Based on some of the questions asked at the Genius Table at the last MacGroup meeting, it sounds like people are a bit confused about iCloud and whether or not they should move from MobileMe. Since that trip is one way if you take it (no going back), you best be sure that’s what you want to do before you take the plunge.

First off, if you want to sync your calendar and contacts with your iDevice (iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad) on iOS5, and you aren’t running the most current version of Lion (10.7.2), then you should not move to iCloud. Stick with MobileMe. There is a work-around for your calendars if you are on Snow Leopard, and you can always use any IMAP client for mail, but your contacts will not sync via iCloud without Lion.

If you want to use a mail client besides Apple Mail, just use the information in this Apple Knowledge Base article to set up your mail client. You must use a client that understand IMAP – no more POP mail (and that’s actually a good thing).

If you want to sync calendars with a Snow Leopard (10.6) machine, you can go into iCal preferences and then Accounts to create a new CalDAV account. Click the plus sign at the bottom for a new account, change the type from Automatic to CalDAV, and fill in your whoever@me.com username and password (make sure you use the “@.me” after your name).  For the server, use p02-caldav.icloud.com. You may get a dialog box like this one:

Select the iCloud server, click “Create,” and you’re all set. Leopard (10.5) supposedly supports CalDAV, but I couldn’t make it work.

A better alternative might be to switch to Google for your contacts and calendar syncing. Leopard and Snow Leopard both support this natively (Leopard with 10.5.3, and all versions of Snow Leopard).

Don’t forget that MobileMe will continue to work until next June. So you don’t have to rush into anything. Maybe you’re planning an upgrade to Lion in a few months. If so, you might just want to sit tight with MobileMe until then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkID1qzR6A

When Steve Jobs/Apple announced iCloud as the successor to MobileMe the questions started circulating about the features that weren't mentioned. In other words, would features like iDisk or iWeb publishing go away? What about web access to email? Apple has posted an FAQ here outliing which features would make the transition and which ones won't. Unfortunately for long time MobileMe (.mac, iTools) users at least 3 features won't make it:

• iDisk
• Gallery
• iWeb Publishing

My goal here today is to provide some alternative suggestions for those who have come to rely on these three features.

Let's start with iDisk

The good news here is that there are some great alternatives already in place. First of all you'll get 5GBs of free space with iCloud. This means that your iCloud aware Apps will be able to store documents in the iCloud. However, if you want more traditional drag, drop & syncing storage, then I highly recommend Dropbox.com. You get 2GBs of space for FREE. You can buy either 50GBs of space or 100GBs of space. The software is very Mac like and you can install it on all your Macs (or PCs) and they even have an iOS App (and Android App) for access to your content on your mobile devices. You can always access your content from any computer that doesn't have the software installed via their web interface. Granted Dropbox has had a couple of security scares recently, but they stayed on top of it, fixed their holes, apologized to their customers and provided great customer support during the breaches. Any company can be hacked (yes it even has happened Apple on more than one ocassion). I can't say enough good things about Dropbox and have been using it for the past year without any problems. I have the 100GB plan and basically treat it like my documents folder. It syncs everything I put in it up to the cloud as well as between all my networked computers at home. I always have access to my photos, documents, etc. even via my iPad or iPhone.

You can sign up for your FREE Dropbox.com account here.

Gallery

Gallery is the feature of MobileMe that allows you to easily share your photos and movies from iPhoto. While I do have some photos on my MobileMe Gallery, I already share those same photos in other places. The good news is that even if you are an iPhoto user and you want to keep things simple, iPhoto allows you to share photos via Flickr.com and Facebook.com just as easily as MobileMe. Both Flickr.com and Facebook.com are FREE to use and have much larger communities than MobileMe. With Flickr you can lock down access to individual Photo Sets (Albums) or pictures. Dropbox also has photo sharing support with instant galleries by simply dropping a folder of images in the Photos folder. You can also post short movies. Speaking of Movies, I acutally prefer to post videos to YouTube anyway. With MobileMe visitors were required to have QuickTime installed and that was usually a pain for Windows users. Everyone is already used to YouTube and YouTube videos work on just about everything. The videos play back in Flash OR HTML 5. Also the YouTube player is built into most mobile devices being sold today. You can restrict YouTube videos to be Unlisted or Priviate. Lastly YouTube is FREE.

