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Why MobileMe Wants to Be Free
My MobileMe Fantasy

In response to complaints about MobileMe, the latest terse Steve-mail (via MacRumors) asserts Apple's cloud services “will get a lot better in 2011." That's good, because it's hard to imagine the industry-trailing MobileMe taking a downward turn from where it is in 2010.

The Competition

While a year of MobileMe goes for as little as $50 on eBay, Apple sells the service for $99 per year, or $69 for the first year with the purchase of a Mac or qualifying iOS device. For that, the MobileMe subscriber gets services like IMAP e-mail, data syncing, photo and website hosting, an interminably slow iDisk, a questionable Backup, and Find My iPhone. They also get 20 GB of storage and 200 GB of monthly bandwidth. There's also a MobileMe Family Pack for $149, providing more e-mail addresses, storage, and bandwidth.

In comparison, Google offers free e-mail, data syncing, photo hosting, along with a free office suite, and free Android device location. If you need more than a limited amount of storage, it's cheap. 200GB can be had for $50, with less space available for less money. Microsoft provides 25 GB of storage, along with free e-mail and other similar services, all for free. See where this is going? Apparently Apple doesn't. Apple just recently introduced Find My iPhone for free, but it basically had to because of what the competition is offering.

Sell Hardware, Not Services

That's just the latest example of the miserly attitude Apple has had towards the cloud, an attitude that is a far cry from the forward-thinking introduction of iTools in 2000. When that predecessor to MobileMe launched, all services were free, and millions signed up. Two years later, Apple renamed iTools .Mac and started charging for it, losing about 90 percent of users in the process. Even after opening the service up to PC users, and more recently iOS devices, MobileMe has never been as popular as iTools. A free MobileMe would change that.

If it seems counterintuitive to give services away free that currently earn money on a subscription basis, it is, unless you aren’t really in the software subscription business to begin with, which Apple is not. Last quarter, Apple earned $20.3 billion in revenue, with just under $18 billion coming from sale of Macs and iOS devices. MobileMe was lumped in with software and services, which presumably includes OS X and applications like iLife and iWork. The entire group earned $662 million for the quarter. From desktops to handhelds, Apple is in the business of selling computers, and free cloud services sells more hardware, or at least help retain more existing hardware customers.

By making MobileMe free, those using it with iOS devices won't be using services from Google or Microsoft, which makes switching to Windows Phone 7 or Android more difficult. While PC users would also have MobileMe free, they'd need to have iOS devices to make it really worth using. The Halo Effect, which argues that iOS device sales later lead to Mac sales mitigates the loss associated with giving away MobileMe to PC users in the present. If they do switch, free MobileMe helps encourage them to remain all-Apple in the future. Free MobileMe would be an investment in hardware customer retention, and it doesn't even have to be completely free.

For example, Apple could give away a year of MobileMe with the purchase of every Mac or iOS device. After all, they already offer a discount with purchase. Free MobileMe would be an incentive to upgrade every year, like the "free" year's warranty you get by upgrading your iPhone every year. However, that would still cause at least some consternation when the $99 bill comes due a year later if you don't upgrade. A better solution would be to offer a version of MobileMe free for anyone using a Mac or iOS Device.

MobileMe Lock-in

If I were in charge of Apple marketing and stuck with the cloying MobileMe moniker, I'd go with: MobileFree, MobileMe ($49), and MobileWe ($99). The latter would be the MobileMe Family Pack. The prices would be reduced, of course, because this is 2010 and storage is cheap, especially in North Carolina, home of Apple's new data center. MobileFree would include a basic set of services: mail, syncing, hosting, and a more appropriately named device locating service. Additional services and storage could be added in paid tiers.

Admittedly, most people would be happy with the free option, but there would be money to be made with advanced services, too. A service called Cloud Capsule would be a real, reliable backup solution using Time Machine off-site. Domain hosting would be Apple’s simple, elegant answer to what can be a difficult service to set up for the non-technophile. Perhaps a subscription iTunes service. These are just examples of ways to get people to use more storage and services to generate revenue, but revenue from MobileMe is not, and never will be, the point in and of itself.

