the new MobileMe service apparently didn't go as smoothly as it could have.
The scheduled changeover of users' .Mac accounts to MobileMe, or .Me accounts, was scheduled for 6 p.m. to midnight PDT Wednesday. The migration was then pushed back to 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
But Thursday at 11 a.m. PDT, neither service was accessible, at least to several people in San Francisco. Reader Deidre Wyeth also complained that .Mac account photos were inaccessible Thursday, and instead the site redirected to the Apple.com/MobileMe page.
Apple spokeswoman Khyati Shah said migration was complete Wednesday night, and as of Thursday morning Me.com should display .Mac users' mail, calendars, photos. She insisted that the pages were working for her, but said she would check into it.
In the meantime, we'll see if we can find out more. Anyone else having issues reaching their .Mac or .Me accounts? Let us know in the comments.
Update: At 11:50 a.m. PDT, the Me.com site was accessible again, though Mac.com still appears to be down.
Update: At 12:30 pm. PDT, Me.com appears to be down again.
CNET Reviews' Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report.
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Apple)
Update at 10:08 a.m. PDT, with clarification on how users' e-mail will be handled.
Apple's MobileMe service is primed to be relaunched this week, ahead of the Friday launch of the iPhone 3G. That means subscribers to .Mac will find the service taken offline for a six-hour stretch as Apple makes the transition, according to a post in MacRumors.com.
The www.mac.com site will go down on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. PDT, leaving .Mac subscribers unable to access the site or use .Mac services, except for .MacMail via their desktop applications, iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, existing .Mac users may have already noticed the ability to receive and send e-mail at an @me.com address if they so request. Other mac.com subscribers will be grandfathered in, allowing them to continue receiving e-mail at their mac.com address, while also receiving a new me.com address.
When the site relaunches as MobileMe, users will find a few changes, according to MacRumors.com:
The revamped .Mac service will offer Web-based e-mail, calendar, address book, photo gallery, and storage capabilities as well as "Push" sync services.
A one-year subscription to MobileMe will cost $99, which is similar to the .Mac price, but purchasers of an iPhone 3G will be able to score a subscription for $69 on Friday, the report notes.
