I used to use .mac.com for hosting movies I wanted to link to on the library website (these would be short iMovies of library events.) It was easy to do and worked very well. I also have other creative work up there, but the ‘push” function doesn’t matter to me at all. As for idisk as a backup site, it never really worked for me. I am using dropbox instead – easy, intuitive, secure so far and *I can get my data back*!

So I can see why you’re not enamoured of mobile me. Great blog, btw.

I’ve been a very happy .mac user for several years. Since they went live as a matter of fact. NO, Dot Mac didn’t do as much. But it did a lot. And what it did it was rock solid doing must of the time.

My email was never down for days at a time. They didn’t intro features and tell me “you can’t use them” as a solution to a problem. All in all Dot Mac was great.

Enter this Mobile Me: it’s a bad joke. Costs more. Does more – so they say. But it’s never all worked at once so who knows? My mail goes out for days. Servers get overloaded and crash, and their “cloud computing” and sync thru the cloud will sometimes work and sometimes not. For it to be meaningful as a feature -it must be reliable. And the whole ..ME is NOT RELIABLE nor is it worth paying for. Maybe someday, but not at these rates in a shitty economy and not with features and functions implemented in some half-thought out way. Five years with .Mac and Apple has finally managed to run me off as a customer.

The larger issue, and this is a personal one (so I’m making my own “case against MobileMe”) is the fact that I can’t seem to fit MobileMe into my life well enough to justify the subscription price – no matter how cheap Amazon.com offers it. All the rest (like the iDisk syncing one) are little complaints compared to that big one.

@Erik – I appreciate your feedback, but it’s rude to write off my “inability” to do something. It’s not about ability – it’s about ignorance. I didn’t know. Now I do, thanks to you. Other sites may tolerate insults, but I won’t.

@Vince – I had a .Mac account, too, and I used it mainly for the e-mail address. I didn’t keep it long enough to play around with Mail.app or the iPhone, and eventually I lost my username. Luckily, when MobileMe came around, I got an even better one: davelawrence@me.com!

iDisk is a webDav online storage system and it’s use requires no local storage. I DiskSync does require local storage.

Other sync services and even online backup can all be done without iDiskSync. This allows you to recover critical data if other backup systems fail or even access your data remotely if you don’t have access to your personal device.

FYI: You absolutely do not have to spend $99/year for Mobile me. Best pricing I can find with a quick search is $ 53.80 shipped to my door and even amazon sells it for $69. I just purchased the 5 user family pack for $85 and even amazon is only $90.

So, what I’m saying (mostly to your readers) is MobileMe is a great service for many users.

I don’t mean to be an apologist. I admit that I once tried using iDisk Sync and had trouble with it. I do not use it now. I also don’t buy into all the Push hoopla of MobileMe. However, I’ve never had trouble with iDisk itself, and what I do use handily justifies the cost. So please be accurate when talking about it. Makes it hard to distinguish MobileMe’s value from your own inability to configure the software.