The point is lock-in. Get people using Apple’s free services with Apple’s highly profitable hardware, and they’ll be less likely to buy hardware from competitors. That’s how the iTunes and App Stores work, and that’s how MobileMe could, too. If only Apple would set it free.

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Infinity Blade Review: Simple Gameplay, Cleverly Packaged
Infinity Blade is possibly the most-hyped iOS game release to date. The title, developed by Epic Games’ ChAIR Entertainment studio, got a lot of attention thanks to an early demo of its graphics engine in the app Epic Citadel. Now that it’s actually arrived as a game you can play, how does it stack up? Be warned, there be spoilers below, but also know that story is not what Infinity Blade is about.

Definitely a Looker

Let me make something abundantly clear: This is a gorgeous game. It’s the best-looking game I’ve seen on my iPhone 4′s Retina Display, and the best on the iPad, too. I haven’t had the chance to see how it works on an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch, but it runs very smoothly on Apple’s latest phone and tablet hardware. You can see many pretty pictures of just how nice Infinity Blade looks in the gallery at the end of this post.

Gameplay

Gameplay initially held some disappointment for me. Unlike in Epic Citadel, you aren’t free to move about the game world in Infinity Blade. It’s an on-rails experience, with pulsing circles directing your attention to places you can travel to. Generally speaking, you have one choice. Sometimes, you have two. Along the way, you can tap gold, potions or chests to get items, and you can change the camera angle, but there is no exploration or open world environment.

When you start the game, you’re presented with an opponent barring your way. Tapping on that enemy puts you into combat, or you can tap a circular blue “i” icon to get more information about him. You can block, dodge or parry attacks in order to get opponents to drop their guard, and then attack with your weapon. If you attack without first breaking an enemy’s defence, you’ll only do minor damage. You can also use a special power attack when fully charged, which automatically breaks an enemy’s guard. Finally, you can also use magic to cast spells with gestures you draw on the screen, which can be either offensive or defensive.

Fighting opponents earns you (surprise!) experience, and money, which you can spend on equipment. You “master” equipment by using it in battle, which grants you skill point upgrades. Levelling up also nabs you new skill points which you can assign to your attributes as you like.

Story

You’ll probably be amazed at how fast you burn through the various battles with the castle’s guardians and wind up facing the God King, the game’s boss. I know I was. And you’ll probably be even more surprised when the God King kills you incredibly quickly. But death isn’t the end. When the God King kills you, you start again, with all your weapons, equipment, gold and experience intact. Because you’re the previous hero’s son. Enemies are tougher, but you earn more defeating them. The cycle repeats as you gain experience and better equipment, getting killed by the God King until you’re strong enough to take him down. It took me four runs (or generations) to get to that point.

Verdict

Infinity Blade is short, and repetitive. Even within the individual “lives” of the hero, the enemies you face have repetitive fighting styles and character model designs. Despite its brevity and repetition, though, Infinity Blade is a good game. Why? Because I still want to keep playing it, even after having seen both possible endings to the game.

When the credits first rolled, I admit I felt betrayed. The game does cost $6.99 after all, and I expected something completely different after playing Epic Citadel. But then I just started playing again, and didn’t stop for a long time after. Collecting and upgrading items feels so rewarding, as does refining your combat abilities and identifying enemy patterns. In fact, in that regard, it feels very much like old-school games where you have to know the boss patterns by heart to win. GigaOM colleague Kevin Tofel noted that Infinity Blade reminded him of gaming classic Dragon’s Lair, which is another pretty good comparison.

Infinity Blade is a great tech demo. It shows that Apple’s iOS devices can run games made with the Unreal Engine 3, and the level of detail put into armor, weapon and environment design is amazing. But more than that, it’s a really fun experience based around RPG fundamentals, yet light enough that it remains a great casual game: one you can pick up and put down at your leisure without feeling like you’re breaking the mood as you might with, say, a Final Fantasy title.

Here’s what you might want to think about before making a purchase:
- Highs: Gorgeous graphics, fun gameplay with solid controls. Addictive RPG elements.
- Lows: Short on story, repetitive.
It’s also good to keep in mind that Infinity Blade’s developers have promised more content to come, including a multiplayer mode. I can see player-vs-player combat being really fun using the mechanics already in place. The promise of future updates doesn’t affect my overall opinion of the game, though. I’d gladly recommend it either way.
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Sponsor post: Sponsor post: If You Hate Meetings, You'll Love This. Online Meetings at join.me.
Forget the commute. There's no need to rush to the conference room. Have your meetings online, for free, at join.me. How will you use it? Here are a few time-saving — dare we say, life-saving — ideas.

