MobileMe has always been the bad boy of the Apple product portfolio. It’s not like Apple doesn’t give it frequent makeovers. It just never seems to attract a crowd.
So it’s not surprising there is speculation out there about the future of MobileMe.
Who knows what Apple will do in the end, but there are some compelling reasons to believe it will become a free service.
MobileMe is a tough sell. It’s always been a tough sell. And Apple is really good at turning a problem into an advantage.
When I say it’s a tough sell, I’m talking specifically about what goes on in the Apple Stores. When a customer buys any Mac or i-device, the sales person is trained to sell them on two additional purchases: AppleCare and MobileMe.
AppleCare is a no-brainer. That’s because it’s easy to understand and worth the price. Pay a modest fee and get two additional years on your warranty.
MobileMe is another story. It’s got lots of parts, so it’s hard to explain. And the fact is, most people just don’t need all the parts. So they decline the opportunity to plunk down 99 bucks.
Every so often, some anonymous Apple employee dares to go public, as this one did recently. He confirms how difficult it is to sell MobileMe. I usually take these things with a grain of salt, but this is consistent with what I’ve read elsewhere and what I’ve heard from my own sources.
Apple has made some gallant efforts to spice up MobileMe, but the result has always been the same. People are lukewarm on it at best.
But now that so many years have passed, the current version of MobileMe faces more vexing problems than its previous iterations ever did. It has competitors who offer pretty good products — most of which are free.
If you’ve had an email address for years, chances are you won’t get too excited about having a me.com address.
If you use Dropbox to sync files amongst multiple computers, you probably won’t get too excited about iDisk.
If you sync calendars and contacts with Google, you probably won’t care much about iCal and Address Book syncing.
If you want to share your photos online, you can easily do that any number of ways.
So what’s the big advantage of MobileMe these days? Like most Apple solutions, its advantage is simplicity. Even if you only have a Mac and an iPhone, the convenience of MobileMe is hard to beat. Just turn it on and your stuff is automatically synced. Don’t underestimate the power of that.
Though MobileMe is a good thing, it’s not a $99 thing. It’s the kind of advantage you expect from Apple, but don’t expect to pay for.
Unless Apple has a secret plan to turn MobileMe into MagicMe, it’s time to officially make the service what it should be — a basic part of the Apple experience.
This way, MobileMe would simply be one more reason to choose the Apple way. It would stop being a “one more thing” message from the sales person, and become part of the main sell. It would delight new customers and strengthen the loyalty of current ones.
Millions would happily buy into the idea of MobileMe — as long as they’re not asked to buy it.
Tags: apple, free mobileme, ken segall, mobileme
