I am totally new to the mac community and I've used Windows based PC's my whole life. I have never even touched a mac until now and I absolutely love it. Probably won't go back to PC. I have a brand new mid-2009 Macbook Pro 15" 2.66 GHZ, bought on July 18, 2009. I also have an iphone 3G, unlocked to t-mobile with firmware 3.0.1.
Anyway, I've tried to convince myself that mobileme was worth it. However, in these times of economic hardship, many people would defer. For $99 a year, it seemed expensive for "just these features". I looked around and found on Amazon for less, about $75 and ebay was even cheaper at $63-$65 or less (if you bid instead of using "buy it now"), both stores with free shipping. Since all it is just a code for you to activate the full subscription. I downloaded iDisk to my iPhone 3G and it was a very convenient app to obtain files I wanted, but it had to be the files that I copied from my computer to the iDisk.
I can't use "back to my mac" because this is my only mac. I probably won't lose my iPhone since I don't put it anywhere, I always keep it with me in my pocket or in my hands, never unattended whenever I go out, so I don't think I'll really need iPhone finder. Besides I bought this iPhone used from my cousin and hopefully a new iphone will come out and by then of course i'll have enough money to buy one new. BTW, I wish I had an iMac as well to use at home so I can use my macbook pro when I'm on the go out at school or work as a grad assistant. Then mobileme will definitely be useful with the back to my mac and syncing features.
Well I enjoy how it's simply easy and smooth to sync my iphone and mac. I am able to sync my calendar with my school, work, reminders, and other important things with no trouble. You can make multiple calendars of different colors. Contacts are always in sync. The Gallery for my pictures are very polished looking and easy to upload pictures from either my mac, internet from another computer, or iphone. Everything is in sync anywhere, from any computer, and everytime. Also the 20GB of iDisk space is pretty generous. I have about 700 pictures on iDisk and i've only used about little less than 600mb!
That was some quick review/history of mobileme and now the comparison. Then comes Google with the web based apps. I went through the time and effort to sync my iCal and Google calendar. However, you can only use one calendar in ical from Google and it's one color, green unless you change the color. I've thought for many days, what should I get? Mobileme for $65 off ebay or use Google for free? I'd thought, "I used calendars that only had one color alphabets before: Microsoft outlook, iPhone, and the good old paper calendars that my University passed out for free once a year to each student".
So I did this: moved all the different colored schedules (or calendars) into the the Google calendar I synced with my ical. All I saw was green lettering and thought, this isn't so bad? It really wasn't. Being a registered nurse in graduate nursing program for FNP, I realized I didn't really pay much attention to the different calendar types (colors). I was more concerned about what was happening that in the coming days, weeks, and months. I was more concerned about the content of the days, not color.
Before, I had different calendars in Google but the other calendars were delegations instead of Google calendars on iCal. Everything synced as Google advertised in the calendar on my iphone, macbook pro ical, and Google calendar. A nice feature I used in the Google calendar was SMS reminders and I have unlimited text and i always have my phone with me. There seems to be more features with Google calendar. I could also easily invite and let others see my calendar in Google if they had internet explorer. I'm now using Google calendar sync on my macbook pro ical and iphone. For me, I don't think i'll need a calendar to do business with such as a typical business man working for corporate would. I may need something like the Google calendar: simple, intuitive, etc. Though I would still use iCal on my macbook pro on a regular basis and the actual Google calendar whenever I don't have my computer with me at work. Or i'll just use my iPhone :).
For pictures, I've recently discovered the usefulness of Google's Picasa. It seemed similar to Apple's iPhoto but with a little more features such as Blog this!, collage, and movie. Though i still use iPhoto for other things because this works beautifully on my macbook pro. But using Picasa seemed more interesting and fun than Mobileme's Gallery. Though Mobileme's Gallery was beautiful. On Picasa, you have 1gb of space for photos: about 250 Albums, 500 pictures each album=125,000 pictures! More if you upgrade your storage and i think it's about $50/year? Still cheaper than mobileme. But with mobileme, you can add your photo's you take on your iphone with the send to mobileme feature. So give and take here. I chose Picasa because it seemed faster to upload pictures on the internet compared to mobileme and the features response was faster. Also, if you have facebook, you can add a lot more pictures. So possibilities are there. For me, as a graduate nursing student, I won't be doing business with photos as a photographer or some other professional would. I only keep pictures of my personal life, family, friends, girlfriend, vacations, and others. At least on Picasa, I can preview my pictures whereas on the iphone idisk app, I can't preview them quickly.
I would mostly be doing school work such as research and papers so iDisk or Google documents would be useful. I won't be using Google docs to create documents cuz I have Office 2008 for Mac and iWork '09 and I want to make use of them since they're paid for. I will be using Google docs to upload documents or presentations so I can access them from any computer on campus or even use my iPhone to edit the documents on Google docs. Not too experienced with the Google docs presentations or spreadsheets. Though I wouldn't use spreadsheets often or maybe never because of what I am studying, I won't be crunching numbers, I'll be diagnosing and treating diseases. I just found out that uploading and editing powerpoint presentations may be a little difficult because of technical browser support issues. Plus I use keynote as well from iWork '09.
I'm waiting for the third party iphone app "GPUSH" to arrive so I can finally get a true push feature from gmail. Right now, I'm fowarding my gmail to @me.com for the push feature and I configured my outgoing mail from mobileme to be gmail. Btw, I also have my contacts in sync with mobileme and Google. They're equal to me in syncing contacts: just phone numbers emails,
I don't speak for anyone here but myself, my preferences, my usefulness of these services, and my chosen field of study. I am beginning to think that mobileme is nice, simple to use all-in-one software. Syncing is seamless with mobileme unlike Google where you have to manually set-up syncing to your iphone and Apple's ical. Even storing presentations can be difficult to do because of browser support or format issues. However, with some time and effort of setting your Google stuff, it will cost me nothing and it does actually work smoothly after you set things up. Then you'll be on your way. I also see that Google's website and access to apps and files are quicker than mobileme. Mobileme seems to lag a bit and sometimes have connectivity issues whereas with Google, I almost never had these issues.
Sorry Apple, as a nurse graduate student, I may stick with Google's free services and upgrade with them to get more storage for $50/year later after I make money. They seem to offer more services than Mobileme at a more cost effective price and access to these services are more quicker and compatible anywhere although you can access mobileme anywhere too. Now that Google has Google Health, it's luring me into the Google world. If mobileme could offer many more services for the price such as this, I may go with mobileme since it's a seamless all-in-one software.
What do you guys think? Any healthcare professional's out there that you know of using Apple's Mobileme more or Google sync more?
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