

To compete with Google, Apple has to make Mobile Me free - a4agarwal
http://sachin.posterous.com/mobile-me-should-be-free

======
gecko
"In many ways, Mobile Me isn't that good! By making it free, they will gain a
lot of users, and therefore gain resources from Apple to make it better."

So, to summarize: the product currently sucks. By dropping the division's
revenue to zero, while simultaneously encouraging more users to see a cruddy
product that (let's be honest) represents Apple in a poor light, it'll be
easier to convince Apple to throw more money at the product.

I think he just successfully argued against his thesis.

~~~
a4agarwal
Certain aspects of Mobile Me need work, like iDisk. Other aspects work well,
like email and Mobile Me sync.

I'm saying that Apple should make Mobile Me free, _and_ put more resources
behind it to make it better. They should focus on increasing its adoption, and
making it a core piece of their mobile platform.

As opposed to trying to monetize from it directly.

~~~
megablast
Yes, we understand that, but what you wrote makes no sense.

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WiseWeasel
The author apparently has too short a memory to recall when .mac was called
"iTools", and it _was_ free. It turned out to be a much larger money pit than
they anticipated, one that was only ever going to be viable by violating their
users' trust and selling their privacy away.

I'm of the opinion that Apple made the right choice in keeping their brand
clean from all the privacy issues with those free ad-supported services,
opting instead for classical b2c relationships (service to client in exchange
for money) with the implied privacy protection of typically confidential
business to customer relationships.

The author [also] makes the repeated mistake of assuming cloud services are
better than the obviously obsolete trail of tears that is syncing to a
computer. What if my personal and relationship data is valuable to me, and I
don't _want_ to have to upload it to ANYONE WHATSOEVER? What if I want to be
able to transfer it directly to another device I own without having it reside
on a third party device? That's worth money to me, and that's what I'm paying
Apple for.

[edit]Made it slightly more clear that I'm talking about two different topics,
.mac and syncing of data from iPhones and iPads.[/edit]

~~~
wmf
_I'm of the opinion that Apple made the right choice in keeping their brand
clean from all the privacy issues with those free ad-supported services,
opting instead for classical b2c relationships (service to client in exchange
for money) with the implied privacy protection of typically confidential
business to customer relationships._

It seems like Apple could retain these benefits by including a MobileMe
subscription with every iDevice, but not making it outright "free". Once 90%
of iCustomers have MobileMe accounts, Apple would be motivated to improve it
and add more Google-like cloud syncing.

~~~
WiseWeasel
I'd like to see them split up the various features of .me, and allow you to
buy only the ones you want, similar to what they're doing with iWork on the
iPad. I'd buy email for $20-25/yr, maybe idisk for another $20, and Find My
Phone for [$5 per incident or $15/yr] (which I'd hopefully never have to buy,
but would be more than happy to fork over for should the need arise). The rest
of the stuff, they can keep.

[edit]Changed suggested price of Find My Phone from $10/incident before
someone had replied to it, but then I noticed my edit made his reply not make
sense, hence this note.[/edit]

~~~
danudey
I use Find my iPhone all the time; not just when I've left my phone at the
diner (I never have), but when I can't find my phone in my apartment also. A
roommate once used it to find her phone, which turned out to be in the fridge
for some reason.

~~~
megablast
You could just call your iphone, that would have the same effect if it was in
your apartment.

~~~
ra88it
Not if it's muted, which mine is 90% of the time.

------
Terretta
"To compete with Fox, Time Warner has to make HBO free."

On the contrary, these products have different business models that
intentionally appeal to different markets.

For example, you can't walk into a Google Store at the mall and have someone
help you get your Windows 7 laptop and iPhone talking to each other.

Also, if you offer people free coffee versus coffee marked down to a dollar
from five dollars, many people will choose the coffee for a buck.

People like to value things, and having paid for something invests them in
valuing its utility.

------
ajju
Rumor has it that the Mobile Me product and infrastructure as it currently
stands is going into maintenance mode. I doubt Apple would give up entirely on
something so important, so my best guess is that they are going to launch
something entirely new that does many of the same things in a better way.

This is hearsay, so please treat it as such.

