"In many ways, Mobile Me isn't that good! By making it free, they will gain a lot of users, and therefore gain resources from Apple to make it better."<p>So, to summarize: the product currently sucks. By dropping the division's revenue to zero, while simultaneously encouraging more users to see a cruddy product that (let's be honest) represents Apple in a poor light, it'll be easier to convince Apple to throw more money at the product.<p>I think he just successfully argued against his thesis.
The author apparently has too short a memory to recall when .mac was called "iTools", and it <i>was</i> free. It turned out to be a much larger money pit than they anticipated, one that was only ever going to be viable by violating their users' trust and selling their privacy away.<p>I'm of the opinion that Apple made the right choice in keeping their brand clean from all the privacy issues with those free ad-supported services, opting instead for classical b2c relationships (service to client in exchange for money) with the implied privacy protection of typically confidential business to customer relationships.<p>The author [also] makes the repeated mistake of assuming cloud services are better than the obviously obsolete trail of tears that is syncing to a computer. What if my personal and relationship data is valuable to me, and I don't <i>want</i> to have to upload it to ANYONE WHATSOEVER? What if I want to be able to transfer it directly to another device I own without having it reside on a third party device? That's worth money to me, and that's what I'm paying Apple for.<p>[edit]Made it slightly more clear that I'm talking about two different topics, .mac and syncing of data from iPhones and iPads.[/edit]
"To compete with Fox, Time Warner has to make HBO free."<p>On the contrary, these products have different business models that intentionally appeal to different markets.<p>For example, you can't walk into a Google Store at the mall and have someone help you get your Windows 7 laptop and iPhone talking to each other.<p>Also, if you offer people free coffee versus coffee marked down to a dollar from five dollars, many people will choose the coffee for a buck.<p>People like to value things, and having paid for something invests them in valuing its utility.
Rumor has it that the Mobile Me product and infrastructure as it currently stands is going into maintenance mode. I doubt Apple would give up entirely on something so important, so my best guess is that they are going to launch something entirely new that does many of the same things in a better way.<p>This is hearsay, so please treat it as such.
I don't feel it needs to be free, but the service certainly does not feel like it's worth $100/year (or even the $69/year it costs if you buy a MobileMe activation code on Amazon rather than direct from Apple).<p>But that's because I'm paying for stuff I don't use. I only subscribed for the "Find my iPhone" service and the contact/calendar sync. I don't use the cloud storage features and I already have half a dozen other email addresses I don't check anyway. If not for "find my iPhone," I would've just relied entirely on Google's sync service.<p>I don't see why they can't implement a pricing system that unbundles some of the services -- sell "find my iPhone," the sync services, the remote access, and cloud storage services a la carte.
Although I think the cloud is very important in making a great end-to-end mobile product, I think this would be a red herring for Apple. Here's why:<p>Apple appeals to a limited range of people. There are many people who simply don't identify themselves as being a potential iPhone owner, regardless of superiority, design, range of apps, etc. I would be extremely surprised if most consumers had any idea of what cloud syncing meant or why it would benefit them, let alone have it be a deciding factor in their cell phone purchase. Sure such a feature can be explained, but most users don't even work at that level yet where they need such deep syncing.<p>What Android phones are offering is choice in identity: tons of different types of phones they can choose from on carriers they are already on (a big deal when you consider family plans), with a big range of prices. These phones run the gamut from the low to the high end of the market.<p>This is the antithesis of what Apple is all about. It is likely that Apple has always known this would happen, and once things settle down, Apple will position itself comfortably in the high-end smartphone market and pull in higher than normal profits.
I know a lot of people love free but I'm a big fain of paying for my email accounts and data hosting. I believe in that "you get what you pay for" saying.<p>Mobile Me however is one of the things I'm finding isn't worth it right now because it doesn't support bringing one's own domain to it. I mean, I love iPhone sync and stuff, but not being able to bring my own domain to it is really crap, as is the speed of iDisk when you're not in the US.
This article is a confusing mix of three unrelated arguments: that MobileMe should be better, that MobileMe should be free, and that iPhone OS devices should be first-class computing devices.<p>I really don't see what any of them have to do with one another.
I recently purchased a subscription to Mobile Me. I was sick and tired of Google's offerings not synching correctly, or completely losing my data. I have not had this problem since switching (mind you, I've only been a member for one month).
For me, the problem of MobileMe's pricing isn't that it costs $100/yr. It's the fact that if I don't want to use the service anymore, everyone who has that email address will need to get my new address. With free services that offer email forwarding (Gmail comes to mind), this isn't an issue at all. Once you get a MobileMe email address, it's tough to get out of that mess.<p>With Google's Sync service, I get half of the MobileMe benefits (push contacts and calendars) for free. And I can move from it if I'd like. There's no lock-in. Then to replace iDisk, there's Dropbox, with a much better merge-handling system.<p>The only MobileMe feature missing from these services is Find my iPhone.
There is the issue of expertise, to scale this fast into a system that ambitious would be something that apple didn't tackle before. Apple talent poll seems to be focused on other problems, very large scale computing is an expertise Google completely dominates at present and is closely aligned with their core business.<p>this isn't resolved by throwing money at it, its a whole other class of engineering problems, and the talent is currently elsewhere, much of at the rivals employ.
This is as untrue now as it was the first time it was said. MobileMe does not need to be free. MobileMe just needs to become indispensable. It needs to suck less and be so integrated into all Apple products that not having it is simple not an option. Making it free would be great and would certainly dent Google, but doing the above will also have a deleterious effect on their rival.
I figure Apple's central cloud-computing strategy is not to offer cool services for free, but rather to make tons of money. To do this: sell tons of iPods and iPhones and iPads, the enabling devices. Sort of like Cisco selling hardware during the initial internet boom, and getting incredibly rich, while others experimented with silly dotcoms etc.
I remember when Jobs promised my @mac.com e-mail to be free. And I am still a Mac user (last time I counted, I had 9 Macs in my collection, one of which is used regularly to sync my iPod)
<i>A user can buy an Android phone, log in with their Google account, and instantly have their contacts, email, and calendar.</i><p>Fortunately, this can also be done with an iPhone. :)
Great comment by the author on making the Apple experience stickier - more difficult to buy hardware from another vendor that won't play with Mobile Me.
Or, ya know, they <i>could</i> just allow 3rd party MobileMe clone services to be configured. That thing called "competition"? Buuuut, this <i>is</i> Apple, so we shouldn't really expect it.