First Things First: What It Is

It’s not a phone, it doesn’t have a camera, and half of the models won’t feature a persistent data connection — assertions of it being a giant iPhone or iPod Touch¹ are mainly from an aesthetic standpoint.  On the flip side, it’s less than a laptop: no physical keyboard (without the special dock OR an Apple Bluetooth keyboard from what I understand) and no fully-featured version of OS X. I’ve read from event attendees that when you plug the iPad in to sync, you’re actually able to browse through the folder structure a la the iPod Disk Mode of yesteryear, so we sway towards the laptop side of the fence.  It is obviously running a variant of iPhone OS, so we then swing back into this middle area, which is exactly where Jobs positioned it from the get-go.

Who Is It Good For?

I will admit that my initial reaction differs greatly from my feelings on the device today and a lot of that was based on speculation that the iPad was going to cost somewhere in the range of $1000 to $1200 dollars. For a grand, the iPad would’ve gone the way of the G4 Cube or the iPod Hi-Fi.  However, for half of that price it becomes a significantly more appealing device for a lot of people, myself included.

The first group I could see gobbling this device up would be media connoisseurs. Not necessarily people who frequently purchase media online (though I’m sure that will be the case), but rather people who have a massive collection of movies, music, eBooks, or even iPhone apps that want this stuff on-the-go or just at arm’s length:

• You want the answer to the Final Jeopardy question before that snarky-ass Trebek?  Pick up the iPad and Google it.
• Want something to do while you’re on the can?  iPad + The New York Times app should be handy.
• Bored on your hour-long train ride to work? Go ahead and catch up on your favorite TV show to ease the pain.
• Could you imagine if Logitech made a Harmony app for it? Best. Universal Remote. Ever.
• So forth and so on…

Another group of people who might dig this device are the casual computer users.  One of the first things I thought when I saw it was “Mom would friggin love that thing” and I’m pretty that most parents (hell, even some grandparents) could get accustomed to the iPad right quick. The learning curve for the most used tasks: web browsing, sending/checking email, and maybe the occasional game are so minimal and intuitive that I’m sure moms and dads would have a solid understanding in less than a day.

The third and final group are the ones that seem to be scrutinizing it the most.  The media professionals that thought this tablet was actually the third set of commandments never brought down from Mt. Sinai. They’re yelling about DRM and iPhone OS and AT&T and so many other nuancical things, which are all valid concerns, but there’s the simple fact that none of the yellers have even used the damn thing. I can see writing up a well thought-out list of pros and cons after using a demo unit or even just playing around with one in an Apple Store, but the fact remains that all of these people crying foul about how locked down the thing is haven’t even seen one outside of the Keynote video. I would estimate that 25% of them will completely change their tune after holding one in their hand and using it for 10 minutes.

Here’s a list of actual uses I could see as possible for a media professional with the iPad:

• A photographer showing off their portfolio or recently-taken on-site photographs
• A video editor preparing to show dailies to a director/producer
• A web designer showing off photo comps OR working website demos in Safari
• As a presentation tool to ensure none of your fancy Keynote animations are lost in the shuffle

I’ll admit that’s not the greatest list at the moment, and true all of those things are easily accomplished with a laptop, but keep in mind that this platform is in its infancy from a developer standpoint. I’m sure we’ll be inundated with a slew of apps that will allow us to do things faster and better, just like on the iPhone itself.

Flash Flood

Perhaps the astute noticed that I left out all of whining over lack of Flash support. The amount of people that are upset by this is ri-god-damn-diculous. I never thought twice about whether or not this tablet would support Flash, my assumption was always “No, and that’s a good thing.”

Flash has been a good platform for delivering video up until the recent advent of HTML5, which offers a far superior implementation in terms of ease of use and overall user experience (no plugins required, above all else). YouTube and Vimeo, two of the largest video sites on the internet, have embraced this open standard and the implementation is flawless  It’s not an accessible platform on it’s best day and soon even animations will be able to be fully supported with the CSS3 standard, so I can’t imagine that Adobe will have such a stranglehold in the online video and “rich UI” market for much longer.

