Apple makes its play for the cloud: MobileMe
Apple on Monday unveiled MobileMe, an Internet strategy where Steve Jobs & Co. takes a little Web 2.0, mixes in some cloud computing and spits out "Exchange for the rest of us."
The rollout of MobileMe at WWDC (all incoming stories) is notable on a few fronts:
- Apple is launching a service to distribute and synch applications--enterprise and otherwise.
- Apple seems to have supplanted .Mac.
- Jobs is adding on services that can connect multiple device through the cloud--a not so trivial pursuit given the MacBook Air-iPod-iPhone-Mac-PC connection.
- It's another revenue stream for Apple. MobileMe will run you $99 a year for 20 GB. It replaces .Mac.
The promise: MobileMe will connect all of your devices and push information up and down to keep everything up to date. It's also designed to be native with the Mac and PC to keep calendars, mail and documents in synch.
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The idea isn't unheard of--in fact Apple is merely doing what others are already doing. The difference: Apple has the interface chops to actually make it look like it just reinvented the wheel.
Ed's notes from the scene:
11:27 am: Synchronization appears to be pretty fast between devices. Take photo on phone, shows up on the web in seconds. Make calendar entry on web, shows up on phone in seconds.
11:22 am: iDisk over-the-air. Better get that unlimited data plan, folks.
11:21 am: Google maps make another showing in me.com's address book.
11:20 am: Oh joy, another webmail interface on me.com.
11:18 am: me.com will have iDisk too (cloud storage). Former owner of me.com has moved to snappville.com . I wonder how much they paid for that one.
11:16 am: Looks like Apple has purchased the me.com address but it's not live yet. Photos synched over the air too.
11:16 am: Works with Mail, iCal, Address book on Mac, Outlook on Windows.
11:13 am: Now for something "entirely new" (not really): MobileMe. "Exchange for the rest of us". get push email, contacts, calendars, etc. everything stored in the cloud. "ActiveStink" - funny.