It seems to be rumor Friday around these parts. iLounge is alleging that Apple plans to do a major MobileMe revamp for next month, including making it free. Their source, who remains unnamed, works for a major educational institution and says that Apple is telling students to sign up for the 60-day trial to cover the gap between now and when the free service will become available.
Since putting all of our eggs into one unnamed source's basket doesn't always garner the best results, we're going to have to wait and see. However, there have been other rumors circulating around the blogosphere about a free, cloud-based MobileMe, and since Apple stopped selling retail copies of the service in its retail stores, it could very well be headed for a major revamp--hopefully one that involves making the service accessible to everyone.
What would you like to see in a new MobileMe? Sound off in the comments below.
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jknowlton
March 22, 2011 at 1:09pm
Free would be awesome. I really like MobileMe, but only used the synching of contacts/cal and FindMyPhone. I always thought that those functions should be free, but if they wanted to have people pay for the photos/storage then I wouldnt mind paying for those features. I pay for a Flickr account, and would gladly fork that over to Apple for the gallery.
I look forward to the announcement either way.
rona
March 22, 2011 at 11:49am
Free would be nice, though I, too, just renewed my subscription... I would suspect that they would have lower limits on iDisk, and pay if you want more, and I would be okay with that. I suspect that I'm not the only person who doesn't really take advantage of all of the features of MobileMe, especially with Dropbox being free AND faster for filesharing.
CaptainV45
March 21, 2011 at 7:56am
While free would be welcomed, I wouldn't mind just paying less, like 25-50 instead of 99. I feel it is still worth something, just not what Apple is currently charging.
malber
March 20, 2011 at 7:34am
Well, for a company that is becoming more like Microsoft every day this would be a very un-Microsoft move.
Philodina
March 19, 2011 at 2:06pm
The issue is answering the question: Why did I (and many other people) get a DropBox account if there's MobileMe?
OK, basic DropBox functionality is free but beyond that it works more smoothly than Mobile Me.
Ben
March 19, 2011 at 2:19pm
I've been using Dropbox for about three years now, and it's great at what it does. But does it...
Send/receive email?
Find my iPhone?
Sync my contacts, calendars and bookmarks over the air to my iPhone and other Macs?
Use a mash-up of DDNS, Kerberos and VPN technologies to let me connect to my home network from anywhere?Dropbox is good for syncing files and data, and yes, if you're clever you can use it to sync bookmarks, preferences and contacts with other Macs, but it can't do a lot of the other things that MobileMe does. It wasn't designed to, and it seems like a lot of people get confused with that. I'm excited to see what they have up their sleeve.
Finally: Is iDisk slow? Yes, but it's partially related to issues with the Finder. [I think iDisk actually works a bit better in Windows Explorer.]
seanesutton
March 19, 2011 at 7:22am
I have two fears.
One: I just re-uped my account and that would suck to loose the 100 dollars. Many people on hear are voicing the same concern.
I have a hard time believing that Apple will burn all the people that have paid for the service by offering the same thing as we get with the paid service for free. Maybe they will do a 2gig free iDisk for people or something like that.
Two: as a foreigner living in China, this would really suck. Services like Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, and any other great service that is offered and is free becomes illegal and cut off. The pay wall has been good for me here and I have no problem sacrificing speed for 100% connectivity.
The good news is the Mac-gensia has been going on about "free MobileMe" for months/years now. They have been wrong every time. This time does seem different though with the MM coming off the shelves.
Lastly, I thought it was interesting that everyone was reporting that it was going to go free at the iPad2 launch When it didn't happen nobody called the rumormongers out on it. They just launching into all the new articles about how "fast" the new iPad is.
Hopefully we are just suckers for the Mac news drain that feeds on these types of rumors and is hoping for web hits.
iMac.27
March 18, 2011 at 7:47pm
Free sounds great!
I wouldn't mind the $69 / $99 if it were a lifetime membership.
Apple should do this so they wouldn't have to pay back millions of people $69-$99Just went with $69 and $99 price because I have No idea how much the family packs are..
Eiter way, One time fee would be a smarted move by Apple. no paybacks. If you've already paid, great, you never have to pay again.
jgreer3000
March 18, 2011 at 7:31pm
I love my mobileme subscription, but the iDisk syncing needs to be a lot faster.
cjaredscott
March 18, 2011 at 6:24pm
I love MobileMe, I have it, I just need faster download and upload times in iDisk, and more flexibility/features in iDisk. Right now I use SugarSync instead of iDisk. I REALLY want to use my 10 GB of iDisk Storage. I think a free plan would be good, but also have a paid plan.
usmc2k3
March 18, 2011 at 7:16pm
I don't even store anything on iDisk because how painfully slow it is. I rather use up my 5GB of Dropbox over the 15GB I have on iDisk.
iBod
March 18, 2011 at 5:19pm
My trial ended March 9th and I was all confused whether to sign up and pay for it given the rumours. Now i have until roughly April 9th (30 days) before my stored stuff gets wiped or I do sign up and pay and risk the no refund approach that could be adopted with any changes to the service.
As for what they offer in future, everything currently available, plus a bigger iDisk capacity, easier or even full functionality with iPads etc, a choice of email address options....
donahue4
March 18, 2011 at 4:59pm
I just renewed my subscription, lame. But, free for the future would be awesome!
therealpinky
March 18, 2011 at 4:41pm
i would really hate if apple just started handing out @me.com email addresses i think that is something that should still be payed for just my thought.
D0GG
March 18, 2011 at 4:21pm
I actually like MobileMe as is. Wouldn't mind a fast file transfer on the iDisk, but other than that I am pretty happy.
What I am a little ticked about (if it becomes free) is that I just re-upped for the year on my account. I hope that Apple has something to pay back the users that have shelled out the cash for something that is going to become free.
usmc2k3
March 18, 2011 at 7:15pm
I feel your pain. I renewed my family account earlier this year when I found a good deal on a family pack online. My account wasn't set to expire until June, but I felt like it was too good of a deal to pass up. If it's completely free, what can Apple do to those loyal customers who ponied up the dough in advance? It's not like I can take it back since the code is in their system waiting to kick in sometime in June, which if it goes free it's pointless anyways. An Apple gift card would be nice, but that's wishful thinking.
cjaredscott
March 18, 2011 at 6:26pm
Agreed with what you said about renewing your service. Same Here.
