Alexei@Nitobi

MobileMe is Apple’s answer to Microsoft Exchange with some additional features that look a lot like that Microsoft is offering with their new Live Workspace service. Essentially it gives you a unified way to handle eMail, Files, Photos, Calendar, and Address Book between all your machines including your PC, Mac, iPhone (iTouch), and AppleTV. For a marketing overview, check out the video over at apple.com. Its main advantage for business users is probably the way it provides similar functionality to Blackberry with the Push-Email Push-Contacts and Push-Calendar features. This means that the very moment an email is sent to you, you are notified with an audible noise from your iPhone without having to wait for it to page the server. Pretty cool indeed, and I bet RIM is shaking in their boots.

The Good

Email. The web based eMail application seems top notch. Clearly mirrored on Microsoft Outlook, it provides a clean, fast UI with seamless integration to the other MobileMe services. The push-email to mobile devices such as iPhone and iPod Touch make this feature an excellent choice for business users. Also, the Ajax-y goodness baked right into the Sproutcore platform makes this a really competitive webmail solution – right up there with Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

Online Storage with iDisk. This is something that has really been missing all-in-one suites. Some way is needed to move large files about the web between devices that doesn’t feel so ‘tacked on’. I was really impressed with the way Microsoft is solving this problem with Live Workspace, and it looks like Apple is following suit with 20GB of storage.

Calendar. This feature is well executed. The calendaring synchronization between devices is perfect, and the UI for the calendar interface on the web is as good as Outlook’s.

The Bad

No Chat. Integrated chat is conspicuously missing from this package. While I can do texting-yes, I cannot see those conversations in the web view if I am away from my phone or don’t want to use my phone. I’ve really gotten used to this feature with Google Apps.

Browser Support. It’s odd that a solution targeting PC users does not support IE6 and only has limited support for IE7. As a rich-ui web developer I know that it’s far easier to build a web app that supports these browsers from the beginning than to go back and fix it later.

Price. Apple is asking for $99 for an individual account (per year). If you buy an iPhone or Mac you can get it for $69. To me this is steep. If I fork out the $2200 commitment for a new iPhone (with 3 year contract in Canada) why are they asking for $70 more bucks just so I can have the same level of communications Blackberry offers me all-inclusive? Also just generally what I expect these days for $99 is quite a lot when it comes to online services. Microsoft will sell me an entire office suite for $170 – I feel like I’m getting ripped off by paying $100 to Apple to make their own devices talk to one another. If I had to pick a price that would make sense for me.. I’d go closer to $49 for the Individual account, and no more than $20 if I buy a new computer or iPhone and sign up within 30 days.

Data Migration. I have so far seen very little on how they are going to help me move my data from Blackberry/Exchange/Google Apps to MobileMe. This is huge for winning converts and my biggest objection so far.

The Verdict

Apple has bitten off a lot for the first release appears to have chosen well for the baseline featureset. As always, I am wary about jumping on new Apple products right when they come out because I usually get burned (either with unanticipated price drops soon after launch, or hardware/software failures). However, my main objection to mobileme is that I am a committed Google Apps user and would have a hard time migrating all my data – as well as my email address. I will certainly keep my eye on this because I would love to get this level of integration with my devices, and like a lot of what Apple does, it looks oh-so-sweet.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Rich Internet Apps, apple, business, microsoft, web2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.