A minor tweak in iPhone 3.0 Beta 4 changes the language for the — still-unannounced by Apple — “Find My iPhone” feature from simply saying it uses your MobileMe account at me.com, to saying it uses a MobileMe Web application.

The assumption has always been that this feature would let you track a lost iPhone (or perhaps the child for whom you bought it), web application sounds — at least to us — a tad more substantial in terms of implementation.

Since Apple will have to build out MobileMe to support this, and since we’re speculating anyway, we’re also still hoping a revamped MobileMe in general might make a guest appearance at WWDC (where Phil Schiller introduced it last year). With note sync finally available, adding it to MobileMe seems an obvious move. Tasks/Todo sync, as well as Photo Sync (currently photos can be shared and stored, but sync only to iPhoto web albums, not to the iPhone) and perhaps — some of the other improvements we’ve dreamt of?

/Tangent

(Thanks to Cody for the tip!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3.0: Find My iPhone to be MobileMe WebApp?

What is MobileMe?

MobileMe, Apple, Inc.’s answer to the consumer-based “push” concept has launched today. MobileMe comprises of web-based applications that not only synchronize with their desktop counterparts, but also “pushes” updates to other computers including calendar appointments, address book entries and Safari bookmarks. Windows-based PC’s and Apple’s OS X can be used to synchronize this information between platforms. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch (using Wi-Fi) you can receive these updates instantly on your device without having to synchronize with your desktop.

MobileMe Setup

After unboxing and setting up my iPhone 3G, I got straight to work on configuring MobileMe. One of my initial concerns was how the information will sync to my new iPhone from iCal, Address book and my Safari Bookmarks without duplicating information. iTunes handles the synchronization process, and I figured that between synchronizing iTunes and sending the same updates out, there was bound to be a duplicate somewhere. As it turns out, MobileMe disables synchronizing this information from iTunes. Instead, it gets “sent to the cloud” and is then pushed to the appropriate devices. 

First, you have to turn on MobileMe from System Preferences in OS X. The options are identical to Apple’s precious synchronization effort, .Mac. After choosing what you want to sync, the fun begins!

Adding Information

After turning on MobileMe and synchronizing in iTunes, I noticed that all of my information was missing on my iPhone. Calendar, gone. Contacts, gone. Nothing. I immediately opened those respective applications on my Mac. Thankfully, they were there and intact. I procrastinated a second and began to look at the web experience of MobileMe. Just as I started to type the URL into the address bar, I looked at my iPhone (I kept the Calendar application up when I left it on the table after freaking out) and noticed my appointments showed up. What? I then looked at Address Book. What again? That is right, within about a minute; my calendar, contacts and bookmarks were synced to my iPhone. I could not believe it. 

This was very impressive. I then proceeded to the obvious: I added and appointment on the iPhone. No sooner than launching iCal on my Mac desktop, the new appointment appeared. Next I proceeded to add a whole new calendar to MobileMe on the web. I clicked the “+”, picked a color and I was off to the races. I added and appointment for fun, and again without fail, a few moments later, the new calendar WITH appointment showed up on my iPhone and iCal. This service behaves as advertised.

One of the nice new features that I am enjoying on the iPhone is that the calendars that are synchronized also keep their colors. For example, I assign green to my personal calendar, blue to my work calendar and red to my wife’s work calendar. These colors and calendars all get synchronized across platforms. When creating an appointment on the iPhone, you can now designate which calendar you would like the appointment to belong to.

Synchronizing with Microsoft Exchange

My next question I asked my self was, “If I used Microsoft Exchange at work, could I also use MobileMe with that too?”. The answer is yes. MobileMe and your Exchange information can live on the same device, but only if you are a paid subscriber of the MobileMe service. If you are not and try to synchronize your personal iCal data and Address Book information, Exchange will win that rock-paper-scissors battle and wipe them out, leaving the Exchange information only.

Summary

I can’t be happier with MobileMe so far. There is more to this service including online photos and a web-based version of iDisk, but I will discuss this further in a full review at a later date. In the meantime, enjoy MobileMe and enjoy the freedom that it offers.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Walkthrough: MobileMe on your iPhone

Here at TiPb, we’ve all had bugs with the leaked 2.0 update and, like the rest of the interw00ts, we’re also not getting Mobile Me working reliably since it went live yesterday. Thankfully, Apple has fessed up and admitted that the transition from .Mac has “taken longer than expected” (per Engadget).

The Mobile Me desktop login just worked for me for the first time just now, this morning. I’m successfully pushing data out, but I’m not about to start depending on it for real work. Is it working for you?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mobile Me is Up, Down for Us. How about for you?

Good morning iPhone lovers! Remember when you were a child and you discovered your parents’ secret hiding place for your Chrismas presents? You spend a few agonizing minutes (ok, seconds) debating whether or not to peek at what you’d get and then, yes, you peeked. Today’s going to be like that. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to fire up iTunes and check for an update because, yes, 7.7 is here with the App store and ready for download. More on that in a bit.