~~~
frossie
What Apple needs, and I imagine this is what it is working towards, is a way
to make its gadget products (iPhone, iPad)"unethered" from a computer. In
other words, you should be able to have an iPhone or an iPad _and no
computer_. This is not currently the case. So I assume they are coming with
some kind of cloud service that allows you to manage your backups, store the
primary version of your information etc. directly from your device.

------
ben1040
I don't feel it needs to be free, but the service certainly does not feel like
it's worth $100/year (or even the $69/year it costs if you buy a MobileMe
activation code on Amazon rather than direct from Apple).

But that's because I'm paying for stuff I don't use. I only subscribed for the
"Find my iPhone" service and the contact/calendar sync. I don't use the cloud
storage features and I already have half a dozen other email addresses I don't
check anyway. If not for "find my iPhone," I would've just relied entirely on
Google's sync service.

I don't see why they can't implement a pricing system that unbundles some of
the services -- sell "find my iPhone," the sync services, the remote access,
and cloud storage services a la carte.

~~~
lallysingh
A big selling point for their stuff is the integration with iLife -- it's
really easy to publish from one of those apps to the web.

------
danielrhodes
Although I think the cloud is very important in making a great end-to-end
mobile product, I think this would be a red herring for Apple. Here's why:

Apple appeals to a limited range of people. There are many people who simply
don't identify themselves as being a potential iPhone owner, regardless of
superiority, design, range of apps, etc. I would be extremely surprised if
most consumers had any idea of what cloud syncing meant or why it would
benefit them, let alone have it be a deciding factor in their cell phone
purchase. Sure such a feature can be explained, but most users don't even work
at that level yet where they need such deep syncing.

What Android phones are offering is choice in identity: tons of different
types of phones they can choose from on carriers they are already on (a big
deal when you consider family plans), with a big range of prices. These phones
run the gamut from the low to the high end of the market.

This is the antithesis of what Apple is all about. It is likely that Apple has
always known this would happen, and once things settle down, Apple will
position itself comfortably in the high-end smartphone market and pull in
higher than normal profits.

------
intlect
I know a lot of people love free but I'm a big fain of paying for my email
accounts and data hosting. I believe in that "you get what you pay for"
saying.

Mobile Me however is one of the things I'm finding isn't worth it right now
because it doesn't support bringing one's own domain to it. I mean, I love
iPhone sync and stuff, but not being able to bring my own domain to it is
really crap, as is the speed of iDisk when you're not in the US.

~~~
intlect
And one more thing that makes Mobile Me effing annoying. If you want to import
mail from Gmail, via POP (let's say you're lazy and don't want to download
local then upload via IMAP) you can't.

Because a company so "security conscious" as Apple only allows cleartext POP3
on port 110. No port 995, no SSL, and the support staff tells you they are
unaware of how to migrate email from Gmail and that they support all standard
POP hosts.

I'm sorry, but when I read that in the support chat interface, I was this
close to start cursing but I realized it wasn't the guy's fault that company
policy in this regard is crap.

~~~
bonzoesc
POP doesn't work well when you have multiple limited-bandwidth clients
accessing the same mailbox. I'm surprised they took the effort to make it work
at all.

------
roc
This article is a confusing mix of three unrelated arguments: that MobileMe
should be better, that MobileMe should be free, and that iPhone OS devices
should be first-class computing devices.

I really don't see what any of them have to do with one another.

------
jherdman
I recently purchased a subscription to Mobile Me. I was sick and tired of
Google's offerings not synching correctly, or completely losing my data. I
have not had this problem since switching (mind you, I've only been a member
for one month).

------
xenophanes
To make Mobile Me free, Apple has to improve it.

They don't want 100x the users until it's ready.

------
chris24
For me, the problem of MobileMe's pricing isn't that it costs $100/yr. It's
the fact that if I don't want to use the service anymore, everyone who has
that email address will need to get my new address. With free services that
offer email forwarding (Gmail comes to mind), this isn't an issue at all. Once
you get a MobileMe email address, it's tough to get out of that mess.

With Google's Sync service, I get half of the MobileMe benefits (push contacts
and calendars) for free. And I can move from it if I'd like. There's no lock-
in. Then to replace iDisk, there's Dropbox, with a much better merge-handling
system.

The only MobileMe feature missing from these services is Find my iPhone.

