

How Do You Like MobileMe For Free? - gaiusparx
http://sanziro.com/2010/05/how-do-you-like-mobileme-for-free.html

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anotherperson
I would rather it just cost less as opposed to entirely free. If there were a
paid alternative to GMail, I would move away from that too.

Paying for something reduces the likelihood that the provider will do
unscrupulous things with my data for financial gain. Or at least I _feel_ like
they’d be less likely. And ignorance is bliss, right?

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fierarul
I dunno, I pay for extra storage on GMail (and the rest of Google's services)
and I don't think it removes the ads. It's just extra storage.

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JunkDNA
I have wondered if this was in the cards for a while now. I have had trouble
reconciling it with a few things though. On one hand, from a competition
standpoint, there is an argument to be made that google is providing free
cloud-based sync for all users. Therefore, Apple needs to be competitive with
them. However, Apple rarely (never?) releases products as loss leaders. They
are always interested in breaking even or (ideally) extracting a small amount
of revenue from every offering. I can't see them generating sufficient revenue
using advertising, but perhaps iAd would be one way to do it.

On the other hand, the cost of hosting email, calendars, address book sync,
etc... is fairly small. I could see a dropbox-like scenario where you get a
small amount of free storage (plenty for contacts, calendars, and recent
email). Then you pay for additional storage and/or access to premium streaming
content. That offering could be built into the purchase price of most Apple
gear without a dramatic price increase.

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TetOn
>Apple rarely (never?) releases products as loss leaders

Ever heard of the iTunes music store? Minimally profitable and repeatedly
referred to as a driver for iPod/iWhatever sales rather than a profit center.
Without the iPhone's popularity, the same concept would apply to the App Store
as well. When announced, it was directly compared to the music operation, and
not expected to make any measurable impact on the bottom line.

This analysis (though obviously flawed by Apple's own sales data release
policies) largely backs up these statements:
[http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/255967-timeline-
strategy-c...](http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/255967-timeline-strategy-
consulting/1234-how-much-profit-is-apple-making-from-the-app-store)

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JunkDNA
>Ever heard of the iTunes music store?

That was the whole point of my post. Lots of companies would be tempted to
operate something like the iTunes music store at a loss, since it would be
seen as driving sales (a marketing expense if you will). For example: Amazon
has is known to sell a significant number of ebooks at a loss to keep prices
low to drive Kindle sales.

My understanding from everything I have read is that Apple at least breaks
even, and may make a small amount of revenue. They do _not_ lose any money on
the iTunes store. If there is going to be a free component to MobileMe, they
are going to try and generate profits from it somehow.

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UnknownSource
How would you like an already painfully slow service to be even slower? The
rumor that this is based on has no credibility.

And even if it were free, I'd still avoid it like the plague, because there
are better offering's out there, most of which aren't mostly tied down to an
OS.

This is unlikely to happen, unless Apple becomes a mobile service provider
which is likely a bigger possibility.

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ivenkys
How will it be any different from the other providers ?

That would be the key, being free is not really a differentiator any more.

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roc
Provided it retains improved integration with OSX, I think it'd be
sufficiently different.

Having iDisk to provide net storage to iPhone OS devices would be a fairly big
deal by itself. (Assuming they include over-the-air backup and fix the
workflow issue.)

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ivenkys
"Assuming they include over-the-air backup and fix the workflow issue" - hence
why rsync wins.

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MWinther
I would want/need the option of using it with a custom domain for it to be
relevant for me.

