I agree the experience on my Mac’s is much better than on my Windows machines. I use MobileMe across 2 Mac’s, 1 Vista Machine, and 1 XP machine. The integration on the Vista machine is okay, but no where near as seamless as the Mac’s. I would love to know more about Live Mesh, perhaps we will get some time to review before our next show in two weeks.

Michael

I was using the trial version of MobileMe and just playing around, I might have to follow up with my post with another because I’m not very happy with MobileMe as a Windows user, and since I wrote that post I have canceled my MobileMe account, never to return again. Being able to sync my calendar to Google Calendar directly using another service was really the key factor for me not to want to continue with MobileMe. NuevaSync does a great job with my calendar and contacts. I think it even handles my contacts better than through iTunes because NuevaSync pulls in the profile images of my Google contacts.

The privacy issues were a great point, I currently don’t have issues with using Gmail and Google Calendar as my main sources though so I don’t mind playing around with these services. The key really is the ability to connect to different sources, but after I signed up with the MobileMe account I was really disappointed to see that there wasn’t a direct connection to my Google Calendar while I could already directly connect to Gmail. In order to connect to Google Calendar through MobileMe I would have to open Outlook and sync from that (which I don’t normally use) and install Google Calendar Sync to get Google Calendar into Outlook. That’s was a lot of work just to get my calendar on my iPhone!

The other disappointment with MobileMe was my inability to directly send my photos to the gallery unless I had iPhoto. I would’ve really enjoyed this feature for my phone but as a Windows user my only option for sending photos to the gallery would be directly upload them from the computer.

I think the user experience for MobileMe for a Windows user can be greatly improved, especially since I would pay the same price as a Mac user if I had continued past my trial.

The iPhone is the first Apple product I ever bought, and I’m quite happy with it, but MobileMe was a big let down for me on Windows. I don’t think it’s as seamless as it was being billed, and I have no interest in switching to Mac, believe it or not, I’m very happy Windows user. I do want to see more cross-platform apps like MobileMe, but they need to be truly cross-platform and not work just ok if you’re one kind of user, and wonderful if you’re another type of user.

Now ask me how much I love Windows Live Mesh though (currently in tech preview). I’ve been playing around with it in the past week and I’m impressed at how easy it is to use and set up. It’s not on Mac or mobile yet, but it’s coming soon. If I could have Live Mesh someday also work with my iPhone I would be so giddy.

Great show this week and I’m glad I could contribute in some small part. Thanks for the very interesting discussion.

Couple of thoughts arising:

- yes, I think iTunes App Store does have different catalogs for US/UK… the Google App was not initially available in the UK while the US did have it, so I think there’s at least a time lag / sync issue or separate catalogs

- I think the MobileMe / Windows stuff is interesting, as I read the blog post there are issues in terms of the way MobileMe integrates with Windows apps… not such a big issue for Mac users where we probably already use Mail, iCal etc. Oh, and Michael R. made the point about work calendars / private stuff not being able to go via Google Cal, surely the same applies to storing that data in iCal (I guess it depends on the context here). So I think the techniques are useful to know about. I need to completely nuke my address book now it’s the primary source of contacts data on the iPhone, it really needs a clean up!

- Michael M., I was incredibly impressed with your mastery of Scottish culture – I think the “Made in Scotland from girrrrrderrrrs advert” was *quite* a few years old. Unless they re-ran it more recently.

OK, I’m just off to order my Dogear Nation hoodie for Hoodie Thursday. Shame that only the light colours seem to show up the text, even though the logo gets inverted correctly if you switch to a dark colour material.

Enjoy your week off!