The Small Wave.

Posted

Dear Apple: Please add decent mobile control over MobileMe photo galleries

As a MobileMe subscriber I enjoy using the Gallery for photos. I think the interface and options for viewing photos in the galleries is beautiful. However, every time I maintain the site I can't help but be frustrated at the lack of control Apple provides. The only real control comes via the Mac using iPhoto or Aperture. And even then, photos placed on the galleries have less utility than on the desktop.

The Mac

With Aperture or iPhoto you can create albums for upload and sync to MobileMe. You can add or delete photos and the albums stay in sync. You can add new albums, drag and drop photos between them, and any keywords or star ratings added to photos in a MobileMe album work just like any other album.

Unfortunately, once you get off the Mac some of this data is not used, and your ability to make changes are reduced drastically.

The Web

The Gallery interface for MobileMe on the web isn't too bad. Here you can add/delete albums. You also have some control over albums, but are missing the ability to set privacy or the download quality of the photos (see album settings below, MobileMe on top, iPhoto on bottom). These are important settings, yet they can't be controlled via the web interface.

As for photos, you can add/delete, rotate, and drag and drop them among existing albums. Not bad, but there are no other editing controls, no ratings, and no keywords. Further, even if ratings and keywords are used on the Mac, they're not available on the web interface. You know the keyword searches you can do in Flickr? Yeah, there's none of that in MobileMe.

The iPhone

On the iPhone it gets much worse. You cannot use the web interface, instead you're routed to a page that tells you to load Apple's Gallery app. The app is beautiful (below) and great for viewing pictures, but that's all it allows. There's no facility to edit information or change settings for albums or photos. There's no upload facility, and not even the ability to delete a photo from an album. Aside from viewing all you can do is email a link to a photo or album.

It should be noted that a picture viewed in the native Photos app can be uploaded to MobileMe, where you can select an existing album (but not add a new one) and a title/description. Again, no editing, deleting, ratings or keywords are allowed.

The iPad

Sadly, the iPad is the worst mobile device of all for controlling one's MobileMe galleries. Like the iPhone, you can't use the web interface and must download the Gallery app. But the Gallery app has not been upgraded for the iPad, so it's either very small or very ugly, take your pick.

The Upshot

In short, you have good control of galleries via your Mac, but some of that data isn't stored online, and when you leave the Mac you're limited. The Web interface is OK, but lacks privacy controls, and the iPhone/iPad have essentially no controls at all.

Apple ought to change this. The Gallery app could take some cues from Flickr's own app, which allows title, description, photoset (including adding a new one), tags, image size, geotag, and privacy level for each upload. Further, it allows editing an existing photo's title, description, photoset, tags and privacy. It also allows you to delete photos.

It's frustrating that real maintenance on my MobileMe galleries requires I get back to a Mac. Frankly, it takes the "mobile" out of MobileMe. It's no wonder I use Flickr more often.

Tagged Apple Gallery iPad iPhone Mac MobileMe Photo Software

Posted

MobileMe Maintenance Tonight

The system will be unavailable for two hours.

While I'd love for Apple to throw in a surprise feature or two (e.g., smooth iDisk integration with the iPad's iWork apps, or OTA Note syncing) I suspect this is simply the equivalent of yesterday's iTunes upgrade. There'll be iOS 4 and iPhone 4 compatibility changes, maybe some big fixes, and that's it.

Tagged Apple mobile MobileMe wireless

Posted

Thoughts on MobileMe Mail beta after one week.

I've been using the MobileMe Mail beta for a week. These are my impressions so far, in no particular order...

Read the rest of this post »

Tagged Apple Mail mobile MobileMe Safari web

Posted

MobileMe Mail: Beta known issues

This article tracks significant known issues in the MobileMe Mail Beta. The article will be updated as issues are resolved. This article is intended for participants in the beta only. For more information, see the MobileMe Mail Beta FAQ.

via support.apple.com

Support page at Apple with an ongoing list of MobileMe beta Mail issues.

Tagged Apple email Mail MobileMe web

Posted

MobileMe Mail Beta: Google Chrome need not apply

Safari 4 (Mac and PC), Firefox 3.6 (Mac and PC), and Internet Explorer 8 (PC) are fully supported.

via support.apple.com

Well, well, well, look whose browser is not invited to Apple's MobileMe Mail beta program.