~~~
grinich
I still think Find my iPhone should be something supported by my monthly
contract with AT&T.

It's something that all carriers could offer for a few dollars a month,
regardless of phone.

------
doron
There is the issue of expertise, to scale this fast into a system that
ambitious would be something that apple didn't tackle before. Apple talent
poll seems to be focused on other problems, very large scale computing is an
expertise Google completely dominates at present and is closely aligned with
their core business.

this isn't resolved by throwing money at it, its a whole other class of
engineering problems, and the talent is currently elsewhere, much of at the
rivals employ.

~~~
plaster2
you mean like cell phones and telecom?

I think free mobileme and itunes/app sync is coming. Remember that large data
center Apple just built?

I've been a mac user for decades but have never used the current mobileme as
it just seemed meh, for the money. I sync calendars over google calendar and
use drop box and mail attachments for files.

If it was free and beefed up I'd try it and it may just become another Apple
sticky.

~~~
doron
I think the entire suite of online synchronization that Google provides online
to the droids as the rival to mobile.me not just itunes sync.

Google provides mapping services, increasingly important to geolocation
services, email, document creation, address book management, not to mention
Google voice which is seamless on its phones.

Apple has a great phone, and of course the ipad, but a great number of the
users use Google services of which the droid enjoys an extremely fast pace of
integration. This leaves Apple in a strange position, where its own clients
rely by the millions on its chief rival technology.

Droid can and will enjoy a very fast adaptation to the cloud, and apple
doesn't have that scale capability, and to scale to a place that can rival
Google in web services will be quite a feat, and a change of focus for Apple.

<http://counternotions.com/2010/05/25/mapwars/>

------
lleger
This is as untrue now as it was the first time it was said. MobileMe does not
need to be free. MobileMe just needs to become indispensable. It needs to suck
less and be so integrated into all Apple products that not having it is simple
not an option. Making it free would be great and would certainly dent Google,
but doing the above will also have a deleterious effect on their rival.

------
Tycho
I figure Apple's central cloud-computing strategy is not to offer cool
services for free, but rather to make tons of money. To do this: sell tons of
iPods and iPhones and iPads, the enabling devices. Sort of like Cisco selling
hardware during the initial internet boom, and getting incredibly rich, while
others experimented with silly dotcoms etc.

------
rbanffy
I remember when Jobs promised my @mac.com e-mail to be free. And I am still a
Mac user (last time I counted, I had 9 Macs in my collection, one of which is
used regularly to sync my iPod)

------
ErrantX
_A user can buy an Android phone, log in with their Google account, and
instantly have their contacts, email, and calendar._

Fortunately, this can also be done with an iPhone. :)

------
mark_l_watson
Great comment by the author on making the Apple experience stickier - more
difficult to buy hardware from another vendor that won't play with Mobile Me.

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timinman
Too late.

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Groxx
Or, ya know, they _could_ just allow 3rd party MobileMe clone services to be
configured. That thing called "competition"? Buuuut, this _is_ Apple, so we
shouldn't really expect it.

~~~
tewks
I think MobileMe uses ActiveSync. They were both introduced at the same time.
They both have the same exact features.

Anyone running Exchange or an ActiveSync licensee (such as Zimbra) can also
support the same features.

~~~
intlect
MobileMe uses XMPP for push.

But true, anyone with Exchange or ActiveSync can support the same features on
an iPhone.