If you're an iMovie user, iMovie can already upload to YouTube directly and YouTube supports HD video, which MobileMe didn't. If you're an AppleTV user you can view Flickr Albums and YouTube videos just as easily on your TV as you did MobileMe content.

You can signup for Flickr.com here

You can signup for Facebook.com here

You can signup for YouTube.com here

iWeb Publishing

This one is probably the hardest to replace from an ease of use standpoint. The handwriting has been on the wall for iWeb for a while now and Apple hasn't updated it. Your options here are not bad though. If you like iWeb you can keep using it as you always have. The only difference is that by June 2012 you'll need to find another hosting service to host your iWeb sites. Most if not all hosting services allow you to upload your websites via FTP and iWeb supports uploading via FTP.  I use GoDaddy and Network Solutions for most of my hosting needs. I don't particularly have any love or hate for either of these companies. They work fine most of the time for me. I don't really have a "perfect" hosting recommendation. Everyone I talk to recommends a different company and there doesn't seem to be one big national hosting company that stands out above all the rest. I would start by looking at pricing and up time. If you're an iWeb user chances are you're not hosting a big commercial website. Therefore you can probably save by going with a smaller local hosting company. You'll want one that's been around for a while and has a good track record for not only their up time, but their customer service. In other words if your site goes down on Friday evening, will it take until Monday before you can talk with someone about it?

If you want to move away from iWeb completely, then I would strongly recommend looking at one of the blogging services such as WordPress.com or Google's Blogger. Even if you have NO DESIRE TO BLOG, you can set up a "regular looking" website using these services. They're web based and allow you to easily update your site's look with literally hundreds if not thousands of free templates and of course you can post photos and embed videos too. Don't forget that for many inviduals they've given up the notion of having a "personal website" in favor of social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr. 

Here's a document explaining how to move your iWeb site from MobileMe to a different hosting provider.

All of these services are FREE:

You can get a WordPress Blog (website) here

You can get a Blogger blog (website) here

You can get a Facebook page here

You can get a Tumblr page here

The Bottom Line

Remember that you don't have to make any of these decision today. You technically have full use of MobileMe until June 2012. However, it's probably best to start thinking about your transition plan now as opposed to waiting until the last minute and having to find places to put your content.

I've been a full-time Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book user ever since Snow Leopard brought native Microsoft Exchange support to the Mac OS. Prior to Snow Leopard I was using Mail/iCal/Address Book for my personal stuff, but I had to use Microsoft Entourage for my work email. The day I installed Snow Leopard was the day I stopped using Entourage and in my recent clean start I didn't even install MS Office back on. It's not that I don't want or need Office, I just saw no hurry to put back on the 2008 verision now that the 2011 version is out. I'm still waiting for it to be deployed at work. In the meantime Pages and Numbers have been working well opening documents from others. Yep, life was good except for one thing! With the swtich to iCal for my Work MS Exchange Calendar I lost the ability to easily share my work calendar with Family. While iCal brings over my work MS Exchange calendar just fine it doesn't allow it to be shared back out! This meant that I had to manually update a regular iCal calendar that I could share via MobileMe or CalDAV. As with any manual workflow there were times that I'd forget to copy over appointments or worse I'd forget to remove appointments that were canceled. That pain recently ended!

Spanning Sync to the rescue!