First up, though, GearLive [via gizmodo] managed to figure out that Mobile Me is basically up and ready to rock, although the service itself may not quite be live yet. It’s not going to show up in any software updaters just yet, but here is a direct download of the installer for Macs.

Update: My computer just let me know that “.Mac is now Mobile Me” and sent me to the software update, which, verily, has the Mobile Me Update available officially!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mobile Me Officially Live

We’ve gone over just how bad the Mobile Me brand sounds to us a couple of times already (almost as bad as this week’s service!), but now reports surface that there may just be something better hidden beneath the bad label:

MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe — calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we’ve heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that’s a technical term).

Delivery estimate? Late June/July timeframe, hooking into the iPhone 2.0 and not only the newly released OS X 10.5.3, but potentially Windows as well.

Read

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mobile Me: Bad Name, Better Service?

Yesterday came word that the name Apple might be using to rebrand .Mac was “Mobile Me”, and amid the pitchforks, torches, and angry villagers storming the internet pipes to Cupertino, we figured our readers could easily come up with a better name, and sweetened the pot with $50 worth of gift card incentive to prove it.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber had previously mentioned that iMobile might be an alternative, though his readers felt it could too easily be mistaken for immobile, probably not the poetry Steve Jobs is shooting for.

Now Gruber, and his handy crowd-source at Twitter bring word that just plain old “Me”, surfaced as me.com, could be a candidate as well, and had mysteriously changed ownership just today.

Make of that what you will (and I will continue to make fun, for the same reasons mentioned in the first post). And don’t forget to enter our contest. Pick a better name than “Mobile Me”, and if the blog staff likes your name best, the $50 gift certificate is yours! [We'll compile the guesses from this and from our previous post. The Gift Card is for the Phone different Accessory store. Deadline: 4EST on Monday June 2nd].

[From Dieter: I dislike this whole "me" thing for several reasons. First, it smacks of a 1990's, by-committee branding that sounds hip and clever but is actually staid and out-of-touch. Very Un-Apple. Second: If Apple somehow manages to make this brand hip and the "Me" does make people feel like they have ownership and identity with the brand ("Me.com really is about ME. Gosh, it's like it's my very own internet service,") then they'll be faced with an impossible task: not screwing that up. Think about how unhappy you are with .Mac's reliability and speed. Now imagine if that service weren't called ".Mac" but instead "Me." People will become disenamoured very quickly. Now we can obviously assume that this whole Me.com thing will have better reliability -- but if Apple really is looking for a straight-out, bald-faced "this is Me on the internet" branding, then even the tiniest failure in the system is going to make people super pissed -- it would go from "Aw crap, .Mac sucks again" to "Me.com is down again. Apple broke ME". Not good.

Thirdly: Windows ME. 'nuff said.]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Just “Me”?! $50 STILL Says Our Readers Can Do Better!

[Note: Official $50 Phone Different Store gift card says our readers can pick a better name than "Mobile Me". See below for details!]

If you hear the steady sound of thumping, as though something were continuously bumping, that’s not the GPS industry going into cardiac arrest at the mere thought of the iPhone 3G’s specs, that’s tiPb’s collective heads as we knock them against our glass screened, glossy facaded, aluminum cased displays in abject terror of what Apple may be choosing to rename our loved-to-hated old .Mac service:

Mobile Me

Sadly, no. (And we thought Back-to-My-Mac was awkward…)

Dear Apple,

We, your loyal iPhone users, realize .Mac was fine for a label pre-.com bubble burst, and has desperately needed a fresh coat of paint ever since. We understand that you need to provide not only ActiveSync for business users, but similar email, contacts, and events “push”-style for consumers as well. We get that the service (perhaps) formerly-known as .Mac is an ideal launching pad for these features. And Jobs-knows that Windows users, your largest install base for iTunes, iPods, and iPhones, would be confused to the point of BSOD by something called .Mac.

But “Mobile Me”. Seriously?

Sure, iSync is taken by local sync features, and Microsoft using ActiveSync for both local and Exchange services is confusing to say the least, but what about Apple Sync? Worked for Apple TV, didn’t it? Okay, Gruber doesn’t like iMobile, but I’d humbly suggest it kicks the sync out of the horribly precious “Mobile Me”.

Please tell Steve that “Mobile Me” just isn’t Zen enough. Tell him it’s already something planned for the “Zune Social”. Or Nokia’s “Comes With Muzak”. Whatever. Anything. Because let’s face it, the line of better names than “Mobile Me” stretches around an Apple Flagship Store sized block a few times.

P.S. I bet the iPhone Blog readers could pick a better name (if not a couple hundred dozen better names). In fact, Dieter’s so sure he’ll pony up a $50 Phone Different Store gift card to the reader who picks the best alternative to “Mobile Me” (to be judged by the blog’s staff).

Readers, have at it,

Apple, warmest namastes,

“Concerned Me”

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

“Mobile Me”?! $50 Says Our Readers Can Pick a Better Name!