For the one or two things that Flash does well, we must recall the egregious offenses some Flash developers are responsible for, not the least of which are: god-awful, seizure inducing banners, walk-in advertisements, and sites that are 100% flash-based (cue subtle nods to most restaurant websites). Advertisers have gotten so out of hand that people have come up with solutions like ClickToFlash and AdBlockPlus in order to combat the onslaught.

Think of Flash as roller coaster cars that have finally reached the top of the first hill. Once half of them have gone over the edge they’ll pull the remainder down pretty rapidly.

Technically…

The iPad is a very capable machine. Without regurgitating all of the specs featured on Apple’s page, it was easy to see just by watching the demos that it’s a much fuller experience than what’s currently achievable on the iPhone. The custom chip created by Apple’s own manufacturer is clocked at 1Ghz, which doesn’t sound like a lot by today’s multi-core multi-processor standards I realize. Though I’m sure when paired with a perfect storm of cache, RAM, and a fast hard drive (in this case, the fastest: SSD), you get a lot of power in a little device. To put this in perspective, the iPhone 3GS uses the last generation of the same processor clocking in at 600mhz and most definitely less cache. Double the speed of the 3GS and you’re in the ballpark of the iPad.

Summing It Up

After doing a little bit of research on the device from a technical standpoint as well as hearing what attendees had to say after the hands-on demos, I think it’s safe to say that despite a harsh words from the Apple fanatics who thought this device would somehow change the entire world for the better, it might actually sell better than anyone anticipates. I, personally, can’t wait to try one out for myself… At which point I’ll be more open to hearing out the fact-based ramblings and rantings of the unhappy campers.

1 – I have the overwhelming urge to injure anyone who calls it an “iTouch” and I don’t know why.

What does this mean for most people?  In a word, nothing… yet (ok, that was two words).  The fact of the matter is that until we have full browser support for the H.264 video codec, which is currently only available in Webkit-based browsers like Google Chrome and Safari, this seamless and superior technology will never be experienced by the majority.

I don’t anticipate Internet Explorer ever fully supporting the video standard or the code to actually implement it (c’mon, 8 versions in and they’re just now figuring out how to render web pages correctly), but for this to be anything close to a victory over Flash, Firefox needs to get with the friggin program.  While it’s true that Firefox does support the code to get it working, the videos need to be encoded using Theora as opposed to H.264—which, in short, requires two versions of the same file, doubling the necessary server space.  You can see how this would be a problem for a company like YouTube, whose server farms are probably running at max capacity with a ridiculous 12,000 videos views per second.

So, while I personally think it’s great that those of us who opt for Webkit browsers will have an overall better user experience, not to mention that videos from both YouTube and Vimeo are now accessible to mobile platforms without the need for Flash, I would love to see this technology rolled out to the populace as a whole, which will require a massive amount of feature requests and a miracle.

On Resolutions

Here's the weirdo, Janus.

Turns out that declaring a New Year’s resolution goes back a lot further than I had expected: 153 B.C. to be exact. When the Romans of this time were compiling the early iterations of what would eventually become the standard 365-day calendar, they named specific time periods (months, seasons, etc) after their Gods. At the head of this calendar they placed a mythical king of Rome, Janus, the God of beginnings. Janus was a pretty weird looking guy, mainly due to the fact that he had two heads each facing in opposite directions. Despite this malformation, the symbolism in his depicted imagery is readily apparent: Janus is looking forward and back, assumedly at the year which just passed and the one to come.

So when this time of “year” came around, Romans often attempted to resolve any differences or disputes with enemies through the offering of small gifts, usually farm produce or coins imprinted with the profile of Janus. Many centuries later the Catholic church got involved and, after much shuffling and sidestepping, separated the one day of gift giving and reflecting on the past year into two: Christmas and New Year’s Day. Janus is still with us at the beginning of every year, under the slightly altered moniker of January.