Spanning Sync is an Application for your Mac that allows you to sync your iCal calendars and Address Book with Google. Yes, both iCal and Address Book have native support for doing this, but Spanning Sync does way more than what Apple built-in. I'll get to Address Book in a minute. With Spanning Sync I was able to easily sync any of my calendars to my Google account. This even included my work MS Exchange Calendar. Spanning Sync is smart enough to sync it as a "Read Only" calendar, which is all I ever wanted! My family doesn't need to edit this calendar. They just need to see it along side their iCal calendars for planning. Once I sync'd my Work iCal to Google Calendars I just allowed my family to add that calendar to their iCals via ICal's built-in support for Google Calendars. A big problem solved! I have Spanning Sync set to update my Google calendar every hour. It can be as frequent as every 10 minutes or as long as Every Week. There is also a manual option. Every hour works great for me. This is one of those things that you set and forget. I just continue to update my iCal/MS Exchange calendar as I always have and I know that it updates Google Calendar in the background.

What about Contacts?

This App can also sync your Address Book Contacts with your Google Contacts. Again Address Book can already do this and I have tried it before. However, it didn't work well and it got to the point that I had to turn it off. It was continuously duplicating the same 20-40 contacts over and over again in both places. Google's Contacts don't quite have the same field mapping as Address Book. Things like a middle name or a 3rd name would cause havoc on the Google side of things. I use Google Voice and while it would be nice to have my Address Book Contacts automatically sync up to Google for use with Googe Voice, it wasn't worth the constant duplication hassle. The problem with Apple's built-in support for Google Contact Syncing is that you have NO CONTROL over it. You can't tell it what to sync, when to sync or anything else for that matter. It's either on or off! Spanning Sync not only gives you more control, but it does the one thing I needed to make me feel comfortable using it. It has an option to "Never Change Address Book". Brilliant! This way the sync is only in one direction. Since I look at Address Book as my master list, I never want an outside force (service) to change it. Now I can make changes in Address Book and add new contacts and they appear in Google's Contacts. My Address Book contacts never duplicate anymore.

Spanning Sync is worth its weight in gold for me. It has made my life a lot easier for getting my information to the places I want it to be without hosing my iCal or Address Book.

You can check out Spanning Sync here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDgdRSjQv2s

With so many ways to share files, if you have a MobileMe account you also have a great way to share large files quite easily, at your fingertips.

Love it, hate it, or lukewarm, MobileMe encapsulates online storage and lots of functionality: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk and Find My iPhone. MobileMe storage functionality is accessed from your computer using the iDisk volume, or online within me.com.

Syncing between my iPhone, computer and MobileMe cloud has proven to be an incredible asset and time saver for me. Yes, it has it's bumps and bruises, but that's nothing new to any software or functionality.

Individual MobileMe accounts start with 20 GB’s (more if you choose to purchase it) of disk space to use for file storage, Web Galleries, Web Sites, Movies, Pictures, etc.

One of the folders residing in the iDisk is the “Documents” folder. You can store any type of file in the Documents folder and then share it.

When I need to distribute large files, this is the folder I go to. The first thing I do is create a compressed copy of the folder containing the file or files I want to share. I don’t have to, but it’s said files travel better if compressed. I, then have two methods to get the compressed file to the point where I can then share it.

1. Drag the compressed file to the Documents folder within the iDisk volume on my computer, and then sync to upload the files to the corresponding folder on my MobileMe cloud, or
    
2. Log-in online to my MobileMe account, access iDisk, go to the Documents folder, select the upload icon to then upload the compressed file into the Documents folder on my MobileMe cloud.

Whichever method chosen, it’s an easy procedure.

Now online, clicking on that compressed file in my browser window, I am presented with the screen you see below:

• Selecting the “Share Options” button, I can set stipulations on how I share this file.
   
• The Address field links to my Mac’s Address Book for ease in adding email addresses and I can choose to enter, or not, a message to the recipients.
   
• I like that there is a setting for how long recipients will have access to the file, and then access will automatically expire.
   
• There is also password-protected access, forcing recipients to contact the sender for the password, thereby offering an added layer of protection.

Once I select "Share" to send off the email, all recipients see the below image in their email box:

Clicking on the Download button will then start the file downloading onto the recipients computer. The 1GB limit may be adequate for most, but if you need a larger file size limit, you might try Dropbox for sharing files, its limit is 2GB.

