I’ve just had a look at Apple’s MobileMe video tour, with a walk-through from the same guy who does the other Apple videos. (”Hi. I’m John. I work in one of our Apple retail stores…” I reckon he’s the only Apple retail store worker with his own dressing room. What are they going to do if he defects to Pizza Hut?) I can’t help comparing it to the alternatives. I think it shows some fascinating cultural differences.

MobileMe:

1. This has come into the world as a fully-formed product. There is no concept of a developers’ platform, or a partners’ platform, so what you get now is what you get forever. (Aside from their slightly disconcerting “services subject to change” caveat.)
2. It’s aimed at people with a particular lifestyle, which really means people who wear black polo-necks, because it’s only those kind of people who actually think about having a “lifestyle”. The rest of us just get on with it. That means you get contacts, mail, calendar, gallery and file storage, but (for example) no notes, expenses app, or — my constant refrain, I know — to-do list.
3. It’s based heavily around devices. Not very surprising, since Apple primarily makes devices. The most impressive and differentiating thing about it is that your PC, Mac and iPhone all sync via MobileMe. Which is related to the fact that…
4. …It’s about making money for Apple. I tried to sign up for a free MobileMe trial, but backed out when I was asked for my credit card details (”It’s okay, you can cancel your subscription at any time”). I don’t blame them for this, so long as they don’t blame me for making the emotional link between that kind of behaviour and unscrupulous mailorder companies who lure you in with a free introductory offer and then make it almost impossible to extract yourself and cut the umbilical link they now have with your bank account.

Google’s various services:

1. These come into the world mostly-formed, but there’s a strong sense of opening it up to developers. Thus we have Google Gadgets, Google Solutions Marketplace, Google Gadgets for spreadsheets, Google Maps API, and others. Which also means…
2. It’s not really aimed at anyone in particular — and hence is supposed to be aimed at everyone — which is the point of opening the platform. The reality, though, is that it’s suits the slightly more techie (or at least webby) people, because there doesn’t seem to be a clear, unified picture about how these things fit together. You have to work out for yourself what’s best, and find the add-ons yourself.
3. It’s based very much in the cloud. Because that’s where Google’s focus is. Remember the GPhone? We can see now they were never going to move into hardware. If you want device syncing then you’ve got rely on developer-market forces.
4. Google isn’t so up-front about making money, so all this is free to a point.

Microsoft is also doing something here, and a fair assessement probably involves Windows Mobile and Windows Live, but I’m not that much of a Microsoft-watcher that I can just thoughtlessly bash out a summary right now. If I had to guess I’d say:

1. It comes fully-formed, and open to professional developers with Microsoft Visual Studio setup and C# skills, rather than Javascript developers with Notepad.
2. It’s more aimed at corporates.
3. It’s based around Microsoft software.
4. It’s no-money, and with the aim to steer people towards lock-in. Again, selling software is, I think, still how Microsoft mainly sees themselves, so you can hardly blame them.

But that Microsoft summary is just a vague impression of something that may or may not be there.

You may say the MobileMe/Google Gadgets assessment is comparing Apples with oranges (pun not intended, but sometimes you get lucky). And I think that right, because when I first saw MobileMe I saw it as something unique. But at the same time I thought that you must be able to do virtually the same thing with Google.

Personally I’m still window shopping for a home in the cloud. The virtual estate agents I’ve seen have some nice properties, but none that I really want to spend the next few years in.

Tags: microsoft, apple, mobileme, google, thecloud