On Resolve

If I had to break down the most common resolutions I’ve heard they’d sound something like this: lose weight/get in shape, fix a wacky personality quirk, have a more balanced/active/social/adventurous life, spend more time with friends/family. If your resolutions sound something or exactly like that, then you’re definitely not alone. Hell, some of those are goals of mine; therein lies my problem with the word resolution: most people set short-term goals as their resolution as opposed to establishing an entirely new routine, a considerably more difficult task. If you really want to make a resolution, you must first draw up a blueprint of your ideal future and become completely enamored by the thought of seeing it through. Envision yourself a year from now having accomplished everything you just now resolved to do. From that moment, you’ll be keenly aware of the driving factors behind all of your motivations and decision making.

The reason why most of my previous resolutions have failed within the first month was a persistent need for instant gratification, thus defeating the point of a new year’s resolution. We live in a world where everything is on demand, so when the wheels of progress turn any slower than what we’re accustomed to (rapidly), it seems fruitless to continue what seems such a lengthy endeavor. While realizing this has changed my approach, old habits die hard (and often with a vengeance).

I’m starting to realize, albeit a few years late, the value of having a great plan. All of the steps leading up to the execution of that plan, regardless of success or failure, have excellent lessons to teach. I recall a particularly insightful quote from The Weather Man, the protagonist speaking about his evolution as a person:

“I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I’d be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that’s who I am, the weather man.”

Despite not amassing all the qualities he wanted to possess, he still had a clear picture of the person he wanted to be from the outset, and I’m beginning to think that’s the most important piece of information a person can possess.

It’s with all this in mind over the past two weeks that I’ve carefully thought about what’s really important to me now, what will be important to me a year from now, and again beyond that. I was a little shocked about the difference in my thinking when comparing short term and long term scenarios since it’s something I rarely do, but entirely pleased with the outcome of my resolutions. And so…

The Resolutions

1. Nosce te ipsum — Latin for “Know thyself”, the key to knowing how to utilize all of your strengths is to also acknowledge your weaknesses. This is something that I’m going to explore more actively.
2. Be in the best shape of my life — A little vague, which is a good starting point. I’ve always been in very average shape up until lately, so anything above average is a success and everything above that is a soaring victory.
3. Spend less. Save more. — I always start saving money for short periods of time only to spend it unwisely (on bills or otherwise). I want to be on time with all of my payments, know exactly when to expect these bills to come in (or auto-pay), and perform preventive maintenance whenever possible to avoid unexpected speed bumps in my saving.
4. Invest more time into rewarding personal projects — Although I wish I was talking about earning the Platinum trophy in Modern Warfare 2, this one is more in the realm of the work I do, not only for my employer but also in my personal time. I’d like to start doing more freelance work, but being selective about projects. I’d like to make a video, a tool, a template, or an app that people actually want to use and content people actually want to read.
5. Put my family above all else — The combination of the aforementioned four resolutions should fulfill at least half of this one by ensuring that both Jackie and Bella are well cared for and supported to the best of my ability, the other half involves being a good father to Bella and partner to Jackie, always there to help in any way possible. Sacrifice, in essence. The other component to that is to try and ensure a good realtionship with the immediately family around me (moms, dads, siblings, etc.) because they’re the best family I have.

Those are my resolutions. I’ve seen the future, and the future is good.

• 
  This Is War
• 
  Sci-Fi Crimes
• 
  Merriweather Post Pavilion
• 
  Only By The Night
• 
  Raditude
• 
  The Resistance
• 
  Octahedron
• 
  Them Crooked Vultures
• 
  xx
• 
  Beggars

Memory of travel is fleeting at best. Photographs serve as road-markers for returning to those experiences.

Read entire review here.

