Posted on Oct 31, 2008

Mobile Me Alternatives

Is it better than free?

When Apple announced the upgrade to .Mac this spring, I decided to give Mobile Me a try as a first time customer. Having heard a lot of grief from people over the years regarding .Mac, I was a little skeptical of how Mobile Me would perform. Months later, aside from the initial issues, it seems like Mobile Me is doing the job for most people. Performance seems steady and improvements are continuing to roll out.

But as someone who was happy with the free services I’d used before trying Mobile Me, one question remains: is it good enough to pay $99 a year? As my trial was running down, I personally decided it wasn’t. It depends a lot on whether you have an iPhone of course. As an iPod Touch owner, the push email is only as useful as the amount of wireless networks available. At any rate, I’ve heard from a few other folks wondering the same thing recently, which got me looking back at why I decided I could save myself the $99.

Here’s list of the offerings I make use of to achieve the same functionality that Mobile Me offers:

  • GMail - Much better options available compared to Mobile Me. Example, the ability to send from various addresses.
  • iCal - Rather than sync with Mobile Me, I use Busysync and iCal to sync my google calendar. As well, I subscribe to my Backpack calendar and reminders in iCal.
  • Flickr - How many people use Flickr and the Mobile Me gallery? It seemed a bit wasteful for me to pay for a Flickr pro account as well as Mobile Me.
  • Dropbox - This service integrates so nicely with OS X and is much speedier than the performance I had with iDisk. A much better option in my mind.
  • Highrise - I use the free plan in this application to manage my contacts. Syncing is not as slick as Mobile Me here, but hopefully plugins such as Greatascent will soon fill this hole.

All in all, Mobile Me is working and can meet a persons needs. But with GMail IMAP access improving all the time, I think a person can meet all their needs almost for free (Busysync is the only tool above that I paid money for).