Of course, there's no Opera, either.

A lot could be made of this, but it's probably nothing. It makes sense for Apple to focus the beta program on the latest IE and Firefox, as well as their own, browsers. But it'll be interesting to see if Chrome gets a shout when Mail is out of beta.

Tagged Chrome email Google IE8 MobileMe Opera Software web

Posted

Apple's page about the new MobileMe Mail, now in beta.

via apple.com

Read about it at the above link.

I am, by far, most interested in the speed improvements. MobileMe Mail is slower than Yahoo! and Windows Live. Much slower. Embarrassingly so. Other features look nice, but if they don't get the performance right they'll never pull in any non-Mac users.

Tagged email MobileMe Software web Windows Live Yahoo

Posted

Hey Apple: When iDisk for iPad is Available, Please Use File Sharing.

The iPad's file sharing capability is nice, but it requires iTunes, so it's really only good for the machine the iPad is synced to. To share files with other machines I can use iWork.com or email, but a direct read/write approach would be more useful.

I think that should begin with iDisk.

The iPhone's iDisk app has been around a while. You see all the files, but it's a read-only gig. That's fine for the iPhone, where editing documents is not very practical (sorry, Documents To Go, it's true). The iPad changes that.

I want iDisk for iPad to list every installed app that can share files (like iTunes does). When I tap one, show me the app's files on the iPad, and let me copy them to the iDisk. Likewise, I want to copy files from the iDisk to the app's iPad directory.

C'mon Apple, make this happen. You haven't released iDisk for iPad yet; I hope this is what you're working on.

Tagged Apple file sharing iDisk iPad Microsoft mobile MobileMe Software

Posted

If You Have Multiple Macs, iPhones, Then Apple's MobileMe Is a Bargain.

Good article on Apple's MobileMe service.

Apple has finally assembled a set of features for its hosted MobileMe service that makes it worth its subscription fee for the right user. As a critic of the service in the past, I find myself with naught but praise these days.

I agree with the author. I, too, was a critic of MobileMe when it first transitioned from MobileMe. In fact, I was critical of it before the bigger guns joined in. Over the course of many months, and now nearly a year and a half, it has become an indispensable tool I rely on daily.

Take a look at the chart below. Spanning three Macs, three iPhones, an iPod touch, and three PCs, look at all the information MobileMe is holding together for me:

The purple Ws denote using the web interface, the red Xs denotes using Webdav disk or other method to access documents on iDisk.

Notice there's one component I choose to keep consistent across every item: calendars. It's amazing that any change made on any of the 10 items will show up on the others in just a minute or two. Yes, it "just works".

Tying this all together was little more than visiting a system preference on the Macs, logging into MobileMe, and checking a few boxes. On the iPhone it's pretty much the same, and on the PC there's a MobileMe control panel to install and use. You set, then forget, it just keeps in sync after that; I never have to think about it.

I'm not even using every sync feature. If I wanted, I could sync Dashboard widgets and Preferences across the Macs. I don't do so only because the varying screen sizes means I use different widgets and prefs on these machines.

Further, there are other features I use not listed on the chart, like the excellent "Find my iPhone", and the ability to wipe data off a device. I have these features enabled on all four mobile devices. It's great.

People balk at MobileMe because they claim Google or Yahoo or Microsoft provide email, contacts and calendars for free. True, but MobileMe does so using powerful native apps on Macs and the iPhone, and is so much more than just email anyway.

Bottom line is I'd have to collect numerous third-party apps (e.g., mail, drop box, Google sync, etc.) to try to get all the above items in sync, and they still wouldn't cover all the bases, nor be anywhere near as easy to administer. I consider MobileMe a bargain, and can't imagine my computing/mobile life without it.

Tagged Apple iPhone Mac MobileMe Social Software

Posted

Discoveries in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: MobileMe

Next up in my discovery series on Snow Leopard is MobileMe. Apple didn’t talk about it much for this upgrade, but I’m writing about it because I ran into a frustrating snag, and found a great new option.

