Mobile Me Mail Makeover
By Harry McCracken | Friday, June 18, 2010 at 5:35 am
Totally Web-based applications don’t exactly spring to mind when you think about Apple. But that’s true in part because of its shockingly archaic approach to them: It wants you to–gasp!–pay $99 a year for Mobile Me, a bundle of mail, calendaring, photo sharing, storage, and “Find My iPhone.” Except for Find My iPhone, all of these services have solid free competitors; I’ve never been sure why anyone would pay Apple for something as readily available as e-mail.
Except…Apple has released a nice new version of Mobile Me Mail. Like its predecessors it has a nicely Apple-esque user interface. But it’s reasonably powerful, too, with features such as rules and the ability to handle external accounts. As before, it’s ad-free, which adds to the clutter-free feel. It feels like what Gmail might be if it were designed by Apple, and it’s worth checking out if you like slick Web apps. (Mobile Me offers a 60-day free trial.)
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June 18th, 2010 at 12:51 pm[…] Mobile Me Mail Makeover […]
June 18th, 2010 at 9:59 am
I pay for MobileMe because it integrates very nicely with both Mac OS X and my iPhone, and having only one place to worry about account settings, passwords, etc. is very convenient. Also, ~$99 a year is chump change next to what I pay for my iPhone service. So it’s worth it for me. Others will disagree.
That said, I do buy my MobileMe boxes from merchants on Amazon. I’m only *willing* to pay; that doesn’t mean I *like* it. 😉
June 18th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Yeah, I’m happy to pay for Mobile Me also. It’s worth it.
> Gmail
I don’t get why Google’s stuff has to be so ugly and unfinished. Mobile Me Mail’s interface isn’t just pretty, it’s really functional and very approachable. It’s not flat like most Web apps. It’s very obvious what each zone is about, and how they relate to each other. The toolbar looks like it’s global. The left-to-right mailbox-to-message hierarchy is very obvious.
Imagine if Google Docs had a desktop interface like this and functioned like Word v5. It would be 10 times as popular.
June 18th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
> its shockingly archaic approach to them: It wants you
> to–gasp!–pay
One could argue that is also a shockingly futuristic approach to Web apps. Cheap can be much better than free. All of the controversial changes at Facebook over the past few years could have been avoided if all users just paid $2 per year. That is very cheap to keep your privacy.
June 19th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
I actually really liked mobile me for the last couple of years until I had to use the new version on a PC at work today… It is SLOW and will not reply or send emails on IE 7 … Apple actually expects me to use only Firefox or Safari.
I am renaming the service to IMMOBILE me
June 28th, 2010 at 9:04 am
I agree with Kim. How come hotmail, yahoo or gmail can make webmail systems that are fast and efficient, and Apple cannot make an application that works for explorer? It's ridiculous to keep paying for the service! I do because of iWeb, but I am very displeased with Apple.