First Things First

Obviously the first thing you’ll need is a high quality source file. (Note: any file will do, but encoding from the original, lossless source always yields best results). In my case, I was working with an HD video file that I just finished editing in Final Cut and exported using Compressor. If you’re exporting from an editing suite and not intending to serve up an HD version of your video, then exporting a standard DV file will work. If you’re taking the video directly from a video camera like a Flip Mino, Kodak Zi8, or even your phone, then chances are your videos are already compatible.

A Brief and Incomplete History of Video Codecs and Containers

Working with video can get overwhelming very quickly if you’re unfamiliar with the terminology or concepts, so here’s a quick breakdown of video as well as the two types we’ll be dealing with: MP4 and Ogg.

It’s safe to assume that if you download videos from the internet, you’ve encountered a few of the more common extensions: MOV, MPG, AVI and unfortunately WMV. Those files are known as video containers. Think of a video container as you would a ZIP file: an all-in-one package that contains the content you’re really after. In the case of video containers, the files within are known as streams or tracks and represent a variety of things including video, audio, subtitles, and more.

Ogg is a free, open-standard container format supported natively by Firefox 3.5+, Google Chrome, and most distributions of Linux. You can also watch Ogg content on OS X or Windows easily enough by installing the appropriate codecs. For our purposes, we’ll be dealing with the OGV container, which is specific to video. Within the OGV container, we’ll have two tracks: the Ogg Video track known as “Theora” and the Ogg Audio track known as “Vorbis”. Ogg file formats are on their way to becoming the standard way that Wikipedia delivers audio and video information, in hope of establishing this patent-free codec as the <video> standard.

MP4 is the container format of choice for Apple and most mobile platforms and is supported natively by Safari (Webkit), Flash video players, the iPhone, some Android phones, and also Google Chrome. Within the MP4 files we’ll be working with, we’ll again have two tracks: “H.264″ for video and “AAC” for audio. H.264, like Theora, is a video codec, but the comparisons end there. H.264 offers a plethora of options and features that are a result of it’s evolution over many years. If you’ve ever watched a trailer on Apple’s site, a BluRay movie, and HD video on YouTube, or downloaded a movie/television show through iTunes, then you’ve encountered H.264 in one of it’s many profiles. H.264 profiles are the key to its versatility, as different profiles best serve different mediums. The Baseline H.264 profile is supported on the iPhone and some Android phones, while the Advanced Profile is used by BluRay discs for the ultimate in video quality.

So, to recap:

Ogg

• Ogg is supported natively by Firefox 3.5+, Google Chrome, and most Linux distros
• Ogv is the container we’ll be working with
• The video track within an ogv container is known as “Theora”
• The audio track within an ogv container is known as “Vorbis”

MP4

• MP4 is supported natively by Safari, Google Chrome, iPhone OS, Android OS, OS X, and Flash video players
• MP4 is also the name of the container we’ll be working with
• The video track within our mp4 container is known as “H.264″
• The audio track within our mp4 container is known as “AAC”

Acquiring the Encoders

I’ll preface by saying that I had a hell of a time finding a reliable GUI-based Theora encoder. The Quicktime plugin was buggy and didn’t always output files as expected, even resulting in a few crashes. Firefogg, a highly recommended Firefox extension, simply did not work for me while dedicated encoding programs that I looked into, particularly Episode and Sorenson Squeeze, were both absent of the Theora codec entirely. This left me with the command line alternative: ffmpeg2theora. For those of you not comfortable working in the command line, fear not, as the calls to output a Theora video file are quick and easy. For exporting the H.264 video, I used the free (and incredibly nifty) Handbrake, which is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

You Down With Ogg?

