Switching to MobileMe
For the past several years, I’ve been relying on Google for all my online personal information needs. That includes Gmail for my email, as well as Google Calendar and Gmail contacts for my basic calendar/contact needs.
That changed a bit once Apple came out with their new MobileMe service to go along with the launch of iPhone 2.0. In order to have the best experience using my iPhone, I wanted to manage my calendar and contacts through MobileMe instead.
However this week I’ve decided to move over to MobileMe fully. The biggest thing holding me back was the inability to use custom domain names (sometimes called “domain spoofing”) with their service. I had been using that with my Gmail account to send email from a DannyStewart.com address. Unfortunately Apple still hasn’t added this feature, but I’ve decided that the benefits outweigh the costs, and I have decided to embrace MobileMe as it stands now. I now use my me.com email address as my primary mode of contact, and my old DannyStewart.com address forwards to that.
All in all, it’s not so different considering I use either Apple Mail or my iPhone to access my email anyway, but I do prefer Apple’s MobileMe web interface for those times when I’m away from my computer and need to check my email from a computer.
I’ve also started using Apple’s iDisk service in lieu of Dropbox. I imagine there are some things that it won’t quite be able to pull off as elegantly, but I do really like the integration with Mac OS X, and I’m all for dropping extra services whenever possible and keeping things down to a bare minimum if I can. (Especially with Snow Leopard on the horizon.) The fewer things I have installed on my system, the happier I am.
So far, it’s been a positive (if small) change. I really love having push email on my iPhone. The benefits of that really can’t be overstated. And having all my information with Apple makes me feel a little cozier than having it all with Google. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google as much as the next guy (probably more), but they’re a little scary these days. So consider me a happy MobileMe user, and let’s hope Apple keeps pushing it forward for the future.