Making The Switch From MobileMe to Google Apps

Posted by Wolfen in Computers, Mac, PC, Software

While this blog is primarily about online gaming, every now and then I will make a post about technology in general. This is one such post.

In May 2009 I wrote about my reasons for using MobileMe over Google Sync. Things have changed since then.

I have been using Apple’s MobileMe service for a couple of years now. My main gaming rig is a PC, but I have owned an iPhone in the past and I own an iPad now. MobileMe has worked flawlessly for me on both Apple and PC products. I used it to sync my email, contact, and calendar and it did so without issue. The problem with MobileMe is that it costs $100 a year. That is not such a great cost when you spread that out over a twelve month period of time.

Even so, Google’s Gmail and Calendar service is free. Google also has a service called Google Apps, which allows you to use your personal or business domain name for your email. The standard version is free and a Premiere version is only $50 a year. The differences in the two plans can be seen here.

I decided to try the Premiere edition due to the extra storage space and enterprise features. I have used the service for a month now and I have been very impressed. Emails are pushed via two-way sync to my iPad instantaneously. My contacts and calendar items also synced without issue.

My only real complaint is that I can not seem to get my Blackberry to perform two-way email syncing. I receive email easily enough and if I delete items on the Blackberry they are also deleted on the server. However, if I delete email via Google’s webmail, it does not delete from the handset. I have yet to figure out why. Setting it up using IMAP settings should do the trick, but it has not worked as of yet.

One very nice item that Google offers for free is a piece of software that automatically uploads all of your email to your new account. Switching to a different email service has been a big pain in the past, but Google’s Uploader program makes it easy.

So, to line the services up, they go like this: Regular Gmail is free and you get an @gmail.com email address. The Standard edition of Google Apps allows you to use a personal domain name, more storage, and better administration. Google Apps Premiere gives even more storage, Exchange syncing on the desktop using Outlook, more users, and many higher-end enterprise features.

I will be sticking with the Google Apps Premiere account and canceling my MobileMe service. I will save $50 a year and gain extra features on top of that.

The Real Reason Apple Is Leaving Macworld

Posted by Wolfen in General, Mac

You might have heard that Apple will no longer be participating in the yearly Macworld event.  They spewed forth some token excuses as to why they are doing this, but I don’t believe what they say.  It has nothing to do with Steve Jobs’ health or any other wild notion I have read about latley.  No, I believe it has more to do with production time and having the need to no longer be held hostage by hard deadline dates imposed upon Apple by these big conventions.

The iPhone 3G was not ready for release when it went on sale.  Many promised features were not available or pushed back to a later date.  The iPhone OS was very buggy and slow.  Apple usually does not make mistakes this large, but they had to have a product ready by convention time, so they released it as-is.  I also believe that the App Store was meant to launch at the same time as the iPhone 3G but it was not in a shippable state at that time.  Also, the release of OS X 10.5 had many problems at release and needed to be corrected with several updates.  Again, it had to be released at a keynote convention.

Apple has done a fantastic job at creating good products and growing the company like never before.  They have more products in more categories than they have had in the past.  All of them require major R&D, programming, testing, and production time.  I believe that Apple no longer has the ability to release products and services in time for all of these conventions.  To appease Apple fans who seem to demand greatness from Apple at each convention, they have had to rush products to market to meet these hard deadlines.  Because of this, more bugs, errors, and problems are introduced into released products, causing bad press from the media and complaints from loyal customers.

Now that Apple has removed itself from most major conventions, they can now release products on their own timetable.  They don’t have to rush production and release things before they are ready.  They will no longer be expected to have an amazing new product available each time a convention rolls around.  This will benefit customers in the long run because the item they buy at release will be more polished and refined.  All the parts and pieces can be ready at the same time so that the whole user experience can be had right away.

Apple has grown, and maybe they have grown too fast and expectations are higher than ever.  This will make it much easier on them going forward to get things right, and in the end, will please their customers greatly.