After installing ffmpeg2theora, you’ll have to open either your terminal (OS X/Linux) or command prompt (Windows). From there, you can type “ffmpeg2theora –help” to get your bearings or just base your settings off of mine. After playing with a few variations of settings, the ideal preset for my project came out to look like this:

ffmpeg2theora –videoquality 6 –audioquality 4 –max_size 416×232 –optimize InputFile.mov

• videoquality X — where X can be any number from 0 to 10
• audioquality X — where X can be any number from -2 to 10
• max_size tells the encoder what the output size should be. If removed, input and output source size will be the same.
• optimize adds some time to the encode process, but gives you the best possible balance of quality and file size
• InputFile.mov can be almost any type of video container. A shortcut to inputting it is to simply drag and drop the file into your Terminal/Command Prompt after writing out the above settings

My uncompressed input file was 106MB at a resolution of 1280×720. Using these settings the file size came down to just a fraction above 16MB. I easily could’ve gone lower than that, but didn’t want any visible video degradation and anything below 20MB seemed like a reasonable streaming video size.

H.264 U

Encoding with Handbrake should be much easier for the average person since there’s a nice, clean interface in which to work. After launching the program, select your input source and, from the Preset Drawer, select “iPhone and iPod Touch”. This setting isn’t specifically for these devices, but more a good starting point from a compatibility point of view. From the top down, choose these settings:

• Container: MP4
• Make sure “Web Optimized” is checked
• Video Codec: H.264
• Framerate: Same as source
• Constant Quality: This is (very loosely) akin to Theora’s 0-10 scale and can be tested by enabling live preview in Handbrake to view your settings live on the video before committing to a lengthy encode. Power users could also simply specify a Target Size or Average Bitrate.
• Under the “Audio” tab, make sure that the Samplerate is 44.1 as 48 is overkill for web video.
• Click on the Picture Settings icon and then adjust the video to your desired size. You may also crop here if necessary.
• Finally, before submitting the export, you can click on the Preview Window icon to get a live, 5-60 second preview of your video with the settings you’ve chosen applied.

Going from the aforementioned uncompressed file I was able to get the MP4 down to 17Mb, which is a space savings of roughly 600% with relatively no visible pixel degradation or blurring.

The Code To Get It Done

The HTML5 code to embed a video is super simple and very much akin to using the <img> tag:

<video src=”MyVideo.ogv”></video>

You can take it a step further and add a width and a height, just like with images:

<video src=”MyVideo.ogv” width=”640″ height=”480″></video>

There are also a number of options you can add on to your video tag, they are: controls, autoplay, autobuffer. They’re all pretty self explanatory, and equally easy to implement. For example:

<video src=”MyVideo.ogv” width=”640″ height=”480″ controls autoplay></video>

The above line tells the browser to use it’s native controls for video and autoplay as soon as the page is done loading. You could swap autoplay with autobuffer to have the video begin downloading right away and then have the user initiate playback using the native browser controls. The options aren’t endless, but they’re certainly nice to have.

The only thing remaining is specifying which video will work in which browser. Rather than wasting away precious bandwidth by loading two movies and letting the browser decide which one it can handle, all you have to do is use the <source> element of HTML5 to tell the browser which video to download. The source element looks like this:

<video width=”640″ height=”480″ controls>

<source src=”MyVideo.ogv” type=’video/ogg; codecs=”theora, vorbis”‘>

<source src=”MyVideo.mp4″ type=’video/mp4; codecs=”avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2″‘>

</video>

So from that you can see that the video element no longer links to the file, but still contains the video attributes like width, height, autoplay, etc. Inside the video element we have two source elements that give us the path to the video as well as the video type, respectively. Note that the type attribute is wrapped in single quotes, which is a little weird, but this is due to the fact that the codecs have to wrapped in quotation marks for this to work.

Beware of the Mimes

I ran into a hugely frustrating issue where my development server simply wasn’t playing the OGV video natively in Firefox or Chrome, yet when I tested my code locally everything worked perfectly. I tried different character encodings, files permissions, and much more before I figured out that it was a simple issue of the server not understanding what the hell an OGV file is in the first place. There are two ways to remedy this issue:

1. If you’re the server admin *and you know what you’re doing*, you can edit httpd.conf and add the following lines to cover all variations of OGG media (one per line, do no include commas): AddType video/ogg .ogm, AddType video/ogg .ogv, AddType video/ogg .ogg
2. If you’re not the server admin but have FTP access, create a file called “.htaccess” in your root directory and add the lines you see above in the same format.

