MobileMe Strikes Out
I got a notice from Apple today regarding the web services it has under what is now called MobileMe. It’s cutting out my ability to use one of the best parts of the service for which I pay $99 a year.
When I first got a Mac, I could take my photographs directly from Mac’s iPhoto program onto nicely formatted pages at a .Mac site where the photos with their titles could be seen by anyone. There was a nice hierarchy to allow viewers to move from one set of pictures to another. However, this has gone downhill. In more recent versions of iPhoto, there was no link to upload to the .Mac site. Apple wanted you to move to some newer programs (iWeb and MobileMe Gallery) and not use the old interface. The newer programs have their own benefits, but they have some serious drawbacks. iWeb chews up a chunk of disk space on your computer and any changes mean a lengthy “publishing” process that misfires about half the time. MobileMe Gallery is just a picture gallery of albums whose biggest drawback is having to keep those picture files live on your computer. If you archive them to, say, a DVD and remove them from iPhoto, the gallery you had posted goes away.
I had figured out a work around for using the old structure. It was clumsy, but I could do it. But I did see the writing on the wall, so to speak. Thus, I began putting all my new pictures onto Flickr. I now use iWeb as nothing more than a skeleton web page where you can click on links that take you to other sites.
So, when I got the message from Apple today that it was no longer allowing changes to stuff I have on HomePage (the old and robust site) as of July, I was not surprised, but was disappointed. I find myself in a position that I need to have MobileMe since I am an iPhone user and want to sync my addresses and calendar, do sometimes use other parts of the service, but I feel like I’m being robbed to have to pay $99 a year for the privilege.
So, if you’re a Mac user and have the same feelings about how Apple seems to be dumbing things down and about the elimination of new use of HomePage (what’s next?), how about writing Apple a nasty or two?
When I first got a Mac, I could take my photographs directly from Mac’s iPhoto program onto nicely formatted pages at a .Mac site where the photos with their titles could be seen by anyone. There was a nice hierarchy to allow viewers to move from one set of pictures to another. However, this has gone downhill. In more recent versions of iPhoto, there was no link to upload to the .Mac site. Apple wanted you to move to some newer programs (iWeb and MobileMe Gallery) and not use the old interface. The newer programs have their own benefits, but they have some serious drawbacks. iWeb chews up a chunk of disk space on your computer and any changes mean a lengthy “publishing” process that misfires about half the time. MobileMe Gallery is just a picture gallery of albums whose biggest drawback is having to keep those picture files live on your computer. If you archive them to, say, a DVD and remove them from iPhoto, the gallery you had posted goes away.
I had figured out a work around for using the old structure. It was clumsy, but I could do it. But I did see the writing on the wall, so to speak. Thus, I began putting all my new pictures onto Flickr. I now use iWeb as nothing more than a skeleton web page where you can click on links that take you to other sites.
So, when I got the message from Apple today that it was no longer allowing changes to stuff I have on HomePage (the old and robust site) as of July, I was not surprised, but was disappointed. I find myself in a position that I need to have MobileMe since I am an iPhone user and want to sync my addresses and calendar, do sometimes use other parts of the service, but I feel like I’m being robbed to have to pay $99 a year for the privilege.
So, if you’re a Mac user and have the same feelings about how Apple seems to be dumbing things down and about the elimination of new use of HomePage (what’s next?), how about writing Apple a nasty or two?
posted by Bud Hirsch at 4:35 PM
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