Thursday, July 17, 2008 -- 1:41 p.m. -- at my desk

Here's a perfect example of Apple doing things right ... a product full of bugs that's tweaked and fixed and worked on and voila! Mobile Me.

I must say. I had a hard time with it in the beginning. So did a lot of other people. It was looking like there was no hope.

And then it seemed as though something just clicked and everything was better.

I've been using MobileMe extensively since the launch. I use it with iCal here at work in 10.4.11, the cloud online, my iPhone and my Powerbook at home running 10.5.4.

And it just works.

I update my calendar here at work and it appears instantly online and pretty much instantly on my iPhone. Then, when I get home at night, everything I've done during the day is on my iCal there. It's fantastic how it just happens over the air, invisible.

I truly feel more productive using it. I always use Exchange here at work with Entourage and in some cases I still have to, but for my personal calendars for meetings and projects, I much prefer iCal. And now I can use it and tweak what I do at home and know that it all will be waiting for me wherever I am the very next day.

That's a good feeling. A really good feeling.

I know there's been a little controversy about defining push and sync over the past few days. And Apple has listened to those concerns and changed the way it describes certain functions. That's great. Personally, whether it's push or sync doesn't matter, as long as the updates are timely and dependable. That's the key.

And they have been. Mail that I cc myself on from here at work to my home account beeps on the iPhone the minute I send it.

The calendar items can barely wait for me to click the calendar icon.

The contacts are the "slowest" but they take a minute or two at the most. I can handle that. I don't know that many people.

That said, I have some hopes and dreams and suggestions that I would like to see ... nothing mind-shattering ... just true productive things that would work for me and I believe work for everyone else.

Calendar reminders
This impacts my ability to multitask, actually. The reminder alarms are key for me and there's no way to attach these to an entry without doing it on the iPhone. So once I add something in iCal in either place, I need to wait for it to appear on the iPhone and then attach the alarm. That's backward. I'd like to see the same calendar menu -- or something better -- in iCal that carries right over to the iPhone.

Syncing photos
Now, photos sync but it's not as clean and cool as via the cloud in MobileMe. You can sync with the Web gallery and your iPhone and eventually that changes in iPhoto as well, but I find it a little buggy. The server times out or something just doesn't work as well as it should. Adding photos from the iPhone to the Web gallery works OK, but I'd like to see the simple addition of photos to the sync menu so that you can sync photos the same exact way you sync calendars. It almost seems like a no brainer -- that Apple wouldn't want to have two different kinds of sync. I wonder if it's because of the file sizes of photos -- that mixing that with calendars and contacts and bookmarks could be too much to handle. Maybe.

Syncing to-dos
I find this confusing because I see that option -- to sync to-dos -- in the MobileMe syncing prefs menu. But there's no true to-dos to sync. There's something that's a part of e-mail, but I think Apple simply needs to add just a little bit of meat to the notes application that allows for syncing to MobileMe. It would help so much if everything I tapped that notepad icon that I saw an updated list of things to do ... because I'm always adding to my to do list from whereever I'm at.

Those are the two biggest things to be honest. I mean, there's little tweaks I'd like to see -- different color icons for Outlook users, etc. -- but overall, a simpler photo sync and a useful to-do notes sync would absolutely make my day.

What about you? What's your take on Mobile Me? What's missing? What's perfect. Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for calling.

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Is it time for me to open an acct again and give it a try? Do you think the mail is really pushing from people that are sending to you? Would love to know before I start over again. I'm running XP remember. Thanks.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I think it's time, but I have to be honest and say that I've never used it with a PC. So I'm a little unsure when it comes to that.

While I can't be sure about all mail, of course, I often cc things from here to my iPhone. And when I do, I see it appear on my iPhone nearly instantly. So I feel good about it in general.

But perhaps other folks here have experience with MobileMe on XP and can give Brad some thoughts ... I know that my experience on the Mac really has me happy.

Hi Scott,
Your right the mobileMe service does seem to have improved dramatically over the past few days. However I'm still experiencing lots of little annoying bugs, nothing major just annoying.

Keep me logged in for 2 weeks just doesn't work I have to log in every time.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Same here!

Birthday and anniversary dates seem to be a day out. I've played with the time zone settings which fixed some but others are still out. Odd.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Same here!

Syncing birthdays to iPhone.

Firefox on WinXP seems to still be a bit tempramental with it's behavior it does hang especially on the calendar.

Changes still don't seem to push from the cloud to outlook, isn't it supposed to sync upto the cloud every 15mins or so but data being sent down from the cloud should push?

Luckily for me MM is a nice added extra and a bit of a cool gimmic. If I was a small buisiness or company using the facility I don't think I'd be overly confident with it at the moment.

Jon

SCOTT'S REPLY: yep. Seems as though these are the minor things that just have to work themselves out.

it's been ok. I can't get onto mobileme from work due to incompatible browser error. Wants me to use safari or firefox. But we are required to use IE.

Also why no alarms avail when entering calendar appts? I have to go back to my iPhone or mac to add the alarm reminder.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Diego, I forgot about the calendar reminders! I'm going back to add that. Thank you for reminding me!!

Many of us PC/Outlook users have a different take on the MMe experience as those appointments created on the iPhone or on the "other" computer do not appear in the month/day/year view of Outlook.

