During the WWDC 2008 keynote, Phil Schiller unveiled MobileMe, their reimagination of Apple’s cloud service, ‘.Mac’. We all know the story from thereon. Massive launch failure, no major feature upgrades, and Google’s feature rich free service, left this service with quite a bad reputation. But many continue to use it, still. Why? I’ve been using it since day one, and it has turned into something that’s an invisible part of my digital workflow. Like a $66 yearly payment to the devil for keeping my life in order.

And now there’s a new MobileMe. A new web client at least. And the new MobileMe is beautiful. The login page is so gorgeous you don’t even feel like signing in. Once inside, the streamlined UI borrows from the iPad Mail’s toolbar, featuring some beautiful buttons, controls, and colour scheme. And it’s not just looks, the entire user experience has been improved. We now have a phenomenally useful endlessly scrolling inbox. The view has also been optimised for wide screens, so you can hide the sidebar and have just your emails in the current screen. It’s got improved performance, message rules, SSL security, better message composer. It’s also got a brand new (since beta) email forwarding feature, which allows you to forward emails from another account to your @me address, and be able to reply with that forwarded email address. And a spam filter. Finally. Thank you Apple, this is great stuff.

But how good is MobileMe Mail, usability wise, for real world usage? I’m only talking about the web client here, as IMAP email is pushed across remarkably well.

The problem with MobileMe web, is it’s very deceptive. On its face, it looks like a powerful desktop class application in the browser. When I first saw MobileMe, I fooled myself into believing it’s actually better than the Mail app; euphoria only lasted so long. When the new beta showed up, I thought I might just give it another chance. Since the iPad showed up I had stopped using the Mail app on the desktop as my daily client, and only launched it when I needed heavy duty work to be done. If Mail in the browser could compensate for that occasional call, I’d be happy never to launch the Mail app again.

There are three key areas where MobileMe failed me. First, was its pitiful search. Like the iPhone and iPad mail clients, it only searches for the message headers, and in the current folder. So if you’re in the habit of sorting your email into separate folders, and you don’t remember which folder you dropped that email into, tough luck searching through them one at a time.

Second, was attachments. Somebody sent me an email with 18 Word documents. Sucks right, I know. But the fact is, that if I wanted to have all those files in my downloads folder, I’d have to click each one, wait for MobileMe to process the request, and then move to the next file. I immediately launched the Mail app and clicked ‘Download All’. Same goes for uploading attachments, as you have to not only select attachments one at a time, they have to complete uploading before you select the next one.

Third, is quick replies. Apple had implemented a brilliant solution for quickly replying to email. Probably inspired by Jobs’s emailing habits. While in the list, just click the reply button and a tiny pop up allowed you to reply to any email without a fuss. Granted, it wasn’t the best way to reply to email, and it encouraged impolite two word replies. But with the new MobileMe, you have to wait till the pop up window shows up, loads its rich text features, and then begin your reply. Compare that with replying on Gmail and you can literally see how much time you’re wasting.

MobileMe also fails on Apple’s mobile devices. Don’t you hate it that whenever you visit me.com on your iPad, you’re politely told to buzz off? I understand the iPhone is a personal device, and that the Mail app is a better way to go about email, but sometimes I just want to use someone’s phone to check my email, or look up some contact info, but can’t because it will inadvertently get mixed up with their data. The iPad on the other hand is far less personal than the iPhone. Considering how touch-friendly the new UI is, I was hoping Me.com would work on the iPad after the beta period, but alas, it still tells you to buzz off.

And finally, MobileMe as a service doesn’t have any form of data protection (other than Time Machine on your desktop). There’s no backup or versioning system, so if by accident you delete your contacts on one device, they *poof* off from all your devices.

To a power user, MobileMe web will show its weaknesses, mere minutes in. For those who rely heavily on the web client, I don’t think it’s nearly as usable as it could be; Gmail is a much better option.

Why do I still pay and use it? MobileMe is quite a bit more than its web client. I pay for it because it’s a few less things to worry about. My contacts and bookmarks are instantly all over the place, email is very reliable, I like the way iDisk works for sharing large files (really, I prefer it to anything else out there), and I use photo galleries to share images with family. Sure I could use Gmail’s contacts sync, or use Dropbox for sharing files, but there’s a certain elegance about how MobileMe does it, that I just can’t imagine using anything else. As an iPhone, iPad, and Mac user, who’s used to seeing things squeaky clean, MobileMe web carries forward that experience to the browser, even if in a less than optimal way. I’ve also grown so used to its ad free clean look, that I’m quite horrified looking at Gmail’s busy look.

Sometimes I wonder whether it’s foolish to continue paying for this service. But that’s just sometimes.