Apple on Thursday notified resellers that boxed copies of its MobileMe service were being discontinued, but that doesn’t mean anything is happening to service.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Rumors have been going crazy lately that MobileMe was going to go through a major overall and may even be made free. Naturally, when Apple discontinued the boxed versions of the product today, speculation went into overdrive.
MobileMe was also taken off Apple’s online store, but that was also the boxed copy.
Personally, I think there’s a very simple explanation. Maybe so simple that it’s been overlooked.
If you’ve ever purchased a boxed copy of MobileMe, you know the only thing in the box is a code. The code allows you to go online and sign-up for the service.
As environmentally friendly as Apple is these days with all of its products and corporate policies, I just don’t think that they saw the sense in shipping boxes with a slip of paper in it and then telling you to go online. Why not just go online in the first place and be done with it.
MobileMe is integrated into the Mac OS X and you can still purchase the service by signing up for a free trial and buying online.
Apple executives said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday that its North Carolina data center is expected to open this spring. That facility will run MobileMe and iTunes when it opens.
I don’t expect any major changes to MobileMe in the near future.
I wonder if Gruber will file this for future claim chowder…
Whilst I usually think your analysis is sound, I don’t get why’d you’d think this. If you feel MobileMe isn’t going to drastically change within a year, I think your extremely deluded.
The massive down-side to this is that it may be more difficult to find deals on MobileMe from hereon out. I purchased my last copy about two months ago for $43. That’s quite a bargain over the $99 you pay to get it from Apple. Normally you can find it at Amazon for less than $75.
This could be the end of that I would think, unless Apple allows resellers to sell the numbers without boxes. What are the chances of that happening?
It’ll change within a year, I think 🙂
Some people think it’ll change in a week or a month — I don’t.
He better not! 😉
I respect Dalrymple’s opinions (and his beard’s), but I think there is definitely more to this than simply “moving all mobile me sales online”.
Apple has also stopped up-selling mobile me to new Mac customers.
http://www.tipb.com/2011/02/24/mobileme-longer-applecom-revamp-coming/
Something new is coming with mobile me. We’ll probably learn whatever it is next week.
I personally hope that MobileMe will improve a lot in 2011. I have a 20 gb of online storage there available that I do not know exactly how to use. iDisk is slowish, and there’s only a certain amount of photos and video one can share online! I hope for a better iDisk à la DropBox, at least.
Not only are they not selling the boxed versions, but the option is no longer available as an add-on to purchasing computers. It seems the only option right now to “buy” on the Apple store is the free trial. Sounds to me like something is changing and sooner rather than later.
it is possible that they will do like they do with one to one sign ups online. Once they have proof of payment, they email you the code.
We’ll see! 🙂 I’m hoping for some improvements to the service this year, the last overhaul was a bit lacking. I’ve been a member since the dotmac days, so I just hope when changes come none of the old crowd will need to forfeit their @mac.com email addresses. That would be rubbish.
Oh, I think you’ll see something within a year 🙂
I think that is part of their strategy, eliminate the middle men.
What that will do is eliminate the $30 savings I gained by purchasing the box off Amazon every year. Now we’ll be forced to pay full price. hmmf.
The rumours that are going around is that MobileMe is going to become a free of charge service which is likely why Apple is pulling the product right now (to avoid collecting money for something that they would need to reimburse later).
Well I’m glad I bought my discounted code from Amazon last month. Hopefully by the end of the year it will either be free or there will be another avenue for discounts. A lot of people (including me) will be unhappy if they have to pay $30 more per year to renew.
What do you count as anytime “soon”? Spring starts next month right? So you would think if they were going to make a change to the service it would happen when they made the transition to the new servers…well I would!
Here’s hoping for a free service with similar abilities to one of the current family members (5GB storage, email, sync, galleries, etc) and that the paid service gets a boost and price drop (say $60 individual, 90 for family). I have never minded paying the $90 for a family pack of mobile me. It is well worth it for ad free email, storage and sync. IMHO.
Now, imaging if Apple offers streaming back catalog video’s (ala Amazon Prime) as part of the paid version of the service. Makes you go Hmmmm.
Soon to me is anytime in the next couple of months. Five, six months, a year, sure there will be changes.
I think your analysis of the situation is spot-on. Others like Hrunga_Zmunda have also mentioned a valid point, the reselling of MobileMe codes. I too have bought discounted codes on Amazon or ebay and I’m sad to see them go.
But for the love of God, why would you want a service to become free? Taking into account the flaws that MobileMe has had and still has, it’s still a service I pay for gladly.
Staying commercial guarantees further development and good customer support.
If I want a crappy free service, with a bad implementation of IMAP and no customer support, I’m going to go to Google.
MobileMe will change on or about the first week of May—at least to the extent that that’s when members will be forced to upgrade to the “new” CalDAV calendars, or forego calendar synching via MobileMe entirely. At this point owners of first generation iOS devices will no longer be able to sync this way, as iOS 4.2 or later will be required. So that’s a “change.” ;o)
Construction on the NC data center is also due to be completed in “spring” according to Peter Oppenheimer at the Apple Annual Shareholder Meeting. The data center is to support Apple’s internal business needs, iTunes and MobileMe according to Oppenheimer. While this could theoretically only mean things like online backup (iDisk) for MobileMe members, it’s likely that something more substantial is planned too. (Note: I really doubt that the service will ever become completely free, or ad supported.)
All in all, I’d say that Jim’s comment that you’ll see something “within a year” is, if anything, pretty conservative.
How would dropping the MobileMe membership fee dramatically increase Apple’s profitability? That’s the question that needs to be answered when discussing this as a possibility.
Moving MobileMe to the Mac App Store greatly reduces Apple’s costs of manufacturing and distribution, eliminates discounts to middle-men like Amazon, and simplifies the process for end-users. That’s justification enough, I think, to stop shipping a boxed version. Even without the Mac App Store, the ability to purchase is built in to the MobileMe System Preference Pane (click on the Account link).
@TheBreen
well if it means anything, according to a Steve Jobs email response, MobileMe is destined to become much better this year. So something is definitely happening.
Do you have any reason to believe this or is it just gut feeling?
I think it’ll happen within six months. Maybe tomorrow.
For the record…
Mobile me is making a very significant change… And the documentation from Apple is lacking to say the least. After hours on the phone with Mobile Me support, Ive been able to specifically identify that upgrading the online Me.com calendar copies your items to a new CalDev server in a totally different location from the prior server.
Upgrading before youve completely synced all devices will disable Calendar Sync on your devices.
The change is upgrading Calendars (only) to an Exchange friendly server and format, which is a significant change to residential and SOHO users. Given that Apple has completely banked its entire market on Residential and SOHO users, and turned its back repeatedly on Business users, Im surprised that they are moving to a corporate based service.
Once the upgrade is done, the primary calendar will exist on the calDev server and all your devices will “Look” at the server for the information. That includes iMacs, MacBooks, iPhone, iPads. This is a significant departure from the multiple synced copies of the prior Mobile Me, and will upset alot of the residential and SOHO users I work with who have no interest in the Cloud having the primary copy.
It also means that Calendars must be managed separately from the rest of the Mobile Me sync, and it adds overhead time by forcing users to delete local calendar copies, or risk knowing they will no longer sync with Mobile Me calDev servers.
This is a strike against Apple, as pre-disclosure was non-existant, and follow up instructions and support are seriously lacking. Once again, Apple engineers have told their users what they want, instead of listening, and Apple looks bad for having done so.
Brian W
CAD Computing
San Francisco, CA