MobileMe: iPhone finally gets OTA syncing - for a price (updated)

Ever since the iPhone was released a year ago I complained that it had to be cabled to a Mac to be synced. Here we had one of the most amazing mobile phones on the planet – with three radios (WiFi, Bluetooth and EDGE) – yet it had to be cabled to be synced.

Apple fixed that problem today with a re-branded Mac.com service called "Mobile Me." Shortly after the keynote was completed the Me.com domain began redirecting to a new Apple Web site for the new service that allows you sync email, contacts and calendars with Mail, Address Book, and iCal on a Mac and Mail, Contacts, and Calendar on your iPhone or iPod touch. If you own a PC it syncs with Microsoft Outlook.

Apple implemented the real-time, Over The Air (OTA) syncinc in MobileMe with "push" email, contacts and calendar. This means that Apple stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on a "cloud" server and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. According to Apple "push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously." An online demonstration is available.

After your iPhone/touch and Mac comes the third component, a suite of Web 2.0 applications at Me.com. The new Apple portal (which curiously does away with the Mac branding) provides Web-based versions of Mail, Address Book, iCal, (Web) Gallery and iDisk. The first three are also identical to their desktop equivalents.

The new Mobile Me service will debut on 11 July 2008 with the iPhone 3G handset and firmware 2.0 and will cost $99 per year. The same price as Mac.com used to cost. It may irk some iPhone buyers that they'll need to pony up $100 per year for what amounts to OTA synching, but it's really much more than that because you also have a Web interface to all your applications plus the gallery and iDisk features to boot.

I've been a Dot-Mac subscriber so I'm tickled about the changes and can't wait to use the new MobileMe. What about you?

Update: MobileMe was built using SproutCore, a new JavaScript framework developed by the guys at Sproutit. If you want to get a feel for how some of the MobileMe apps will feel online, try the photos demo at the SproutCore Web site.

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