I love MobileMe. At times. Some of its features are so very simple and helpful I absolutely do not want to live without them. The over-the-air syncing works great for me and Backup is a great way to keep my most important data archived every night. I especially love my tdhurst@me.com address, as it means I’m in an exclusive club reserved only for the most loyal Apple fans.
I’m a fanboy, because if I wasn’t, I’d kick some of the piece of shit MobileMe features to the curb. I’ve had it with poor iDisk mounting, a Backup program that won’t overwrite old data (like Time Machine does) and a webmail service that looks prettier than it handles.
Here’s what I want out of MobileMe before I renew my Family Pack next year.
1. Make iDisk FAST
Time yourself the next time you mount, open and upload a file to your iDisk. Then do the same to Dropbox or to a server via an FTP client. No matter the connection I’m on, MobileMe takes forever and more often than not freezes the Finder. This isn’t third-part or new software, people. It’s SUPPOSED to be an integral part of Apple’s offering and it’s slower than any of my cheaper or free options. Every single time.
My $150/yr subscription gives me 20 gigs of storage space, plus another five each for each of the people on my Family plan. 40 gigs of online storage? C’mon. Hard drives get cheaper every year and I bet server storage does that even faster, yet Apple’s $6+ billion war chest can’t spring for some exabytes? I’m willing to pay a premium for premium service. This isn’t it.
3. Backup is just dumb.
I back up my fiancée’s iPhoto Library on her iDisk, but after two or three backups, it fails. Why? Because the four-ish gigs exceeds the storage space available. WTF, guys? We can’t just sync changes? It’s not like I’m backing up ONE large file, I’m backing up a folder from a native application. Time Machine seems to be able to figure this out, but Backup cannot. I realize this type of service may take longer, but because I can schedule it in the middle of the night, what do I care if it takes four hours?
4. Sharing via the Public folder never works correctly
If I want to share a file I’ve uploaded, I log into the MobileMe site, find the file and turn on sharing. A prompt shows up with an option to send notifications via email. Never has anyone I’ve ever notified this way received it. I CAN copy the link and send it via my MobileMe account using desktop Mail, but never through webmail. Why does this feature even exist? Where are those notifications going? Spam?
5. Any added features are gimmicky
I’m happy that so many people find streaming music services useful. I’m even more glad that MobileMe is rumored to soon allow streaming to a mobile Apple device from your home network. But I don’t give a rat’s ass about the ability to do so. I have a 16 gig iPhone 4, and while I don’t proclaim that’s enough for everyone, I also don’t need ready access to every song I own anywhere I have a WiFi connection. I make playlists for a reason and I bet a lot of other people do, too.
Until MobileMe somehow allows me to sync my iPhone 4 to my MacBook Pro’s iTunes library wirelessly, any sort of music streaming service is completely pointless.
Apple, fix this.