:::

So you decided to "upgrade" your MobileMe calendars to Apple's new way of doing things – the one that puts the calendar up in the cloud as the main version, and offers to keep a local copy in iCal when you're offline. Did you find out a problem the hard way like I did? If you used to publish a calendar, like, oh, a club meeting calendar, that was read-only, so your club members could see when meetings were, then guess what?  You can't do that any more.

It gets worse! Suppose you were doing that, then went to MobileMe and said "upgrade."  All your former calendars were replaced with new ones up on the MobileMe servers. But what if you forgot to "unpublish" your old calendars? Surprise! They're still there. And once the old one is gone, you can't unpublish it. You'll need to create another one with the same name on your Mac, publish it, then unpublish it to get rid of it. Otherwise, it will be out there for people to look at, but never get updated.

But surely Apple has this covered, right? You can right-click on a new calendar and select "Share Calendar" to email the web page to your friends, right? Um…no.  Yes, you can email them an invite to the calendar – but the invite gives them a cryptic long file name ending in .ics. What iCal is sending out for you is a subscription address – your friends can subscribe to the calendar, but not see it in a web page like before. If you allow it, they can even edit the calendar. Problem solved! Unless, of course, you have a lot of people who went to the web page to check on club meetings that don't have Macs, so no iCal, or a compatible Windows program. All they want to do is check out when a meeting is and to see maybe if some details attached to it changed. maybe they want to check from work before they leave, but can't exactly subscribe to your calendar from there. So how do you get a web page back?

PHP iCalendar to the rescue! PHP iCalendar is free software, written in PHP, that will allow you to publish .ics files as web pages. Now, you'll need some sort of web server available to you for this to work, and that web server must support PHP scripts (many ISPs offer free web space to subscribers, but Comcast for example does not allow you to run PHP scripts). But there are free and low-cost web providers that allow PHP scripting around.

Before you start worrying that you need to learn how to write PHP scripts, don't worry – you don't need to know anything about it. You also don't need to know anything about HTML. All you need to do is to download the zip file, unzip it, and put the resulting directory in the root of your web server's web root, which is the same place your index.html file or other home page file is (and yes, you can put it anywhere else too – I'm simplifying). You can rename the directory if you like (in case you think "phpicalendar" is too long say). Then edit one line in the file config.inc.php (use a text editor such as TextEdit in text mode or the free TextWrangler, available in the new App Store, or also directly from Bare Bones Software) - look at line 104, it looks like this:

#'webcal://calendar.sxsw.com/iCal-EXDrB-sa-sxsw@rollerfeet.com.ics'

This tells PHP iCalendar to subscribe to a .ics file. You want to change it to subscribe to your calendar. So first you need to right-click on the calendar in iCal and select "Share Calendar." Then send an invitation to yourself via email. In it, you'll get a long file name beginning with "webcal://" and ending in ".ics". Use that file name in place of the sample in line 104 (and take out the # sign at the front – that is a "comment" character that tells the system to ignore the line). Save your file, and you're done! You can then go to http://www.your-web-site.com/phpicalendar (if you didn't change the default directory name) and you will have a web page with your calendar (by default, showing you today). As you update it in iCal, and those updates are sent up to MobileMe, they will show up in PHP iCalendar (you need to refresh the page to get the updates). You can go to a month view by going to http://www.your-web-site.com/phpicalendar/month.php. Hovering over an item will pop up any details about the item. You can print, subscribe to RSS feeds, and save off your preferences for views, etc in a cookie (like a preference for always starting in "week" view).

