The Potential of MobileMe

I am grateful for what MobileMe offers — I use iCal every day and would be pulling my hair out if it weren’t always in sync between my iPhone, iPad, Mac — but I could just as easily get my contacts and calendars synced for free via Google. And that is precisely my point. Apple is letting other cloud services define and strengthen the relationship between our desktops, laptops, and mobiles more than Apple is.

In many ways Dropbox and Google are driving the iOS / OS X relationship more than MobileMe is. While MobileMe is syncing my contacts and calendars, Dropbox is syncing my most-dear files: the projects, articles, and notes I’m interacting with every day. What are iWork.com and MobileMe for if not for the sharing and syncing of everything between our Macintoshes, iPhones, and iPads in sync?

MobileMe works great as a contacts / calendar / bookmarks syncing solution, but Google is catching up. Not to mention Dropbox: what’s going to happen when everyone’s most loved San Francisco-based startup announces a system to automatically sync preferences between multiple devices? Apple needs to change and improve MobileMe. With faster and multitasking-enabled iOS devices, it’s in their best interest.