Not too awfully different from Microsoft’s Mesh (in beta), Apple’s new MobileMe service is just the ticket for me. I maybe MORE excited about this than the new iPhone. Okay, maybe not.
But it definitely is cool. I have been looking for a seemless way to sync my calendar and contacts between my iPhone, Mac, and multiple Windows PCs. The best way I’ve found so far is through a clunky mess of services such as Calgoo or, most recently, Google Calendar (with their new Outlook syncing tool).
The MobileMe service solves these issues and allows for email and photo syncing as well. Oh, and don’t forget about the 20GB worth of online space that can be used to share and sync files and folders. Cool stuff indeed!
When you update your calendar, for example, on your iPhone, the information is pushed immediately over the cell network to any other devices you have sharing the service. Immediately. So I can have ALL of my contacts, calendar and email shared on my Mac, my laptop, my iPhone, and my home computer.
This is way handy as I now have to manually update this devices – plug my iPhone in the dock, sync my Mac with the Google Calendar, etc. – or just do without. Normally, I keep all of my info current on the laptop as I take it home most nights and generally sync my phone with it. That’s a pain for those short days at the office that I just want to hop on the Mac to handle email or whatever without plugging in the laptop and waiting for Vista to load (which can be a painfully slow process).
Instead, I’ll be able to just wake up the Mac, use Mail.app (which is INFINITELY quicker than Outlook) to deal with my email, update iCal, and everything will be synced automagically with Outlook on the home computer, my iPhone and my laptop when I turn it on next.
To top all of this awesomeness off is the fact that all of this information is also available through a slick “ajaxy” Web 2.0 interface. I can hop on a friend’s PC (or Mac, or iPhone, or Linux machine, or Wii, or PS3, or…) and pull up my personal calendar in old-fashioned Google Calendar style.
I can’t wait to spend my hard-earned money on this worthwhile service. Now I just need to figure out a great new email address. It’s going to be ________@me.com. Suggestions? Leave a comment!