A thread chronicling our struggle is here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7636473

SCOTT'S REPLY: Certainly understandable ... And thank you so much for providing the link so we can see the details. That's something I'll delve into later because it's true ... we're not all Mac users and Mobile Me needs to work across the board.

We use the to do function in iCal. It ties in to the Mail function as well. Hopefully, this will get added to the iPhone.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Indeed. The extra function in that app would be great. The note pad could be so much more than it is, you know?

For the last 3 hours, MobileMe has been really, really dead.

Nothing but blank, gray screen here. (Using Safari on an XP PC)
Any idea what's going on?

SCOTT'S REPLY: Strange! No problems here that I can detect. Anyone else out there having trouble? PC or Mac?

I've got three Macs and two iPhones syncing up with MobileMe. The Mac I use at work uses Entourage to connect to our Exchange Server. Using Entourage's capability to sync with iCal, I am able to sync the Exchange calendar with all three Macs. I think that's cool!

SCOTT'S REPLY: I think that's cooler than cool!!

I like it too. I like sending a photo from the phone to my gallery.

(By the way, I am still waiting for my 3G phone from ATT. I ordered it last Monday and should get it tomorrow. Maybe.)

SCOTT"S REPLY: You'll like it, David. Despite all of my complaining about things that need to be fixed, it's still a great experience.

Thanks InTheAir- now we need to get them to fix it! Would like to know if push mail is working properly for you?

SCOTT'S REPLY: Me, too. Do tell, InTheAir.

I love everything on mobileme so far! One problem I am having is every now and then when I delete an email off my iphone, for some reason it sends it back in as an unread email. As a new email. I guess mobile me in my mac still thinks is new and hasn't send over the air that I read it and deleted it?

SCOTT'S REPLY: I have that problem as well, but not all the time -- every now and then would be a good way to describe it. It seems as though you describe it right ... it doesn't register as read on the server and it's sent again. Exactly.

MobileMe has been working well ... so well I renewed my .Mac account.

SCOTT's REPLY: That made me think about something ... I always loved .mac because I loved my e-mail and my photos in one place -- but not, .mac/MobileMe is so much more useful.

But still .. MobileMe doesn't have that ring that .mac did. .mac felt geekishly cool. MobileMe feels like some weird thing that I can't really describe. Of course, I'll get used to it :-D

Unrelated- when i get a call that's both a missed call and one that's left me a voice mail, the phone app on the desktop shows it as being "2" calls. When you go into the phone menu, it shows as "1" recent call and "1" voice mail like before. Never did this before 2.0 did it? Anybody else notice?

SCOTT'S REPLY: Actually, Brad, it's always been that way ... 2 on the outside and when you go inside, 1 and 1.

I'm not sure how to reply to a comment, but...

So far, push email through MobileMe ~is~ working. Although, as you know, push email is simply from MobileMe to iPhone (and not to any of the desktops connected to the 'cloud'). But, nonetheless, it does work for me.

SCOTT'S REPLY: All good on replying to the comment -- there's no specific way, so just like this is fine ... yep. Not push to desktop which is unfortunate, but I always have my iPhone with me, so I'm more likely to respond to that anyhow.

Can't re-activate my acct after canceling for the free trial-wants to charge my credit card. Any suggestions?

SCOTT'S REPLY: So you had a free trial and canceled it and are trying to reinstate it? Is that what you mean?

I would go to the MobileMe support page and ask send an e-mail and ask if they would reinstate your trial. Usually, Apple's pretty good about that.

Or have you tried another screen name? Does that help?

Got a separate trial acct again but no mail displayed on me.com and mail doesn't push to phone. Noticed in MobileMe preferences that there's no mail sync preference- only contacts, calendar and bookmarks? Could that be why there's no mail etc- or does it just do that automatically- when it's working right? Just tried to see if calendar from iPhone would sync and that doesn't work either. Going to try to see if it will work a while longer- a shame it won't so far; it's a nice idea. Chatted with support today to get acct going again. Maybe just need to keep talking to them until they can help me get it right. Frustrating.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I wish I understood where the problem is because you are using an entirely different account, right? And you cleared out the syncs/backups in the mobileme prefs, right?

I am loving MobileMe and its sync services. As well as an iMac, MacBook, and iPhone, I also have a Palm Zire PDA that's my major time-management tool. The Zire syncs with the MacBook via bluetooth, and the MacBook syncs with the cloud, and all of my devices are happy with one another. And all without cables!

I agree, though, that it would be nice to have to-dos and notes that would sync and be available on the iPhone. Those are two of the main reasons I stick with the Zire.

SCOTT'S REPLY: And while there's nothing wrong with the Zire -- I think it's great that you still use it -- if you had notes, you'd make the move completely. That just goes to show just how important it really is.

I really don't use MM with outlook or any other app.. prefer to stick with the web interface..

One bug I've noticed is that when I delete messages from my iphone, they don't get deleted from the MM site.. I have to delete a message before it's forced to sync my mail again.. Very odd..

otherwise, I'm very happy with it.. Can stay organized from any desktop w/browser or my phone.. Ok, it doesn't LIKE IE, but it CAN work, if no other option available. :)

I too would like to see the To Do list work on the iphone and the reminders available from the calendar in MobileMe.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Same bug here with mail, Tim. Same with a lot of other folks. I think that might be a systemwide one.

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