Hands-On Report--MobileMe on an iPhone, Mac Pro and MacBook Air

I have been trying to use MobileMe since late Friday (see 7/12 reports below) and by Sunday it seemed to have been working nearly as well as it can. I write "nearly" because I still occasionally had some long pauses at Me.com when trying to view my iCal data.

First, I have a tip on getting the MobileMe software update if Mac OS X Update for MobileMe 1.1 still has not appeared in Software Update and you are running Leopard 10.5.4. Open System Preferences, click on the .Mac icon and log in. Doing so triggers a dialog box about MobileMe, then click on the Software Update button. Then manually open and run Software Update if it does not do so automatically. I had to do this on several Macs.

As I previously mentioned I had two .Mac accounts so I now have two MobileMe accounts. One I use for personal email and the other I use for business/work email. The latter receives my work email redirected from a Microsoft Exchange Server so that I can view it on my iPhone. As an aside, this is the best solution I've found since my work IT department refuses to enable IMAP "for security reasons." The only problem is that I do not get all of the header so I don't know if I am the primary addressee or have been copied nor do I get a list of all of the original addressees.

Of course, I wanted to set up MobileMe so that it pushes my work email. But I've used my personal .Mac address to set up all my Macs and to activate my iPhone. This may be why it is used as the default or primary .Mac address on my iPhone and is the only email account to have the "push" option. Short of reinstalling Mac OS X, reactivating my iPhone and deleting and reinstalling the accounts, I have tried and failed to get MobileMe and my iPhone to push the email from my work MobileMe email account instead of my personal account. So I gave up and set up MobileMe for my personal MobileMe account.

I set up MobileMe to work among my Mac Pro, MacBook Air and original iPhone. Initially, I got some double and triple entries in iCal but I edited them out in iCal on the Mac Pro. When MobileMe automatically updated my Me.com web site, iPhone and MacBook Air all iCal entrees were single again demonstrating the benefits of push. It was during this time that I had the problems with viewing my iCal data at my Me.com web site and that I learned that MobileMe updates entered from my Mac Pro (and MacBook Air) are not instantaneous unless I click the Sync Now button in the MobileMe pane of System Preferences. Apparently, push is only nearly instantaneous when entries are made on the iPhone or on the Me.com web site. Automatic updates from the Mac Pro or MacBook Air occur every 15 minutes according to this Apple Knowledge Base document.

Except for the curious 15-minute delay for entrees made on a Mac, MobileMe's push seemed to work well as I tried every permutation of data entry. It is a welcome addition to the Mac world.

I have only two concerns:

1. Apple needs to eventually modify MobileMe to accommodate those of us with multiple MobileMe accounts or at least provide some directions on how to switch the push capability from one account to another on the iPhone.

2. What happens if there is a server glitch in the MobileMe cloud and all of my contacts, iCal data and bookmarks are deleted? Will MobileMe blindly carry out these changes by deleting the data on my iPhone, Mac Pro and MacBook Air as well? Hopefully, Apple has built in some protection against this happening. But what happens if my iPhone goes on the fritz and my data are deleted? Fortunately, I have my Time Machine backups.

[Bill Fox]