Bad News First

I keep a local iDisk on both my Macs. I use the data on whichever machine I want, and never worry about it being current because MMe keeps it all in sync. The beauty of this approach to Cloud computing is that I’m not at the whim of the Cloud in terms of whether performance is slow, or if I can even log in at all. Further, since I’m using local data I get great performance, and can use desktop apps with capabilities that exceed Cloud alternatives. Since I launch some apps via documents, I kept a handful of document aliases in the iDisk's Documents folder. These aliases would point to the correct local file no matter which Mac I opened them from. Not any more. On Snow Leopard, if I used an alias on one machine, the other would balk when it tried to sync it. I could override it, but the resulting synced file was garbage text instead of a functioning alias for that machine. It took some experimentation with three different aliases to confirm this was the problem. I could no longer get a good alias for one machine if it worked on the other. To get around this, I deleted the aliases from iDisk and created them locally on each machine. They don’t sync, of course, but they don’t need to. This really isn’t a big deal, but it was frustrating today as I tried to figure out what was going on. Anyway, since I deleted the aliases iDisk syncs have been fine. No more errors and all seems well.

And Now For The Good News

Personally, I think Apple should have shouted from the rooftops that MobileMe iDisk syncing has a new option:

This is great. I don’t get a lot of sync errors, but when I do I can’t think of a single time that I didn’t take the most recent version of the file. From now on, if the sync issue is due to a time discrepancy I won’t even be bothered. I understand the idea behind any discrepancy stopping the process and prompting the user, but I also believe that some of the prompts are overkill. In my opinion, having the option to always use the most recent file is a great addition.

Tagged Apple MobileMe OS Snow Leopard Software

Posted

My New iPhone 3G S: Fast, But No Activation or Secure Network Connections [Updated]

AT&T delivered my new iphone 3G S on June 19th as promised. To be honest, I wasn't sure how to activate it (should I swap the SIM card from the old phone?) and it didn't come with any documentation to that effect. Ultimately, since there was a sticker on the box with my phone number, I assumed AT&T did what they needed to do, so SIM-swapping was unnecessary. I plugged it into iTunes, and saw the (common) message that it needed activation and that could take a while. I'd read this could take up to two days, so I kind of expecetd it. No biggie, since I could still sync it, put it on WiFI, etc. I took the option to restore it from the latest backup (of my current iPhone). This worked great, with all my apps brought over, including all my settings and their positions on the various home screens. Connecting it to my home WiFi network, my Microsoft Exchange account asked for a password, and it was all set. MobileMe did as well, but it claimed it could not get a secure connection to the server. The Inbox worked, but I could not see or interact with any other folders in my account. Without MobileMe I don't have bookmarks, contacts, etc., but I used Safari to browse to some sites and could see the speed improvements. Then I tried Tweetie and it failed. Like MobileMe, it could not get a secure connection. So I deleted it, thinking maybe it just needed re-installing. To re-install it I went to the App Store. Connecting there was fast, and so was browsing, but when I went to purchase Tweetie it failed because it could not get a secure connection. So I have a phone on my own WiFi network that somehow cannot connect securely. I've tried:

Turning off SSL for MobileMe email, but it still won't connect.
Blowing away the MobileMe account and re-added it, but that was no help.
Double-checking all network settings, but everything is fine (and matches my existing phone which works great).
Turning off 3G and hard-resetting the device. No help.

I do not know if -- and do not see why -- activation would have any bearing on secure connections via WiFi, but at this point I've decided not to trouble-shoot the secure connection issue any further until the phone is activated and I verify the problem persists. So I'm waiting... It's been nearly 24 hours and I'm waiting. [UPDATE:] I visited my local AT&T and they got it activated. That's the good news. The bad news is that -- as I feared -- this didn't address the secured network connection issue. So I've now got a valid phone but no contacts, email, bookmarks, etc. [UPDATE #2:] After resetting Network Connections and a few other tricks failed, I found a forum post that said to click OK on the initial error about an invalid certificate, and then just wait. According to the post, it would take a while but the phone would chew on it and apparently reset its certificate. Well, it worked, and everything is working now. To be honest, I think I had done that yesterday, so it's possible it only worked in conjunction with many other things I tried today.

Tagged Apple Hardware iPhone iPhone 3G S MobileMe Tweetie

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