A few weeks ago I let me MobileMe account expire. I was a decision that I’ve been contemplating for awhile. I had mentioned it over Twitter and someone asked what I decided, so I thought I would share my reasoning why I decided I no longer needed to spend $99 a year on the service.
1. Mail, Contacts, Calendar Sync – There are a couple of reasons why this wasn’t important to me any more. One I must use a Microsoft Exchange server at work so this performs the same function with all my work Email, Contacts, and Calendar. And for all my personal info I use the Google Suite – Gmail and Gcal. The Google products perform the same function, and the cost is FREE.
2. Online Gallery – The online galleries that .Mac and now MobileMe have look great, and there was a time they were the best thing out there, but now with Flickr and Picasa once again a free service offers a comparable solution. iPhoto will even upload to Flickr now. And I bet for most people photo sharing on Facebook is good enough.
3. Back-to-My-Mac – Now I must confess, I was never able to get this to work right, and I know very few people that use it consistently without problems, but it’s still a feature that could be a great service. And once again, I found a FREE service that is able to perform the same function. I use LogMeIn and it works great, and it also can allow you to go back to a PC if you wanted also. I’ve had much better luck with LogMeIn, than I ever had with BackToMyMac. They do have a pay service, but the FREE level has been great for my needs.
4. iDisk – This was another service that in it’s day was unique, and the easiest way to share and store files online. The replacement for this for me has been DropBox. It works great and is super easy. You can have both private and public files. Great for storing things you need access to (even from your iPhone) or things you need to send the links out to share. DropBox‘s free level only offers 2 GB of storage which is a fraction of MobileMe’s 20 GB, but if you needed more you could pay for it.
5. iWeb – This one there I don’t have a great free solution for, but if you really want to host a website, even one you created in iWeb, there are a lot hosting companies that are much better and still cheaper than the $99 you spend a year for MobileMe. But if a website is what you are after a free Blogger or WordPress account would give you that blog or site for FREE.
One thing that was nice about MobileMe, was all these services were integrated into one interface. My current FREE solution is a series of links, but it gives me a series of tools that are all really good at the one thing they do instead of an integrated service that doesn’t always work as advertised. Plus the money that I saved I was able to put toward an Online backup service which is more valuable to me than an integrated package.
So am I crazy? Did I make a big mistake giving up on MoblieMe? What are your thoughts?
I concur!
i too have been thinking about dropping my mobile me.. but I just cant make myself.. I love that its all integrated into 1 service.. I’ve tried googles services, and I hated them… the main thing I hate was gmail… yes, I could put my other email addresses in there, but if I wanted to send an email to someone, through gmail.. it would go from my gmail addres, “on behalf of (email address)” which I hated.. and i found it confused people, because they didn’t know what email address to keep as mine.. and that bugged me.. if they got rid of that, I might consider using it..
I agree Chris, gmail isn’t perfect for email and since my work email is all in MS exchange, all i have gmail for is my personal email so it hasn’t been a problem for me. But I totally get what you are saying.
I wonder about iphone users does google push contact information and calendars to its users?
I was thinking the same thing but I have yet to find a reason not to use it. I have a mac so everything syncs. I also have a website and you are able to post some how with it though I have not discovered it yet. I am going to research it more before I decide in August.
everything in one place is really nice for me. the biggest benefit in my use of mobileme is that i haven’t lost a contact and everything is up-to-date thanks to the syncing feature. having had my phone replaced twice in the past year it’s been awesome to have my calendar and contacts on my phone by the time i reach my car in the parking lot.