Free Alternative to MobileMe
In truth, I get it. The idea is so simple: click a button, pay $100 for a year and receive your push mail, contacts, calendar, storage for your photos and files, plus a “find my iphone” application all in one handy interface to your computer. However, it forever irks me when I’m told about these services as if they are the only game in town. I mentioned my doubt to the Mac Store genius a few days ago and was told “yes but MobileMe is seemless and far less complicated”…
That sounded like a challenge to me, so I wrote out my alternative to MobileMe system. I thought it would take longer, but it’s actually quite simple. Here are my choices:
Push Gmail, Calendar, Contacts
Comes straight from Google for free (Mail was included back in September 2009) and here are the steps to set it up. When you make a change to your email, calendar of contacts, the change appears almost instantly on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Photos
If you’re using Gmail, you have a Google Account. This means you have a Picasa account, even if you haven’t activated it. Just head over to picasaweb.google.com. Your storage is shared with your email (most people have about 7GB). If you need more space, it’s available for a reasonable rate (see my picasa post for more details).
Storage (iDisk)
Dropbox is a service I’ve talked about before. It’s easy to use and it integrates with both Windows and Mac.
See the little icon with the box and the check? i got that to replace the default MobileMe icon on my Mac with several hours of coding… HA! Just kidding. It was as simple as dragging the old icon off the tool bar and installing Dropbox (10 seconds). I would love a free Mac product to store my stuff, but using Dropbox is a breeze and it’s free.
Find My iPhone
Finally a service that doesn’t have a free alternative. You setup your MobileMe on your iPhone and the service will help you find it if you misplace it or someone steals it. I won’t downplay how great this service is, but if it’s the only part of the MobileMe family that you can’t get for free… is it worth paying $100? There is a similar product on the app store right now (who knows for how long) that’s called “Find my phone” which does exactly the same thing (as far as I can tell) for only $0.99.
The moral of the story
I’m not trying to be a jerk. My new Mac has made me very, very happy. Moreover, I’m perpetually enthused about Apple products. My only complaint is that MobileMe is $100. It should be free or at the very least, uber-cheap. If that were the case, I’d convert over from my google alternatives in a heartbeat.
In short, don’t believe all the hype quite yet. If someone is asking you to pay $100, it should probably be for something entirely unique.
Enjoy!
~ab
I TOTALLY hear you on this post. After getting my new Macbook Pro last month I tried Mobile Me for the second time. I have about 21 days left in the free trial and have seriously been considering whether to keep it or not. As a big fan of Dropbox and Google Apps I’m just not sure I see the point.
The one thing that is keeping me from canceling right now is I’m not sure how the sync of mail, contacts, and calendar items works across Macs (we have 3 in the house, 2 of which I use regularly along with my iPhone and soon-to-be-acquired iPad). If I am using the same Google account across all 4 to 5 devices will the information sync when I open up Mail or iCal on different ones?
Also, I have tried to like Picassa for a few years now, but I do find the interface confusing, especially how it organizes photos for you. iPhoto is much cleaner and with the facial recognition I am liking it more and more. However, I cannot figure out how to get iPhoto to sync across machines either. Do I need to upload my photos to Mobile Me or is there a way to just indicate that each iPhoto on each device should point to a single Mobile Me account?
Finally, the big thing keeping me from jumping on as a paying customer for Mobile Me (and it may seem trivial but it’s important) – I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get an iDisk icon to appear in my menu bar. As you demonstrated above, Dropbox just puts it there when you install the application on your computer. For some reason Apple has no documentation on this (I’ve read about needing the file for the Library folder, etc. but it is not even clear where you’d get a file like this for idisk). Is there a way to get an idisk icon in the menu bar / task tray?
I know your post is about alternatives to Mobile Me, but if have any answers on these please let me know.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Sorry for the delayed response
- I think your multiple sync setup should work without you needing to do much else. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a max number of sync-able devices.
- You can sign into mobile me from the preferences panel on your devices, creating your own little “skynet” and syncing your photos.
- I had a bit of luck getting non-standard toolbar icons using Command + drag. Careful though, this also allows you to remove stubborn icons (and I’d hate for you to be without another icon if my idea doesn’t work…)
Thanks for reading the blog and taking the time to comment.
~ab
I found your article reassuring as i have a mobile me account plus a gmail account. My main beef is that apple have never got round to having more than 4 address formats in mobile me and (as is usual with mobile me) whenever it falls over – i am left having to re- format every single entry due to the perpetual sync conflict .
I am now going to try using just google system as i am due to renew mobile me in a month or so and if it all works okay then bye bye mobile me.