World of Apple

Following the official launch of MobileMe late last week a knowledge base article on Apple’s support site began raising concerns amongst some.

The article outlines that instant data sync only occurs to MobileMe from the web interface or a portable device such as iPhone or iPod touch. The main concern is that changes made on a Mac will not be instantly synced back to MobileMe but changes will be updated automatically every 15 minutes or manually by hitting the “Sync” button.

Also regarding MobileMe, Apple has confirmed that the iDisk File Sharing feature of the service will be delayed.

In response to a customers support email “Mike” of Apple’s MobileMe Support team wrote, “When MobileMe was announced, iDisk File Sharing was mentioned as a feature; however, the MobileMe webpage noted that all features listed on that page were subject to change,” continuing, “When MobileMe was released on July 10, 2008, iDisk File Sharing was not included. I apologize for any inconvenience.”

Apple’s website lists iDisk as coming soon but doesn’t offer any timeline as to when the feature will be enabled.

To help some users, Apple has pointed many users towards this support article, which describes other ways in which MobileMe users can share the contents of their remote iDisks.

Apple has released an update for users of Mac OS X, adding the abilities of MobileMe to the operating system. The update is available through software update.

“The Mac OS X Update For MobileMe is recommended for users running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 and includes general system fixes that enhance your Mac for MobileMe,” reads Apples description of the update.

There is no indication as to what exactly this update fixes or updates.

After over a days worth of downtime Apple appears to have stabilised and officially released MobileMe, the replacement to .Mac.

The $99/year service replaces the original .Mac service and offers web-based email, address book, calendar, photos and storage. It also integrates with both Mac OS X and iPhone to provide “push” services that allows all your devices to be synchronised at all times over the internet.

Apple has today revealed that the revamped .Mac service known as MobileMe will go live on July 9th between 6PM and 12AM PT.

According to the service status message which can be seen when users log into .Mac:

MobileMe Launch
7/9/2008, 6pm-12am PT

As part of the MobileMe launch, www.mac.com will be taken offline at 6pm PT on Wednesday, July 9th.

Members will be unable to access www.mac.com or any .Mac services during this time with the exception of .Mac Mail accessed via a desktop application, iPhone, or iPod touch.

MobileMe will be available as soon as possible during this maintenance window.

Apple today announced that its online service .Mac will be replaced with MobileMe.

Apple has posted an article aimed at .Mac users to help them understand the transition.

This article helps current .Mac members better understand what to expect from the upcoming MobileMe upgrade. When MobileMe becomes available, this article will be updated with more details to help upgraded members get started with the new service. You may want to bookmark this article and refer back to it when MobileMe goes live.

In short the article outlines that your .Mac account will work as it did before, but you’ll have a choice of using either username@mac.com or username@me.com. If you have aliases setup at .Mac they will continue to work as well. All your .Mac websites will continue to work at both mac.com and me.com.

Apple today introduced MobileMe, a new Internet service that delivers push email, push contacts and push calendars from the MobileMe service in the “cloud” to native applications on iPhone, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. MobileMe also provides a suite of elegant, ad-free web applications that deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser. MobileMe applications (www.me.com) include Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online.

“Think of MobileMe as ‘Exchange for the rest of us,’” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get.”

With a MobileMe email account, all folders, messages and status indicators look identical whether checking email on iPhone, iPod touch, a Mac or a PC. New email messages are pushed instantly to iPhone over the cellular network or Wi-Fi, removing the need to manually check email and wait for downloads. Push also keeps contacts and calendars continuously up-to-date so changes made on one device are automatically pushed up to the cloud and down to other devices. Push works with the native applications on iPhone and iPod touch, Microsoft Outlook for the PC, and Mac OS X applications, Mail, Address Book and iCal, as well as the MobileMe web application suite.

MobileMe web applications are 100 percent ad-free and provide an incredible, desktop-like experience that allows users to drag and drop, click and drag and even use keyboard shortcuts. MobileMe provides anywhere access to Mail, Contacts and Calendar, with a unified interface that allows users to switch between applications with a single click, and Gallery makes it easy to share photos on the web in stunning quality. Gallery users can upload, rearrange, rotate and title photos from any browser; post photos directly from an iPhone; allow visitors to download print quality images; and contribute photos to an album. MobileMe iDisk lets users store and manage files online with drag and drop filing and makes it easy to share documents too large to email by automatically sending an email with a link for downloading the file. MobileMe includes 20GB of online storage that can be used for email, contacts, calendar, photos, movies and documents.

MobileMe, available on July 11, is a subscription-based service with 20GB of storage for $99 (US) per year for individuals and $149 (US) for a Family Pack, which includes one master account with 20GB of storage and four Family Member accounts with 5GB of storage each. Users can sign up for a free, 60-day MobileMe trial at www.apple.com/mobileme and current .Mac members will be automatically upgraded to MobileMe accounts. MobileMe subscribers can purchase an additional 20GB of storage for $49 (US) or 40GB of storage for $99 (US) annually.

Using an iPhone or iPod touch with MobileMe requires iPhone 2.0 software and iTunes® 7.7 or later. For use with a Mac, MobileMe requires Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 or the latest version of Mac OS X Leopard.

TUAW is reporting on what they believe to be an accurate view of what Apple’s revamp of .Mac will hold for current and future users of the online service.

TUAW notes that .Mac “will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC” and that existing users will have their @mac.com email addresses forwarded to @me.com addresses.

The popular blog also reports that the entire web interface will be given a new look with contacts looking like they do in Address Book and calendars looking like iCal.

MobileMe is expected to be available in late June/early July, and is reported to be integrated heavily with the latest build of the iPhone OS 2.0 beta. One of the features said to be coming to the iPhone is over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendars and photos.

After much rumour over the last few days that .Mac will be re-branded and revamped at WWDC next week, a long service outage has sparked further speculation.

At around 5.30pm Eastern time on Monday .Mac mail went offline for around 6 hours.

During last years All Things Digital: D5 conference Steve Jobs was questioned on why Apple had let .Mac dwindle, Jobs answered “I couldn’t agree more, and we’ll make up for lost time in the near future.”

After the news late last week that Apple could be renaming its suite of online services from .Mac to Mobile Me it appears that the company has also purchased the domain “me.com”.

Me.com currently points to Snappville.com but a Netcraft page for the domain lists an Apple email address as the DNS contact.

Macworld is also reporting that Apple has snapped up multiple .me domain names which are up for grabs from the country of Montenegro.

The .me registry states that Apple has registered domains such as ipod.me, apple.me and itunes.me.

Trademark-holders have until 20 May to register their company and product names under the new .me domain, which is being marketed as a generic top-level domain by the country of Montenegro.

“The .me extension gives every company on the planet the opportunity to personalize their brands…and make them more relevant to today’s Internet-savvy teens,” says Roland LaPlante, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Afilias. “Companies should be registering .me names not just from an intellectual property protection standpoint, but because there is so much business opportunity to personalise products.”

Companies can reserve .me names from more than 60 domain name registrars. Anyone can register a .me name from 6 June through 26 June. The .me registry is scheduled to go live on July 17.

Earlier rumours that .Mac will be renamed have become somewhat concreted by the discovery of references to an existing Apple trademark.

A reference found in the latest iPhone 2.0 OS beta points towards the use of “Mobile Me” as the new name for .Mac.