Note that the first method is a server-wide change whereas the second must be done on a domain-by-domain basis. Once I established my Mime types, it was smooth sailing.

In Summary

HTML5 video is exactly what a lot of people have been waiting for and, beyond learning a little bit about video encoding, should be comfortable territory for any proficient HTML coder. The only obstacle at this point is Internet Explorer, which seems to have no intention of supporting either file type now or in future versions. Though it would be easy enough to write a Javascript workaround to fallback on YouTube in the event of IE, the native implementation and seamlessness are really what make the HTML5 video element shine. In the web development world, where working drafts take years to be approved and the inhabitants argue fruitlessly over the minutiae of doctypes or trailing slashes, HTML5 video feels like an evolutionary first step in the right direction: An open web that utilizes open source tech to solve usability conundrums.

You can view my finished page here.

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.

It’s kinda sorta poetically perfect isn’t it? I mean as a visual image of what Windows is — a big giant pile of grease and fat, served up cheap.

Apparently, BK has had this sandwich for years in Texas, which makes sense because you know the old saying: “Texans are slobs”.

On the 27″ iMac, you now have the ability to utilize a video input, which has been on everyone’s wish list forever and a day.  My question is this:  If I bought two 27″ iMacs, could I use the video out from one into the other to extend my desktop AND THEN connect them via Firewire 800, enable Xgrid processing and, in essence, utilize the four cores for intensive tasks like video rendering?  The ball is in your court, Apple.

Update 10/22/09 Another question I need answered: Can the iMac still function as a second monitor if OS X isn’t installed or in other situations like when booted into Windows via Boot Camp?

What it offers

At it’s most basic level, MobileMe provides a dead-simple way to keep all of your contacts, calendar events, and Apple-provided me.com email account completely linked up.  This means that if you add a contact on your iPhone, it’ll automagically get sent to “the cloud” and be synced down to your computer’s address book application.  You could also add a series of events to iCal or your Outlook calendar, give them a label, and color code them and within minutes they’ll appear on your iPhone calendar exactly as you’ve added them. If you mark an email on your @me.com account as read, and move it to your ”Follow Up” folder while in Mail.app,  that’s exactly how and where you’ll find the email on your iPhone.

I think you get the picture about how tight the integration is.  The best part is at no time do your iPhone and computer have to be connected, this all happens wirelessly and instantaneously.

Stacking it up

Two out of three of those features (Address Book and Calendar syncing) can be acquired for free from a similar service called Google Sync.  You can see my write-up and review of that on my Google Sync Follow Up article.  The difference between the two is as simple as whether you prefer Google products or Apple products.

With Google Sync, you’ll be working within the realm of Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar. Your Gmail account also won’t be Push, which is probably a negligible feature for the casual user.

Using MobileMe, Apple’s Mail, Address Book, and iCal will be your primary desktop programs for viewing and editing contacts, events, etc.  Notice that when using Google Sync your information will be stored online at all times whereas with MobileMe your information is accessible from the web (via me.com), but can also be manipulated with desktop applications quickly and easily.

The extra mile

The aforementioned features alone weren’t enough to persuade me to the MobileMe side of the fence.  It was the additional value adds that Apple tacked on which sweetened the deal and made it a worthwhile purchase.

