All Articles in MobileMe

Update: Apple is now reporting all services are back up and running.

MobileMe is currently down for some via client (Mail on Mac and iPhone — count me in), and the Web (working fine for me). Maybe they were upset we gave GoogleSync all the love this morning?

Let us know how it’s working for you, and we’ll update when it’s back online for everyone.

Synchronization of Media State Across Multiple Devices, one of the latest patents filed by Apple, aims to use MobileMe to make sure if you start watching a movie in iTunes or on the AppleTV, then switch to your iPhone, you’re at the exact same place in the movie (and back again) — with no USB sync required.

Last month, prompted by reader Seth Clifford, TiPb asked for just such “WhisperSync” (to use the Amazon Kindle term) functionality. Not only would this be great for users with multiple Windows, Macs, iPhones, and/or iPod touches, but it would be a great way for Apple to add value to MobileMe, whose $99 a year is non-competitive to say the least, especially for Windows users (who don’t benefit from iLife, Back to my Mac, Mac sync, etc.) So, yeah, Apple — make this happen!

[Patently Apple via Macworld via Engadget. Thanks @sethclifford!]

Apple’s MobileMe News page has posted two updates today, one on recent MobileMe service improvements, including direct access to Find my iPhone, and the other on iDisk public folder updates.

First up, the service improvements:

As part of an update to the MobileMe web applications, you can now access Find My iPhone directly from the MobileMe toolbar. This support article contains information about this and other service improvements.

Second, iDisk:

Your iDisk Public folder, a place where you can share files with friends, now matches the look of me.com and supports drag and drop for moving files between folders. You can manage your Public folder preferences at me.com including allowing visitors to upload, move, and delete files, and setting a password to protect your Public folder. To edit preferences simply click the Action button (gear icon) in the iDisk web application and select Preferences. You can then upload or move files to your Public folder at me.com, and your friends can access them by visiting http://public.me.com/[YourMemberName].

Attention iPhone users on Microsoft Windows, Apple’s MobileMe News “blog” has announced an update to the MobileMe Control Panel:

With the new MobileMe Control Panel for Windows version 1.5 you can assign your primary MobileMe calendar to sync with the default calendar in Microsoft Outlook. Any other MobileMe calendars you have will continue to sync with Outlook and appear as separate calendars. The new control panel also delivers improvements for syncing bookmarks between Internet Explorer and Safari, and provides compatibility with Windows 7.

iTunes 9 will install the new control panel automagically for current users. For new users, Apple provides separate install instructions.

Let us know how it works for you!

Apple’s MobileMe News “blog” is touting a new feature: you can now remotely set a passcode lock with Find My iPhone and iPhone 3.1:

With Find My iPhone, you can help protect the information on a missing iPhone by remotely assigning a four-digit passcode lock. This is especially useful if you’ve never set a passcode before or if you want to set a new one.

This is a nice half-way ground between leaving it wide open, or having to wipe it clean, if you can’t find it but aren’t sure you’ve permanently lost it.

And, again, it shows MobileMe is all about the incremental update. Very incremental…

A robbery victim has taken advantage of his MobileMe service and put it to good use. A Pittsburgh man, who’s name has been withheld, told police he was forced to turn over his wallet, his PIN number and his iPhone at gun point (Pellet Gun as it turns out) by 3 robbers early Sunday morning. Lacking any tech savvy skills or common sense for that matter, the robbers were clueless about one of MobileMe’s very helpful features, “Find My iPhone“.

After calling the police, the man used his computer and MobileMe to track down his iPhone along with the 3 not so smart criminals having a late night snack at a local restaurant.

Police said they will charge Bryant Rather, 22, of West Mifflin, Brent Ray Potter, 22, of Swissvale, and Myron Knox, Jr., 22, of Homewood, with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. Mr. Rather and Mr. Potter will also be charged with robbery.

Moral of the story: crime doesn’t pay.

[Via Post-Gazette]

Apple’s lone outstretched hand to the social web, the MobileMe News “blog” is back with another helpful hint for users, this time about using iPhone 3.0 to search older email on the server:

select your Inbox or another folder from your MobileMe Mail account and access the search field by scrolling to the top of the message list. (Tap the status bar at the top to quickly reveal the search field.) Type what you want to search for and tap To, From, or Subject, or All to search all three. You’ll see the messages that match the search on your device, and you can then tap “Continue Search on Server” to see the remaining messages that are stored in the MobileMe cloud.

I’ve used this to find old order info, network machine names, and scads of other stuff buried in server-side email. Since it doesn’t (yet?) search the body of the email, it’s not as useful as Gmail’s WebApp, for example, but it’s lightyears ahead of where it was under 2.2.1.

Apple has once again made some service improvements to MobileMe:

We recently updated the web applications at me.com. In Mail, you can now see your unread message count in your Inbox and in each of your Mail folders, and forwarding or replying to HTML (rich text) messages now maintains the messages’ original formatting. In addition, there is a direct link to Help in the toolbar. See this support article for more details and a summary of other improvements.

Coming on the heels of WWDC 2009 related improvements, like Find my iPhone, MobileMe updates continue to more closely resemble the steady, iterative process that best suits the web applications model, rather than the big splashy event releases of classic hardware and software. Kudos to Apple for that.

Now how about that iDisk App?

[via MobileMe News and TUAW]

Apple’s MobileMe News shares how to view calendars published to MobileMe on iPhone:

MobileMe members who use iCal on a Mac can publish calendars to MobileMe to share with friends and family. To publish an iCal calendar, simply click the calendar and select Publish from the Calendar menu. You can then send an email inviting other iCal users to subscribe.

Your friends and family can now subscribe to your published calendars and view them on their iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0. They simply view the invitation email on their device and tap the link to set up the subscription to the calendar. For more details on how to publish calendars to MobileMe and subscribe to them, please read this support article.

Subscribing to calendars is a great new feature in iPhone 3.0, but is buried in the Settings. This, however, looks like a much friendlier way to set them up. Hopefully commonly shared calendars, like holidays, sports team schedules, etc. will set up some similarly easy add options for iPhone users.

While TiPb is still waiting on Mobile iChat (SchillerNote Macworld bullet-point perhaps?), at least MobileMe isn’t taking time off for the holidays. In addition to an update for their browser-side PIM services, fresh rumors abound of iWork — Apple’s word processing Pages, presentation making Keynote, and spread sheeting Numbers — going WebApps (think Google Docs with buttery Apple-crafted UI). Ars Technica says:

“Magic” could refer to a few things, but my best guess is that it will be a new iWork component or application that will allow some kind of online sharing, collaboration, or application access. It’s possible that Apple will indeed introduce iWork web application at the Macworld Expo, but if that’s the case then I think they’ll be offered as part of the existing suite, or as an add-on component, rather than as groundbreaking overhaul.

What seems more certain, and certainly handy, is this catch by TUAW:

Soon a new feature in iDisk will make it simple to share files too big for email. iDisk will automatically send a message with a simple link. The recipient will just click the link to download the file.

Official iDisk integration for the iPhone would be a nifty holiday treat as well. OS 2.3 please?