1. Walk through your presentation.
There’s nothing worse than sending over a PDF before a meeting and having your client sneak a peek before you talk. Instead, start a join.me session so your participants can see one page at a time while you share your point of view.

2. Collaboratively build a document.
Start a join.me session to brainstorm on a topic, wherever you are. You can keep a document going live so everyone can see the updates as they happen. In the end, when your document is complete and agreed upon, you can instantly transfer it to everybody.

3. Have an impromptu meeting.
Good ideas don't always happen when a meeting is scheduled. Grab your colleague on the fly whenever genius strikes by sharing your screen at join.me. It's an instant ad-hoc meeting.

4. Start a cult.
The point is, you can do whatever you want with join.me because it's so flexible, easy and instant. If you want to get people together and on the same page, whether it's for a business presentation or to convince everyone to wear red sneakers and worship some lesser-known sea creature, then hey, to each his own.

Ready to try it out for yourself? Head over to join.me and start your meeting now.

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How-To: Printing Mailing Labels From Address Book
This holiday season, the Unites States Postal Service recommends getting First Class Mail out by Monday, Dec. 20 to ensure delivery by the 25th. The following two tips will help you get address labels printed up and ready to mail using your Mac. Both methods use Avery 8160 Address labels in this tutorial, but a wide variety of Avery printable labels can be used.

Apple Address Book and MobileMe Contacts

Apple’s Address Book application on Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the ability to print directly to address labels. First create a new group called “Holiday Cards 2010″ in Apple’s Address Book. Add the contacts you wish to send a card to this season to this new group. Once this task is complete, simply select the group and perform the following steps:
1. Select File>Print from the Address Book Menu
2. Click the icon next to your Printer choice that looks like an upside-down triangle
3. From the Style drop down menu, choose Mailing Labels
4. Under the Layout tab, set the Page to Avery Standard and 8160 (or whatever type of mailing label you have)
Now you’re all set to print. I would also recommend saving the results as a PDF file, and printing from there. That way you’ll always have a record of whom you already mailed cards to this holiday season. If you want to change the font or add an image to the address labels, from that same print dialog box where you choose which type of label you’re using, simply toggle over from Layout to the Label tab and make any changes you want.

Avery Designer Pro and Google Contacts

Just as with the Apple Address Book solution above, the first thing to do when you’re dealing with your Google-stored addresses is to create a new group called “Holiday Cards 2010″ in Google’s Contacts. Add your chosen contacts to the group. Now we’ll export the group to a local file on your Mac, and use Avery’s Designer Pro for Mac application to actually print the labels. Once you’ve installed Avery’s software, perform the following steps:
1. Export the contact group in Google Contacts as a “Google CSV” file (google.csv)
2. Launch Avery Designer Pro and choose 8160 – Easy Peel Mailing Labels (or whatever type of mailing label you have) from the list of all Avery Products
3. Click on the Use Blank button in the bottom right hand corner of Avery Designer Pro
4. From the toolbar located on the top left, click on the Text Box button to add a text box to the label
5. Now click on the Mail Merge button located just below the toolbar, this will prompt you to load the exported CSV file (google.csv)
6. Select the exported CSV file from the file system, and insert the columns you want to show up on the label
Now you can print from Avery Designer Pro’s File menu. I would again recommend saving the results as a PDF file, and printing from there.

This technique is a little more flexible considering you have the option to choose one of Avery’s design styles. It’s also a little more powerful since you are actually designing the address labels in a designer that even supports layers, and of course a little more complex, as you need to export data and install and use a third-party application.

You can also mix and match the above two solutions, as you could certainly export your Google Contacts as a vCard and import them into Apple’s Address Book. The Avery Designer Pro application can also import Apple Address Book Contacts. Either way, hopefully you find printing mailing labels on a Mac one of the easier one of the easier things to cross of your list this holiday.

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