MobileMe may soon become free

By on May 11, 2010 at 1:31 PM
General May 11, 2010

mobileme

Introduced in June 2008 to much fanfare — although soon derided by critics and consumers alike for a series of shortcomings — Apple’s $99 per year MobileMe service didn’t exactly get off to the best start in life. However, according to a report from MacDailyNews, Apple is planning to make MobileMe a free service “soon.” MDN’s tipster couldn’t nail down an exact date for the change, citing that it all “depends on certain facilities going operational” (read: Apple’s $1 billion, 500,000 sq. ft. server farm in North Carolina), but allegedly everything should be sorted out in the near future. The question is: if MobileMe becomes free, will Apple dole out refunds to those who paid for the service within the past year, and will Apple generate revenue off the free service with iAds?

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26 Comments

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  • phantom

    give all your information to the cloud for free! as if it doesn’t have it already.

    • tom

      Did anyone see The Simpsons, the episode about Apple?

      Steve Mobs said the company’s other policy is “no refund”

  • VZWHoustonRegionalManager

    Mobile Me and Exchange are all dying. With the proliferation of smartphones and push email in addition to things like Google sync have made these types of pay services obsolete.

    • bonesb

      Uh, you *do* realize that Google licensed Exchange ActiveSync from MS, right? Just like Apple did.

  • e

    yeah, i’d buy that.

  • Efraim L.

    Wishful thinking that Apple will refund the ones who already paid for the MobileMe subscription…

    • http://music.kwaping.com Kwaping

      You never know, they did refunds when the iPhone prices dropped a while back.

  • http://www.scottcorgan.com Scott Corgan

    Good! Now I don’t have to pay to wait for it to load, I can get that joy for free…

  • alen

    the only reason i thought of it was for the track your iphone if lost feature, but it’s almost useless. Google will give you free email and contacts. Mozy has much better backup features than MobileMe. only the most die hard isuckers pay for it

  • jesseps

    I’ve been using .mac/mobile me for the past 6 years. Would be nice to get money back for 1 of those years.

  • dannyboy

    I’ve already replicated MobileMe’s services using free alternatives (Google, Dropbox), but I would look into it again if it went free.

  • StevenGlansburg

    Oh I’m glad I don’t have to worry about getting charged for something every time I turn my phone on anymore.

  • Steve Slob-on-a-knob

    Baha, suckers. It will never be Free, that’s why I carry a BlackBerry over my iPhone 4G.

    • rre

      iPhone 4G doesn’t “exist”

  • neil

    Nah, I don’t see SJ giving out refunds over this. Paid users will get upgraded to a premium service with more storage (online time machine backups?) and no ads. Free users get a smaller amount of storage for email, and pictures only (no iDisk) and plenty of iAds.

    I would sign up for the lost iphone finder and remote wipe alone.

  • Hardeep

    More like ad-supported mobileme for free and ad free for the same price, so they don’t have to give refunds..

  • John

    It would be cool if MobileMe was free, but I’d rather them just have them make it better. I read an article about how MobileMe should be even more integrated into Apple devices with unlimited cloud storage. that would be awesome! http://www.macdaddynews.com/?p=3008

  • Fernando

    Eh, refunds probably not. iTunes gift cards, that sounds more like apple.

  • Johnny Griswold

    I signed up for the MobileMe free trial when I got my iPad. I deleted the account the next day. Not worth $99 AT ALL.

  • D-man

    While this price drops, another is surely to go up or appear. Don’t see Apple doing any favors without some strings or other service coming.

  • jayrodathome

    I cancelled mobile me because of the price. I wonder if when it becomes free I can get my email address back. The email part of it should have been free anyway. It does have good features for anyone trying to keep up with the MacBook updates as they roll out so quickly. I use Google and I’m happy.

  • http://twitter.com/DerekStein DStein.

    Mobileme is a sweet service, I’ve used it for the past three years. A refund would be nice if this service does become free, but I probably won’t be demanding one.

    • Ken

      2nd this. mobileme is excellent. uptime is superior to gmail, gallery, idisk, sharing files (in parts of china i was told yousendit was blocked). i really do take offense to the notion that I’m a sucker. it does everything I need and completely integrates with phone and computer. absolutely cannot do this with random exchange provider for this price and feature set for the one user option.

    • bonesb

      I’d actually like to see an ad-free environment, and I’ll pay for it. Maybe it’s not ideal right now with the cost, but anybody paying full price is nuts with Amazon’s 30% discount since day 1. All that’s missing for me is mobile platform support outside the iPhone OS and domain hosting (besides web sites), then I can ditch Google Premier Apps…

  • MikeD

    I think its a good thing if its offered for free to all.

  • mmmiles

    MobileMe is an excellent service, but the price has always been way out of proportion.

    Syncing between all my devices and seamlessly integrated cloud storage (for files, photos, websites, whatever) is all neat, $10/month, or $5/month on the aftermarket was always a little hard to swallow.

    Apple has been wholesaling it for MUCH cheaper than this for a long time – why not make that the retail price? I paid $90 for a family license, instead of $190 from Apple – what’s the deal?

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