PHP iCalendar is free and open source. If you're handy with PHP, you can of course customize it any way you want, as you have the source code. But if you don't know anything about PHP or HTML, you can still set it up very quickly.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-HLxpWGCzc

I've been  MobileMe (.mac) customer since day one (iTools user before that). I have no plans of dropping the service anytime soon. However, for those that have no interest in all the benefits of MobileMe, you may find Dropbox to be a great alternative to MobileMe's iDisk for sharing files. Dropbox is by no means the first service to come along offering a free amount of storage space in the cloud. However, it's certainly one of the best I've seen when it comes to integration into the Mac OS. Like MobileMe, Dropbox is integrated into the Finder. Once you sign up for your FREE 2GBs of space (you can buy more if you need it), you can download their software, install it and then Dropbox becomes a part of the Finder. Not only will you have a Dropbox menu on the menubar, but you'll also see your Dropbox folder in your Home directory (or wherever you chose to put it). The beauty of this integration is that you treat your Dropbox folders like you do any other folders. You drag/save files to them as opposed to having to upload and download everything via a web browser. Once you put a document in one of your Dropbox folders it syncs to the cloud in the background. You'll also see these same documents/files/folders on any other Macs that you have configured with your Dropbox account. 

Sharing is easy too

The main reason I use Dropbox is to share files with others. I can either share files on a file by file basis or I can create shared folders that automatically appear in my colleagues Dropbox folders. This is AWESOME! Just recently I setup a shared Dropbox folder so that the three of us could share various photos that we took on our last trip to Egypt. We each took great shots of the location but also of each other. This way I can easily share the pics I took of my colleagues and vice versa. If I choose to share an individual file with a NON-Dropbox user, they get a simple link to click on and download the file. 

You can pay for more if you like

2GBs is not a ton of space. You can buy more if you need it. However, this is where MobileMe might have the advantage. We all know that we can get MobileMe for LESS by buying older retail packages or find sales throughout the year. You can then just open up the box and plug in the new code when it comes time to renew. For example, here's one from Amazon.com for only $53. (NEVER PAY APPLE's FULL $99/Year!). At this discounted price hat works out to $4.42/month and you get 20GB of space.

With Dropbox.com you get 2GB for Free OR you can pay $9.99/month or $99/year for 50GB.  Granted it's more than double the space you get with MobileMe, but MobileMe offers more than just iDisk storage. In other words If I'm going to pay for one of these MobileMe works out to be the better deal. 

Yes, Dropbox also has an iOS App to make it easy to access and share your files. I'm also seeing several 3rd party Apps that allow you to access or save files to your Dropbox account. It's really becoming quite popular. For example, I scan receipts with my iPhone's camera using the Scanner Pro App and once I save the PDF that it creates I can upload the PDF directly to my Dropbox folder from within the Scanner Pro app. By scanning and uploading these receipts as they occur it makes doing my expense reports a breeze.

You can signup for your FREE Dropbox account here.

You can download the Dropbox App for your iOS device here from the 

I've had a MobileMe account since day one. I like the fact that it gives me an email address that will not change, even if I change service providers every six months. It gives me off-site storage for critical files. It gives me a website/blog and photo archive. And yes, I know those things are available elsewhere for free (as this was in the beginning), but I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somewhere, sometime, the free services tend to migrate to paid services or else you get stuck with ads and other nuisance things, so I don't object to paying for my MobileMe account. Saying that, I will admit that I don't pay full price for it by leaving it on automatic renewal. There are always discounted packages available at place like Amazon and Small Dog. And don't be fooled by 'this year's' vs 'last year's' packaging. It's all the same, and all you need is the serial number. Amazon is currently showing 'last year's' for $48 — half price.

Sometime back, Apple added "Find My iPhone" to MobileMe. If you add your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to it, as long as some sort of networking (3G or WiFi) is enabled, you should be able to locate it. Now, it won't tell you the exact location, but it will at least let you know if you left it somewhere in your house, office or that last coffee shop you visited. 

Better yet, you can remotely lock it or, if necessary, wipe it clean. Yep, if you have confidential info on it and it was picked up by some light-fingered louie, you can erase your data to keep it from prying eyes. You also have the option to display a message. Or, you can have it play a sound, even if it's in silent mode. Admit it. We've all called our own cell phones just so we could locate them. I will even admit to using my cell phone to locate my cordless house phone. 

