Originally published in the Smoking Apples Magazine, Issue 2 (December 2008). Free PDF direct download.

The Smoking Apples reader surveys go beyond normal reviews. We ask the people who actually use the products what they feel about them. No professional reviews here, only what the people think. For this month, we went around asking what MobileMe users thought of the service. As it been reliable? Will they renew membership? What’s the killer feature that’s present/missing that’s making their decision?

MobileMe got off to a rocky start. Everyone saw it, and Apple even admitted it. The service was down for most part, the web applications didn’t work, and the sync issues were horrible. However, over time most of the issues were resolved, and we noticed that MobileMe was in fact working, almost as well as advertised. So we took this to the people, to see what everyone’s reaction has been to this web service by Apple.

Surprisingly, most people found the service reliable. Apart from short downtimes spaced very far apart, the service has been up for most of the time. Mail pushes beautifully across the Web, Desktop and the iPhone, and the Calendar and Contacts sync across just fine. 

Here’s what some of the replies on a Twitter poll had to say.

“Been perfectly fine, not had a single hiccup.”

“I use MobileMe and love it. Syncing and push are awesome.”

“I’ve only had one small outage for mail one afternoon. Other than that it’s been reliable and push is great on the iPhone.”

“For me using MobileMe Mail, as-well as Back to my Mac and have had no issues in a quite some time!”

Most users however complain that the web apps are sub par. The applications are buggy and tend to have performance issues at random. The only WebUI that has worked perfectly for me is the Photo Gallery. The rest have a tendency to crash and refresh the browser.

“The web applications are not up to scratch at all. Slow and very laggy.” says a forum user. He did mention that otherwise the service has been working just fine.

iDisk
One big disappointment in most people’s experience is iDisk. The backup service is pathetically slow and unresponsive, and has issues of losing data along the way. Most have turned to using FTP solutions to access the iDisk folder, or even moved on to other solutions like DropBox which is a much more feature rich web storage solution. 

iPhone
MobileMe seems to be popular among iPhone users or those who have multiple Macs as they love the syncing across devices. For someone who has just one Mac, MobileMe has seemed to be a pointless exercise. 

“I’ve not had any problems with it at all, but I just haven’t used it.  It sounds really handy if you have more than one Mac, but with just one Mac, I don’t quite see the point. I’m not going to renew” says Michael Randall via email.

“I’ll never buy another PC and when my current desktop fails (or when finances allow) I’ll get a MacPro and then MobileMe will probably be useful. So will continue to use.” says Steven Kenny, who primarily uses a PC for work. 

So what’s the take on those who are disappointed by the service? Will they renew? Will they give it up and move to something like Gmail? Surprisingly we found most of those who grumbled about the service willing to renew when the time comes. 

“Bookmark sync doesn’t work for me. Contact and calendar sync does seem to work, but is a pain. iDisk is OK as far as I can tell. Email goes down occasionally, but not enough for me to really complain about it. Back to My Mac has never worked. In general, I’m not completely happy the sync solution that Apple uses instead of push technology that was originally announced, but I can live with it.”

Windows
We also wanted to find out how Windows users were using MobileMe. Mike was kind enough to share a few details. 

“Yes. I believe there are many Windows Users that use MobileMe. In the Control Panel you have MobileMe Preferences where you setup Sync for Contacts, Calendar and Bookmarks. You can only Sync Outlook Calendars with MobileMe. However, you can Sync mutiple Address Books.

I use Outlook for my Contacts, Calendars and  MobileMe Mail via IMAP. With Windows Vista I can also create a Network Drive Pointing to iDisk. All works quite well.

With all that I would not use MobileMe if I did not have a iPhone.”

Of course there are those users who just need some crucial features like Exchange support or find the web applications too pathetic for use. From what we can tell, MobileMe doesn’t go well with business users who prefer the real Exchange mail solution. 

“I used the trial period before I opened the shrink wrapped box. The lack of Exchange Server support is a deal breaker for me since it basically drives my life. I returned it and hoped that they would add this support, but to date have not heard anything about it. Since other companies (i.e. Google and their sync) can sync with Exchange, it’s clearly a marketing, and not a technical issue.”

So what does the Smoking Apples Team think of MobileMe then?

Milind: I just love MobileMe. The web applications are beautifully designed, and apart from the occasional crashes and slowdowns, I love using the Web Apps. I’ve not had any downtime issues when it comes to Mail for the last three months. The push mail works fine and my contacts and Calendars sync across beautifully. I will definitely go for renewal when the time comes.

Preshit: Tried to use Mail, but Gmail is too powerful. Love the syncing of Contacts and Bookmarks on my iPhone. Love that I don’t have to worry about my Keychains and Preferences, as they are safely backed up to the cloud. iDisk is my most used feature, since I get to access all my documents wherever I go (even on my iPhone). Would still love to see that Share File feature of iDisk though. 

We hope this paints a clearer picture on the current status of MobileMe. If you have any doubts or questions, or just want to vent out against or for MobileMe, shout it out in the comments.