29Dec/083
Giving up on MobileMe
Yeah, I know. I'm not the first one, neither am I the last. But every one got his own reasons. And not everyone describes the alternatives. This is exactly what I will do in this post.
First of all I want to say that MobilMe is great.... for unexperienced users who want something simple that "just works" and is now bloated with functionality they don't even understand. But its missing quite a few bits for the rest of us and bellow you can find detailed "what the hell" list.
- [BLOCKING] Mail doesn't support custom domains. It just doesn't work for me. I don't want to be stuck with the @me.com address for which I have to pay every year! Besides I need to use the SMTP server to send emails from other mail accounts!
- Mail has no server side filters, which kind of strange if you remember that you can actually sync the rules with MobileMe!
- iDisk is rather slow and there is now easy way to send links to public files. I have to send link to my whole public folder (what the hell?). Furthermore, its filled with unnecessary stuff they use for syncing purposes
- Blog engine in iWeb is something beyond my understanding. Why can't I have a web based admin panel like in blogspot?!
- [Half Blocking] Gallery public interface is bloated with JS and buggy in older browsers. So I never know if my friend will be able to open it.
- Bookmarks are not accessible from web interface. Syncing bookmarks between browsers without giving access to them is so not modern! What if I'm traveling and want to check that linked I saved right before living home?
The rest of the stuff that mobileme offers is quite good and does its job. Calendars and Address Book sync, just as well as keychains, bookmarks and notes and mail rules. And I would have used it if it was cheaper. But to pay 75 euro just for these few basic services is and overkill!
So we are looking for alternatives. Ouch that hurts there are a lot! I am not gonna discuss all of them, but just those I decided to use.
- Mail is of course replaces with GMail! After playing around with IMAP settings and enabling some lab feature I set it up in Apple Mail just perfectly!
- Address Book is synced with Plaxo (www.plaxo.com), which is a fantastic services that allows you sync anything with anything and it's free!
- Calendar... hmm I wanted to sync that with Google but then the plugins are not free and I don't use it that much. But wait! Plaxo can sync it and then sync it with Google. Fantastic
- iDisk is surely replaces with Dropbox. Much cleaner and faster.
- Photo gallery - Picasa from Google
- Bookmarks go back to infamous del.ico.us service. And there is even a plugin for Safari which costs just 10$ (http://delicioussafari.com/). Buy it if you are a heavy user.
- Passwords can be synced with 1Password+Dropbox 1Password is an amazing tool for storing you secure information. 40$ and it worths every cent!
- Blog... well that can go anywhere. Why not blogspot, we have google account anyway.
So this is the equation MobileMe = Google+Plaxo+Dropbox+delicious+1Password
Of course there are some downsides. Plaxo can't sync tasks (yet), but you can create tasks in Mail within GMail account and they work perfectly. Also you mail rules are not synced, which you might actually want if you use other IMAP accounts except for GMail which has them on server side.
However, you get all this almost free (maximum you spend 50$ one time of software). You can replace services if they don't satisfy you at any time, you are not tight to one provider.
P.S. As I don't have iPhone yet, and I am stuck with WM6 based iPaq I guess I'll try Plaxo premium which can sync with Windows Mobile.
October 8th, 2009 - 22:39
Hi Sergey… How good is Plaxo for contact sync? Does it sync properly, leaving no duplicates? Does it support contact pictures? I need to sync my mac, outlook and windows mobile.
October 17th, 2009 - 13:41
Well, I found that Plaxo works just fine for me. The web site UI and functionality lack behind somewhat (compared to Google). But yeah, contact/calendar syncing works just fine!
I tried Google for contact syncing — well thats a disaster you never now how many copies of the same contact you’ll end with.
October 18th, 2009 - 09:01
I use mac address book’s ability to sync with google and google’s ability to sync with Windows Mobile. So far I’ve never had any dups. Outlook though is out of picture and I need it synced because my IP phone syncs with Outlook. I use WM phone as a bridge at the moment