MobileMe will send you an email showing when your message was displayed. There is also a free Find My iPhone app that will run on your iPhone or iPad so you can check, even if you are not near a computer. Kids in the family with iPhones? If the phone is turned on, you can even locate said offspring. 

If you have an iPhone or iPad or even a touch, and you don't have a MobileMe account, you might just want to consider it. It might save you some headaches.

If you have an Apple Mobile Device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) it's actually possible to sync it with multiple computers. You just have to understand the rules. Apple groups things into four categories:

Data – the data or info category consists primarily of things like your contacts, calendar, bookmarks, notes, email accounts, etc. This information can either be sync'd via iTunes or wirelessly via MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange (although Notes currently can only be sync'd via iTunes). 

Media – the media category consists of your music, movies, music videos, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, ringtones, iTunesU and now iBooks. This content can either be sync'd or managed manually.

Photos – well this category is pretty self explanatory. It's your photo library and all of your photo albums. Your photos can either be in iPhoto or simply in a folders and subfolders.

Apps – last but certainly not least is your Apps that you've downloaded from the App Store.

Now that you know what the four categories are the content from these four categories can live on one, two, three or four different computers. In my house I sync my iPhone, iPad and iPod touch between two computers. I have a MacBook Pro that is my main everyday computer and we have an iMac that is our "iTunes media server". Of the four categories above I sync my Data, Photos and Apps with my MacBook Pro and I sync my media with my iMac. This works great for me because it means that I don't have to keep every song, movie, TV show, etc. that I own on my MacBook Pro. 

How do I sync between more than one computer?

This is where most people get scared off. First off the categories can't be split if you're syncing. So photos have to be on one computer or the other, not both. Same with Apps, etc. The only thing you could get away with splitting is if you set your media to "Manage Manually" then in theory you could drag content onto the device from more than one authorized computer. I prefer to use syncing, which brings me to the big scary message.

When I set up a new device I start with my MacBook Pro and in iTunes I UNCHECK "Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected" and then I UNCHECK Ringtones, Music, Movies, TV shows, Podcasts, iTunesU, and Books. Basically all of the media category. I perform my initial sync and all is good. Then I unplug the device and move to the iMac and plug it in. In iTunes I uncheck Info, Apps and Photos and I enable all of the media categories. Now when I hit the sync button I'm going to get a big dialog box warning me that this iPhone (or other device) is sync'd with a different iTunes library and if I continue it's going o erase the content. That's what stops people dead in their tracks. YES! This is OK, all it means is that it's going to erase the MEDIA content, not the other content from the other computer. It will put on the media you just enabled. Once this second sync is done your Apple device is now configured to sync between the two computers. You can go back and forth syncing between the two whenever you need to. So If I want to sync new notes , Apps or photos I sync with my MacBook Pro. If I want new movies, songs, or iBooks I sync with the iMac. I've been doing this ever since the first iPhone came out in 2007 and most recently with the iPad. It works great!

1. share large files

One of the things I use my MobileMe account for the most is to share files with others that are too large to email. Sure I have my own Mac OS X Server and I have FTP setup, but I find it much easier just to send someone a link and have them click to download the files I want them to have. It's easy! Just put the files you want to share on your iDisk. You can even put them in a private folder like your documents folder (they don't have to be in the public folder). You should probably Zip (Compress) it first. Then log on to to your account at me.com. Click the iDisk icon at the top and once you find your file, just click the Share button. You'll get the chance to key in an email address and even password protect it as well as set an expiration date for the sharing.

2. Host your custom website or gallery

Although MobileMe works great and directly with sites built with iWeb, what if you built a site in another tool or exported a photo web gallery from another product like Lightroom? Well you can use your MobileMe account to host those custom sites. Although there is no FTP support, you can simply drag your web folder into your Web->Sites folder on your iDisk and you will then be able to access that site at http://web.me.com/membername/foldername/

3. Email Aliases

With your MobileMe account you have one main email address (username@me.com). However, you can create multiple email aliases. For example lets say you want an email address that you give out to sites that you are going to register on for a one-time thing. You don't really want to hear from that site ever again and more importantly you might get spam from others if they give out your address. So you can create an alias at me.com in your email settings and give out that address (say superstar@me.com). Any email sent to that address will appear in your main email account. However, if you notice that you're getting a lot of junk at that address you can then go disable or delete it and your main address remains intact. 

