With a vague name like “Mobile Me”, many iPhone users are unsure of exactly how the feature works. In a nutshell, it utilises the concept of “cloud computing” or storing all your information on an external drive (the “cloud”) rather than your computer or iPhone. In the iPhone’s case, your information is stored on an Apple server somewhere that enables you to access all your email, contact and calendar information from one location by means of the internet. The Mobile Me service pushes any changes to all of your different devices, whether it’s your Mac, iPhone or Windows PC.

The essence of the Mobile Me feature is that no matter what device you use to access your information, the information is always the most up-to-date and relevant it can be. For example, if you were to have lunch with a colleague who tells you that they have changed phone numbers and you will need to update your contact list, you’d probably change the number there and then to keep your address book up to date.

Within moments of changing the information, it would be synchronised with the Mobile Me service. The Mobile Me servers would then push that change down to your other devices so by the time you return to your office or home computer, you wouldn’t need to manually change your friends contact information on the computer – it would be up to date already. This convenient service not only works for contact information, but also calendar appointments and email.

In the case of email, the Mobile Me service means you will receive pushed email notifications no matter where you are with your iPhone. And if you read an email on your iPhone, it will be marked as read by the time you open up your email application on your computer, or vice versa.

Me.com
In addition to all these auto-update features offered by the Mobile Me service, there is also an impressive web-based portal for accessing your information. Logging into me.com allows users to access all their emails, calendar entries and contact information, no matter what computer or remote device is being used because it’s all stored “up in the cloud”.

The online portal itself uses the latest Web 2.0 features making the experience itself more like using a computer than a website. The email service, for example, looks and works like the Mail app found on every Mac. Having a similar appearance and functionality to Mac-based software means Mobile Me is entirely user-friendly. Emails can be dragged and dropped into folders, double click on times in the calendar to add appointments and even drag contacts details into a new group, all from the browser.

The service replaces the old .Mac service and offers 20GB of online storage space. This can be used to store photographs, large files or even host your own iWeb website. All the same services of the .Mac feature are still there as well as many more including the ability to synchronise the Dashboard widget preferences with a home computer.