“Take Control of MobileMe” Guides You through Apple’s Cloud
If you’ve had a Mac long enough, you’ve seen Apple’s cloud-based service go through many changes, from its humble beginnings as iTools in early 2000, through its 2002 transition to .Mac, and to its present incarnation as the far more capable MobileMe. Through all those changes, keeping track of what the service did, and how you could best use it, required constant attention to various Apple announcements and tech support postings, and to press descriptions and analyses of Apple’s play in the software-as-a-service arena.
Now, thanks to Joe Kissell and his newly revised “Take Control of MobileMe, Second Edition,” you can find out exactly what MobileMe offers, what it’s good for, and how you can best take advantage of its various features, all from within the virtual pages of a single $10 ebook.
Joe has been running the Red Queen’s race in his attempt to finish the book: each time he thought his book was ready for release, Apple would move the finish line by announcing a new feature or a major service change. Most recently, for example, Apple changed the way MobileMe calendars worked (see “The New MobileMe Calendar: Should You Upgrade?,” 20 October 2010) and updated the MobileMe-savvy iLife application suite (see “iLife ’11 Updates Three of Its Apps,” 20 October 2010). By burning gallons of midnight oil, Joe has succeeded in rolling information about all the latest changes into this new edition.
Among the many questions to which Joe supplies the answers are the following:
- What are MobileMe’s primary features?
- How do I set up MobileMe syncing on my iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch?
- How quickly should I expect MobileMe to sync my data?
- Which types of data sync only between Macs and which can sync across platforms?
- How do I configure my email software to use MobileMe?
- How do I access my iDisk from Windows?
- How do I add movies and photos to my Web Gallery?
- Where in my MobileMe account does my iWeb-created site go?
- What should I do to host a non-iWeb site in my MobileMe account?
- How can I configure my AirPort Extreme to work with Back to My Mac?
Although much of what MobileMe does is available in other ways, the convenience of MobileMe and its integration with both the Mac and Apple’s iOS devices make the $99/year service from Apple a compelling option. (Heck, all of MobileMe is cheaper than carrier services that provide features similar to Find My iPhone.) And now, with Joe’s “Take Control of MobileMe, Second Edition” guidebook, you can ensure that you’re getting your money’s worth.
Suggestion for a future book: calendaring. If you have to range across a Mac, iOS devices, Entourage, etc, then calendaring is currently agony. But that might be because there's no good explanation of how to make them all work, eliminate duplicate entries, etc. I'd buy such a book in a second.
The suggestion that calendaring be the subject of a future book, or at least a big part of it is well founded. After trying to get the new Mobile Me calendaring app to sync with iCal, Entourage, Outlook etc, let me tell you that it's an absolute pain. Why can't the best minds at Apple, Microsoft et al make this stuff work properly? But well done on the book series - they're great to have.
Coincidentally, I've been thinking the same thing about a calendaring book (well, contacts and calendars, since they tend to go together). Thanks for the suggestion.
By the way, it's not so much that this stuff doesn't work properly (it usually does--really!), as that there are so many ways that you can define "properly": what is perfect for one person's needs is completely inadequate for another's. Furthermore, when it comes to syncing, there are a lot of moving parts, some of which are out of any one company's control.
Did I miss something about sharing calendars, or is it really impossible to turn off the other person's alerts?
Actually, I'm finding it quite difficult to do something that should be a no-brainer:
Wife & I both have MobileMe accounts and iPhones. I use a MacBook and have set up an account for her that she rarely uses, but acts as a place holder for her calendar. She has an iPad for email and web browsing.
So we want to share a single address book, and each others calendars. But not each others alerts!
Of course, I want to use MobileMe since the sync will be automatic...
So far we can either share calendars, as described in TCoMM, or address book if she logs into my MpbileMe account to sync the calendar.
I'm a Unix guy, so am perfectly able to do what I think is the only reasonable solution to sharing the calendar - and that's to make my calendar group writable by my wife and me, then put a symbolic link to it in her library. Pretty ugly, so there MUST be a better way.
Oh, and the book's great - lots of good info and an easy read.