Apple MobileMe ... PC vs. Mac

Apple’s MobileMe isn’t just a warmed over PC- and iPhone-compatible version of .Mac. It’s important for two reasons:

1. Apple is jumping headfirst into the cloud computing market. (And confounding pundits who predicted they’d partner with Google.)
2. Apple is providing a consumer-friendly Exchange-like service that should work similarly beween PC/iPhone nad Mac/iPhone.

With this in mind, I’ll be previewing and then reviewing MobileMe. Working through the information that’s available now for the preview, I’m struck by how much more functionality Mac users get. That makes a certain amount of sense, obviously: On the Mac side, Apple has the iLife apps and so forth. But I think it will be interesting to investigate the differences between the Mac and PC experiences on MobileMe.

Here’s a first attempt at a table describing how the various MobileMe features map across Mac, Windows, and iPhone/iPod touch:

Feature	Mac	Windows	iPhone/iPod touch
Push email	Mail	Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail	Mail (OTA)
Push contacts	Address Book	Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Contacts	Phone Contacts (OTA)
Push calendar	iCal	Outlook	Calendar (OTA)
Gallery (photos)	iPhoto ‘08, Aperture 2	n/a (Web access)	Photos/Camera
Gallery (movies)	iMovie ‘08	n/a (Web access?)	n/a
Web site create, publish	iWeb ‘08	n/a	n/a
iDisk	Web browser, Finder	Web browser, Explorer	n/a (?)
Bookmark sync	Safari	Internet Explorer, Safari	Safari (OTA)
Dashboard widget preferences sync	Leopard-only	n/a	n/a
Dock items sync	Leopard-only	n/a	n/a
Application and system preferences sync	Leopard-only	n/a	n/a
Mail Notes sync	Leopard-only	n/a	n/a
Back To My Mac	Leopard-only	n/a	n/a

Notes: All Mac features work on both Tiger and Leopard unless otherwise noted. Outlook costs about $100 and does not come with Windows. Apple iPhoto, iMovie, and iWeb are part of iLife ‘08 and do not come with Mac OS X, but do come with new Mac computers. Aperture does not come with Mac OS X.

Aside from the obvious stuff (Back To My Mac is Mac-only, go figure), what stands out here is that while Apple is finally starting to support native Vista applications (Windows Mail, Windows Contacts), it still requires Outlook for calendar sync, which is a shame as Vista’s Windows Calendar application is very similar to iCal and would work fine.

On the storage side, Apple does (as before) offer additional storage, and it’s more reasonably priced than it was during the .Mac days. You get 20 GB of storage with an individual MobileMe account and can add an additional 20 GB of storage for $49 per year. An additional 40 GB of storage is $99 a year.

What’s unclear is how you can access and use this storage. Mac users get the full meal deal, of course. But can Windows users, say, create a MobileMe Web site, attached to their own custom domain name, and then upload photo galleries as can Mac users? This is unclear to me right now.