Nokia or Sony Ericsson could have done something similar. But it had to be Apple. In the age of mobile phones that can access the internet, what nicer application could there be than enabling that little toy in your hand to have access to a 20Gigabyte storage and some nifty remote services as well?
Enter MobileMe
With MobileMe, iPhone users need only to update their contacts, calendars and messages and your desktop PC or Mac gets the updates as well. No docking or uploading cables needed. You get 20Gb of remote storage for these including office files that can be shared for a truly mobile and collaborative computing environment. You also get a gallery for your images you and your friends can access anywhere on earth. Lastly, iPhone’s MobileMe allows you to locate your phone from a map display, enabling lost or stolen pone to have its data erased using the Remote Wipe feature.
A lot of remote service bureaus on the net allow PC users to have all the storage they need from a remote location. This makes remote and mobile computing independent of the client workstation. That means you can access your files anywhere from any PC on earth. And you don’t need to carry your laptop every time.
Apple adopted the idea for their baby – the iPhone. Anywhere you go, as long as you have your iPhone with you, you have access to a 20Gb storage that gives you virtually all the storage space you need for your contacts, messages and multimedia artifacts. All that without worrying about the memory of your gadget.
Now why didn’t they?
MobileMe works pretty well for gadgets like the iPhone which is self-limited by its internal memory capacity. It doesn’t allow you to expand its memory. Unlike the typical mobile phone that supports external memory cards that’s now above the 8Gb capacity. You only pay once for the card and it serves the purpose for the life of the mobile phone or up to the limits the card’s reliability. And for some types of memory cards, you can use them across gadgets, like digital cameras and other mobile devices.
It’s all part of Apple’s marketing and product strategy. They could have designed iPhone the way others do. They didn’t. No doubt, there are pros and cons to it. The services provided by MobileMe, while anchored on providing 20Gb of remote storage, goes beyond that to cover synchronizing services for all your computing resources and a promising mobile and collaborative computing experience from a mobile phone.. It looks like Apple’s iPhone not only revolutionized the interface of a mobile phone, it has redefined mobile and collaborative computing as well.