1. Bookmarks Sync
   This might seem like a small thing, but for someone like me who’s constantly bookmarking articles and interesting things for later consumption and classification, this is a life (and time) saver.  Anything I bookmark on my phone gets synced back to my computer and vice versa, so I’m never away from my bookmarks.
2. Back To My Mac
   This has proven to be indispensable for me since I’m not always home to access my computer.  Basically, you log in to your MobileMe account on your primary Mac and then when you log in to MobileMe on any other Mac (on the same network or 500 miles away), you’ll be able to access all of the files on your home machine AND share the screen.  In the past I’d often find myself forgetting a snippet of code or image file when working on a website remotely and would pretty much have to make do without it, but now with Back To My Mac it’s as easy as mounting my home machine on the desktop as a disk and continuing on easily and painlessly.
3. iDisk
   Apple goes ahead and throws you 20GB of space  and 200GB of monthly bandwidth to divide up however you’d like.  By default it’s split evenly down the middle between file space and mail, although you can adjust it however you’d like from the me.com control panel. I’ll reserve my comments about iDisk for the next section
4. Gallery
   This is a dead simple and damn sexy way to look at your photos and videos.  On a desktop web browser you’re given a few options for how you’d like to browse and when viewing on the iPhone it looks identical to skimming your photo albums.  It’s such a rich experience it almost feels like you’re using a desktop application.  You can view one of my photo galleries right here: Bella Ragazza.
5. iLife Integration
   I use iPhoto for organizing all of my pictures and the integration of MobileMe makes sharing my albums a piece of cake. I just select any number of pictures, an album, or event, click the MobileMe button and it publishes the gallery just like that.  The same is true of iMovie and iWeb, although I don’t routinely use either of those programs so I can’t vouch for them personally.
6. Me.com
   I’m not personally a big user of the Me.com website, but it would be doing a great injustice to the service if I didn’t at least mention it.  Everything I’ve mentioned above is accessible from one central place at Me.com.  You can view your contacts, calendar events, galleries, and iDisk files from the rich web applications Apple has set up.  Everything is interactive and makes you feel like you’re on the desktop and if you’re not an iPhone user this would be the best way to access everything quickly and easily.
7. iPhone 3.0 Features
   Find My iPhone, by all accounts and measures, is an awesome service that lets you find your phone and even if you can’t locate it, you have the option to remote wipe it to clear all of your data if a less-than-honest individual was trying to access it from afar. The iDisk App isn’t available yet, but looks like a great way to access your files on the go, like a lite version of Back To My Mac aimed squarely at iPhone. I’m eagerly awaiting this to tie my digital lifestyle together just a tad more.

It’s not all butterflies and rainbows

There are definitely certain parts of MobileMe that are lacking.  The one major sticking point I have is the speed of the iDisk when transferring files thru the Finder.  It mounts on your desktop just like a regular hard drive and by default mirrors the folder structure of your home directory (Pictures, Movies, Music, Documents, Sites, etc). This makes it easy for newcomers to understand how to move files to their iDisk, but the transfer speeds are attrocious.  For a standard video file of 100MB, I clocked my upload speeds thru the Finder at roughly 8kbps to 19kbps on my 16/2mbps cable connection.  Compare that to when connecting via FTP (any clients with WebDAV support are capable of this) with the same video file transferring at an average of 114kbps and you can understand why I’m a little baffled by this.

While on the subject of iDisk, another tiny problem I have is the lack of options for adding more storage space. By and large, most users won’t ever have to worry about hitting the 20GB ceiling, but for someone like me who stands to benefit from storing uncompressed video files or moving large amounts of music to and from my iDisk for safe keeping, the option to purchase additional space by the 10’s of gigabytes as opposed to a system like Amazon’s S3 where you only pay for what you use seems teensy bit archaic.

My only other gripe is that I’m not crazy about having to use iWeb to create a webpage on my allocated web space.  Beings that I’m a designer/coder by trade, I’m curious to see how fast an Apple server would load my pages to the masses and don’t really want to use a WYSIWYG editor to test that curiosity.

In Summary

If you’re an Apple computer user and have an iPhone, then MobileMe is really a no brainer.  For $99 a year, you get the convenience of, well, everything… everywhere.  Access your contacts, calendars, mail and more from a variety of platforms and programs.  Serve pictures and videos attractively from the MobileMe Gallery. Store and access your files on “the cloud” or just get them directly using Back To My Mac.  Despite the one or two complaints I have, they’re certainly not enough to outweigh all of the convenience and ease of use MobileMe has provided me for the past three months.