8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

Today at Apple’s WWDC developer event they announced “MobileMe”, a replacement for the “.Mac” suite of services. “MobileMe” will enable a user to keep their contacts, calendars, e-mail, synchronized across all devices via push. It also offers enhanced photo sharing capabilities that will be integrated into the iPhone and new website, as well as better data synchronization courtesy of iDisk. All of these new web applications and services can leverage “MobileMe’s” new 20GB of storage space.

So, the question inevitably becomes, “is it worth $99?”. For me, the answer is a resounding, “no”. There are a couple of major snags in the offering. First of all, my e-mail is associated with this domain, and so I have no interest in getting a “me.com” e-mail address. I have scoured the new documentation, but it doesn’t mention allowing you to do an MX forward so that you could associate a personal domain with these services. Major bummer.

Second, the services don’t match the price. $99 is a hefty sum for synchronization services. I use a Zimbra mail host for my personal data management, and it provides roughly the same functionality (disclosure: I work for Yahoo, which owns Zimbra, but this has nothing to do with why I use it).  The Zimbra hosting allows me to keep my personal domain, and offers an iSync conduit that keeps my address book and calendar in sync across all of my devices and has a web interface for accessing my e-mail, calendar, and contact list.  iTunes also supports syncing iPhone contacts with Gmail and Yahoo!, and I imagine that both of these companies will offer native apps for the iPhone to help keep everything up-to-date.

If you combine one of these PIM solutions with a free file storage solution like the most excellent Dropbox you can replicate these services for a much cheaper cost.  I pay around $6 a month for Zimbra hosting from 01.com and Dropbox is currently free.  Sure, you may not get everything managed in a single place with the extreme elegance and simplicity of an Apple product, but you do get a more flexible solution.  Is “MobileMe” for me?  Certainly not.  Is it a great service that would be perfect for my mom?  Definitely.