Does anybody use MobileMe on their Mac, is it worth it, any problems, downsides etc?

Yes, Yes, you have to pay for it

Trial it for 60 days and find out for yourself!

Personally I think the £60 a years a little steep & If I didn't freelance I don't know if it'd be worth it? All the things I use it for allow me to work from anywhere with out having to constantly shift data around. The mail syncing is good, the iDisk is brilliant oh and now my Mac book and iMac look the same! Not forgetting that i can now browse office doc's, PDF's and Jpeg's from my iDisk on my iPhone…

Used to be pretty bad when it was .mac but much better now.

I have an iPhone and Mac at home and use it to sync calendar and diary using push notifications. Don't use the email much but the 20gb storage is useful for sharing files. Uploading to it via the desktop is a bit painful so I use Transmit FTP client instead. Shared files up to around 4.5gb on it.

Email is actually quite good and you can also create multiple aliases.

All the features can be got elsewhere but I find it's least hassle to have it all in one place.

Oh and if I had another Mac I'd sync the settings as above.

If you have an iPhone the remote kill switch is pretty good, as is the locate my iPhone.

Do they really charge £60/year, I expected some sort of subscription but that seems a bit OTT.

I use it, it's very useful for making sure all my data is available anywhere even on my iphone. Handy backing up new contacts from phone to everything else as is synching calendars. All n all I don't miss £60 p/a.

Hmmm.. why do you need MobileMe for syncing?

I use Google Calendar for my appointments, which is synced live to my iPhone using the Google Sync Exchange server.
If I was arsed I could also use that for syncing iPhone contacts to Google Contacts.

My personal email (from Fastmail.fm) and my work email both support IMAP, so I get live syncing with them too.

None of that costs me anything.

You can't use an external address with it easily. Anything you sned from MobileMe from the iPhone has the me.com address rather than my other email address. It's a real pain frankly and I would use it for the integration if it weren't for this restriction. I'm just waiting for Exchange support in Snowleopard and I'll have the calendar and address book synced too.

you don't need mm to sync, but you do in order to do it remotely.
i disc also available on your iphone
also aperture mm galleries.

i like it and for me it's worth £60.
few teething probs now and again though.

edit sorry misread graham s post

you don't need mm to sync, but you do in order to do it remotely.

Confused. What do you mean "remotely"?
(I'm not a Mac head so a bit in the dark what MobileMe actually offers)

ah edited reply, sorry i thought you were saying "why do you need mm to sync" i.e. can't you do it by cable. i'm guessing you are saying why do you need MM in particular to sync remotely with iphone.. not sure re google but i use ical and the apple address book and a mm email account. my macbook looks as same as my iphone no matter how many changes i make to either and no matter where i am.

On my iPhone Googlemail synchs contacts remotely, it also synchs calender events remotely. If i keep important documents in my e-mail folders then i can accesses those on my iphone too, tho Googlemail also has a 'google-documents' function which you can access on your phone (and obviously from any computer too). If i needed to shift files etc. for work then id prob pay for mobileme, but for personal use Googlemail covers it nicely.

not sure re google but i use ical and the apple address book and a mm email account. my macbook looks as same as my iphone no matter how many changes i make to either and no matter where i am.

Yep that's what I was getting at. My Google Calendar syncs immediately and looks the same on my browser at work or in the Cal app on the iPhone.

I can look at my email using Microsoft Mail at home, via a web browser at work or on my iPhone Mail app and it will all be the same.

So if you use MobileMe just for syncing to an iphone then I don't see the point.

The point? It's easy and most non-techy iphone users don't know about google diary/etc… (mind I certainly wouldn't pay for it)

HTH 😉

Interesting thoughts folk, I think I'll give the 60 day trial a go as mystery move suggested and see if I get on with it. Being a bit of a cheapskate I'm not overly keen on paying out on a yearly basis but if it does the job I suppose £5/month isn't a huge amount. I'll just have to cut down on the mid-ride pasties.

i see, didn't realise (and esp when when i got mm) that google would do the same.. well i guess that leaves the synchronising with aperture and the idisc app as the only benefit then…

Well I use Goosync and mm, mental eh!

Well I use Goosync and mm, mental eh!

Me too. You could probably do it with a bit of pain using Google etc., but that sort of defeats the object of having a mac. For £5 a month its a no brainer IMHO – especially as work pays for it for me 🙂

Seems to me that only theginjaninja has any compelling reasons.

If you are just using MobileMe for syncing email, contacts and calendars then you are essentially paying a "no-brainer" £5 a month for something that everyone gets free anyway*

*(albeit they may have to waste several minutes of their lives suffering "a bit of pain" manually entering some well-documented settings when they initially set it up).

🙄

If I was arsed I could also use that for syncing iPhone contacts to Google Contacts.

If I was arsed, I could probably do it using Google, but I use multiple Macs and it is easier to use MM. The calendar syncing I do between iCal and Google calendars is a little flakey to say the least.

I prefer the me.com calendar interface over Google Calendar too.