Dear Aunt TUAW: Should I renew MobileMe?

Re: Robert's "And if you are so anti-ipad what are you doing here anyway???"

Good point. Once again the 'anti's' vent and miss the point: The Apple experience adds pleasure - and value. In this case, the best driver of learning, be it for the young or the old, proves to be pleasure. The 'rest of us' just want it to work seamlessly and derive enjoyment from that and prefer simply getting on with accomplishing things, not having to stop and dope out a 'how to' in order accomplish an actual objective or purpose. Reminds me of the crusty old geek who objected to Windows when it came out: "Computing is hard, DOS is hard. It's supposed to be hard. That's the fun of it - figuring it out."

No thanks. Road building is fine for highway engineers. Me: I just want to get there, smoothly, pleasantly, and quickly.

I had MobileMe, but I canceled it and demanded my money back. There was a mandatory "Calendar Upgrade" on the server which broke my calendar. I spent over 6 hours with support, and was finally escalated to a "Senior MobileMe Advisor" -- who was unable to resolve the problem after TWO AND A HALF WEEKS. What's more, I was given virtually nothing in the way of status updates, he didn't read my responses to his emails, and he just didn't seem to give a damn.

It's not like my calendar is anything exotic. I have a stock iPhone, used only the built-in calendar app, and MobileMe sync. It was the worst customer support experience I've ever had with Apple.

I opted to use MobileMe over, say, Google's free apps because I thought I'd get good support if I required it. Well, needless to say, I'm now using Google apps.

Caveat emptor!

What's the point of paying for Mobile Me? Set up Gmail Exchange and get a dropbox account.

I've had mobileme for +- 3 years and have paid +- $210 bucks. If you buy mobileme at the time you buy any "device" that can utilize it; ie iphone, mac, ipod touch or ipad, its 'only' $69. I got it with my 3gs, mac mini and ipad, and depending on if the rumors turn to facts i will get another year when the i5 comes out. (One time i didn't have enough money to buy it at time i bought the imac, came back a week later and spoke with the gentlemen who sold me the comp, he talked to his manager and got the discount) kepp that in mind if you recently bought a device; ipad2)

Don't spend $99. You can get a years worth of mobileme on amazon for $67

I upgraded to the family pack a few weeks ago for my wife. Te transaction initially went through on my card, then was credited back a day later.

MobileMe is a great service. You can sync your contacts, calendars, and address books to multiple computers and iOS devices. You can host a domain there and have your email be @me.com and johndoe@mydomain.com.

I mean, Google does this too, but Google also mines your data and other things as well.

I don't mind at all spending $99 a year for it.

For most people, there are only two big reasons to get MobileMe:

1. Ease-of-use. While you can get most of MobileMe's features for free elsewhere, novice users will find them hard/tedious to set up, MobimeMe greatly simplifies this setup, and people are willing to pay for convenience. Yes, advanced users will have no problems bypassing MobileMe and using free services elsewhere, but there are a whole lot more novice users than advanced ones, and Apple's selling to the novice users.

2. Contact groups. If you want and use contact groups (on the iPhone), MobileMe is about the cheapest solution around. Yes, many people don't care about contact groups, but many do.

As an Apple consultant, it has been my experience that Apple will prorate you based on the number of months you've had the service. So if you decide to quit the service half way through the year, they'll credit you 50% of the balance you paid (if you purchased MobileMe through Apple. I don't know about buying it elsewhere at a discount.)

For me, the MobileMe service has been invaluable in keeping all of my iMacs, laptops and iOS devices in sync. And since I use MobileMe to host one of my websites, it actually saves me money each year.

So if you don't continue your subscription you still keep and can sign in to you email for up to two years? Is that correct?
It's such a pain having to change email addresses.