several times finally made the correct configuration stick.
Also, MobileMe does not currently sync published or subscribed iCal calendars to iPhones or me.com. (An Apple tech note points out that calendars are, in fact, synchronized—it’s just the events in the calendars that don’t show up, which isn’t helpful.)
MobileMe on the Web
The most visible part of MobileMe is the Web presence at me.com, which takes advantage of advanced Web technologies to come very close to replicating a desktop application.
Me.com gives you access to your mail, contacts, calendars, Web gallery, and iDisk, as well as account settings. Using the modules is surprisingly interactive. You can now edit published galleries on the Web, such as dragging photos to reorder them; changes you make online are synchronized to the galleries you originally set up in your desktop application (like iPhoto).
With the MobileMail Calendar, you can use your mouse to drag events to reschedule them, or extend duration by dragging an event’s borders—with .Mac, you had to use a dialog box to enter such information. In fact, the MobileMail Calendar performs better than iCal under Leopard in some ways. For example, you just double-click an event to edit its details; in iCal, you double-click the event to view the details, and then must click Edit to make changes.
The site uses advanced Web technologies to provide an interactive experience, such as dragging an event’s top or bottom edge to change its time and duration. Keyboard shortcuts abound using the Control key, such as Control-N to create a new outgoing message or Control-Shift-R to reply-all in MobileMe Mail. You may forget you’re using a Web browser.
As a result, you need to be running Web software that fully supports AJAX and JavaScript: Safari 3, Firefox 2 and 3, OmniWeb 5.7, and Camino 1.6.1 all worked fine for me, while Opera 9.5 and Flock were denied entrance. Under Windows, Safari 3 and Firefox 2 and higher are recommended; Internet Explorer 7 will work, with some caveats, and Explorer 6 is not supported.
MobileMe now includes 20GB of combined e-mail and file storage (double that of the last .Mac plan) for individuals, or 40GB for the $149 Family Pack. You can also purchase additional storage for either plan.
Transferring files between your computer and iDisk finally doesn’t feel as sluggish as in the .Mac days; I found copying to my iDisk roughly equivalent to copying the same amount of data to my ISP. And the Finder copy window now accurately displays the transfer progress (a little annoyance in .Mac that always bugged me).
One iDisk feature, which would act as an alternative to e-mail by letting you share large files via linked message, has yet to be implemented.
MobileMissing
Retrofitting .Mac to become MobileMe involved abandoning several pieces on the shop floor. iCards are gone—I suppose the avalanche of poor-quality Flash animated cards at other sites finally proved overwhelming. Publishing photos as .Mac slides (where your images could act as someone else’s screen saver), and Web access to bookmarks are also gone, although bookmarks are still synchronized between Macs.
.Mac Groups can no longer be created, though you can still use existing groups. And HomePage, which was supplanted by Web Gallery, continues to function but won’t be getting any further attention from Apple.
And although customers who signed up for e-mail-only .Mac accounts can renew that service, an e-mail-only plan is not an option with new MobileMe accounts.
Macworld’s buying advice
If you need up-to-the-minute access to your important data on your iPhone or online, MobileMe is a great solution (even given the 15-minute lag from the desktop, something I expect Apple will fix in the future, since they demonstrated the capability when MobileMe was announced). Similarly, if you work on multiple Macs and want to keep information consistent among them, or use Back to My Mac to control them remotely, MobileMe is worth the yearly subscription price.
MobileMe isn’t as compelling for casual users. For online storage, photo publishing,
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