4. iDisk App

You can now access the contents of your iDisk on your iPhone, iPod touch or presumably iPad using the FREE iDisk App. Download it here for free.

5. upload via the web

One of the biggest complaints of using the iDisk in Mac OS X has been slow uploads using the Finder. One way around this is to upload to your iDisk using your web browser instead. You can upload via me.com and by going to the iDisk tab on the site. 

6 give others access to send you stuff 

"hey send me that file." But it's too big to email. So why not give people the ability to upload files to you via the web even if they don't have a MobileMe account. Your address http://public.me.com/username

7. Family Share

If you have a MobileMe Family Pack, you get a special "Shared" Folder on your iDisk that is seen by all of the users on your Family Pack. This is cool to have one folder that everyone sees. You want to share a file, just put it in that folder and everyone can download it without having to do any extra work.

8. Turn off Auto Renew

The best tip I can give you for MobileMe is to not pay full price for it EVER! MobileMe is a service. If you set your account via the me.com page to auto renew it will charge your credit card the full $99 or $149 a year each year until you tell it to stop. However, you can often find MobileMe discounted throughout the year and buy it. The box contains an activation code and all you need to do is go to http://me.com/activate and key in that code to renew your account at any time. So don't pay full price. You can get MobileMe here for only $64.50 (family pack $103.98  ) right now!

9. Subscribe to your Galleries on Apple TV

If you have an Apple TV not only can you link it to your MobileMe photo galleries, but if you know the user name of your friends, you can subscribe to their photos too. This is great way not only to see your shots on the big screen, but it gives you an easy way to see your friend/family's photos as well as have them see yours.

10.  Don't forget about me.com

I'm so used to having MobileMe integrated into the OS and Mail, iCal and Address Book that I never think about the fact that it's a website too. If you need to access your email, contacts, calendar, iDisk, etc. on someone else's computer, you can do so just by going to a browser on any Mac or PC and going to me.com and logging in.

Want more tips?

10 Mac OS X Finder Tips

10 Safari Tips

10 MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Tips

10 iCal Tips

10 Address Book Tips

10 iPhoto Tips

10 Apple Mail Tips

I'm a fan of MobileMe and while I do think the service could offer more for what it costs (considering there are so many similar things out there for FREE), I'm happy with the OS level of integration both in the Mac OS and on my iPhone.

However, one of things that makes MobileMe easier to justify is that I NEVER pay full price for it. MobileMe's retail price is $99/year for individuals and $149/year for the family plan. I'm on the family plan and can't remember the last time I actually paid $149 for it. 

If you have your MobileMe account set to "Auto Renew" you get the convenience of never having to remember to pay for it because Apple will charge your credit card the full amount as your expiration date approaches. However, if you want to save a significant amount of money each year just buy another retail copy off the shelf when you find a good deal on it. Once you buy it you can either shelve it until it's time to renew or go ahead and renew early by going to http://me.com/activate and keying in the number that comes in the box you bought.

Amazon always sells it for less!

See the current prices here (Individual | Family)

Also don't worry if Amazon or anyone else lists it as "Old Version". That just means that the retail packaging (yes the box) has changed. The service and what you get is not determined by what's inside the box. The most important thing inside the retail box is the activation number and as long as you have that you're good to go each year.

MegaMacs.com is also known for having it on sale at different times throughout the year (Individual | Family). 

So log into your MobileMe account and Turn OFF the Auto Renew feature now. Don't worry about forgetting to renew. MobileMe will send you email reminders that your subscription is going to expire even if you don't have Auto Renew turned on. You'll thank me for it each year you save $$$.