As you may remember from my last post on MobileMe’s launch, I said that I would get a trial and provide a review of the service.  Well I was expecting to get the trial on Thursday, when the switch was made, but as most of you know Apple’s servers were up and down all afternoon.  Well today I was able to set up an account.

The first thing I did was try to come up with hilarious names for the service, like mymomyells AT me dot com, areyoulooking AT me dot com, and so on.  Well I decided that if I decided to keep the service and pay the $99, then i needed a legit name that wouldn’t scare people away.  So the first step in getting the trial is to give your information, so I picked itakepictures@me.com, seeing that I’m an avid photographer and plan on trying the gallery features.  The first major thing that shocked me was that Apple asked for my credit card information so that when the trial ends, they slam you with the bill if you don’t cancel the trial.  Well I decided to cave in and give the information and add an iCal event to remind me a few days ahead to cancel the service if it didn’t suit me.

The first thing that pops up is a video that will explain what MobileMe is and how to use it. Then you are at your inbox for your new address.  On the top left you can see the menu of different services that Mobile Me has to offer: Mail, Contacts, Calender, Photos, iDisk, and Profile.  When you click on the icon you are taken to the respected site.

First, let’s try Contacts. First thing I notice is that it is relatively slow going from site to site, which will hopefully be fixed.  Contacts gives you pretty much the feel of Address Book, so no real excitement, but I have no contacts so maybe that’s why it is not that exciting.

Next we’ll try Calendar. Well I am getting an error message saying that it can’t get calendars from the server, so we will try to move on to the next app.

Let’s give Photos a try! Photos didn’t take as long to load, but I have none uploaded so that could be the reason.  So lets upload a new album to show the world my love of photography.  After creating the album name and permissions, you are shown a green arrow asking you to click it to upload.  The upload process was very speedy compared to the other functions of MobileMe, less than one minute for six 1MB photos.  Here is the first album of many to come, Pictures!  The gallery has not changed from what little I know of the .Mac service.  Along the top menu bar you are allowed to change the permissions, upload more photos to the album, rotate pictures, etc.

The last real part of MobileMe is the iDisk function. You can sync items from your Mac into your iDisk to store for backup or to share with friends.  There isn’t much to say about iDisk, because it kind of explains itself.  Also Account Settings really explains itself, you can change your settings and so on.

My final first impression of the MobileMe service is: Wait a few week before you try this. As you may know, Apple has had server issues all day today.  This is the first time MobileMe is up and running completely, so I assume that everyone is trying the site out, which bogs down the speed.  If Apple makes the site faster, this service is pretty much like .Mac.  I have not been able to try the push function because the 2.0 firmware has not been available for the iPod Touch.  With this review, I plan on doing a final review right before my trial officially ends, hopefully the service will work to its full potential in sixty days.

See you then!

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