Why MobileMe is really worth it

I’m sure you have that favorite band, TV show, or movie that you absolutely adore and desperately pray to every God listening that you never have to defend in public.

I don’t. The awesomeness of the stuff I love is self-evident and even those who are dumb enough to mock, say, the pre-”Batman” film work of Mr. Adam West are at least sensible enough to know that to speak up would only reveal their own cod-slopping ignorance.

Open it up to software and hardware and online services, though, and it gets itchy. By far the one question I hate the most is a common one from new Mac users:

“Is a MobileMe subscription worth the money?”

Umm… It’s complicated.

This is not what the questioner wants to hear. It’s also what someone doesn’t want to hear when they’re about to be set up on a blind date and ask the question “Is this person good-looking?”

MobileMe has been tough to defend since day one of Mac.com. It costs a hundred bucks a year. What do you get for that dough? Oh, a whole pile of world-class, useful features.

You get e-mail which is every bit as good as Google Mail (which is free).

Online storage! If you’re a fan of Box.net or DropBox, you’ll love your iDisk so much that you’ll eventually forget that both of those services were free, and that Box.net supports live online editing of Office documents and DropBox automatically keeps your online storage in sync with folders on every Mac or PC you own!

And you say you like publishing your photos and videos on the Web? Apple has a spectacular solution for you: all of its iLife apps can export your media to lovely MobileMe online galleries. No more mailing photos to relati…

Eh? Well, yes, I suppose it is a lot like Flickr.

Away with the drudgery of…

And Vimeo. And Photoshop Express, and Picasa, and… Yes, which are all free. Look, we’re getting off-track, dammit! Just buy the damned service!!!

I’m sorry to say that this is indeed a typical exchange. It explains why I didn’t get a second interview at the Apple Store but was immediately headhunted by a recruiter for Microsoft Retail.

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