Giving up on MobileMe

Today my MobileMe account expired and I am glad it finally did. It was really not worth the $149/year I paid for the Family pack…simply because of a very stupid design flaw on Apple’s side. I actually signed up for the Family Pack only because I wanted to sync a calendar between my wife and myself on our iPhones and computers. After signing up, I realized its not possible.

Since I maintain my own server(s), we have no need for hosted space, additional email addresses and what else MobileMe had to offer, the only attraction was the “Over The Air” sync ability between the iPhone and our computer. I thought – and it’s nowhere really described somewhere on Apple’s web site – that I have the ability to sync a calendar from iPhone to iPhone directly, as long as they are in the same Family account.

Of course the 60 day trial does not allow you to test the Family account, so you can find the design flaw only after you actually paid the $149 in advance.

After signing up, I had to settle for this scenario:

If I entered a new calendar entry, for example a photo shooting in my iPhone A, it synced this with my MobileMe account. Then when my computer was switched on, I could see the calendar entry also in iCal. So far, so good. However, to add this new calendar entry also on my wife’s computer and iPhone, I had to purchase another software which synchronized our computers via our LAN. At first I bought 2 licenses of BusySync, then later upgraded to BusyCal. This solution works perfectly. After the Mac calendars synchronized, my wife’s computer (computer B) synced it to her MobileMe account, which then synced it with her iPhone (iPhone B) and vice versa.

For privacy reasons I don’t want to sync to a Google calendar account, they know already enough about me and since our computers sit on the same LAN, it offers no real advantage to involve another 3rd party here.

While this worked so far, it has a major drawback…if one of our computers is switched off, the chain is broken. So in case I add a new calendar entry while on the road, my wife will not find out about it, until we both switch on our computers and give it a few minutes to sync. This is not really worth $149 a year.

Now that the account expired, we simply go back to the low tech approach of syncing our phones with iTunes and BusyCal takes care of the syncing of the computer.

Works fine and has no real disadvantage to Apple’s solution.

But what I really would love to see – and I would be willing to pay for it – is an integrated “Family Sync” directly integrated into MobileMe:

It had so many advantages:

• Direct sync of calendar entries between iPhones, without the involvement of stationary computer
• All connected devices are in sync as soon as they are connected to the Internet
• Faster sync times
• No involvement of third party software, ergo less costs and complexity

Come on Apple, I am sure I am not the only one who would find this useful, but for now you lost a customer.