When MobileMe was announced at Apple’s WWDC last week, a number of bloggers and Tweeters suggested it was akin to Live Mesh. A few asked me to give my thoughts on this and I eventually did over at Hexus in response to Scott Bicheno’s post.
First let me say there are people in Redmond eminently more authoritative on the topic of Mesh. One reason for the lack of real comparison is that beyond the coverage from WWDC about MobileMe there isn’t a great deal of information on the architecture etc. Contrast this with the in depth information you can get from Channel 9 and the Mesh blog and forums and you’ll begin to understand why it’s hard to make an apples for apples comparison :) Until there is more information, the best I can offer is what I posted in response to Scott. I’ve highlighted what I think is a key point that lies at the heart of the difference between these two products.
One final thing….please read my response before you jump back with the “oh it’s the Microsoft guy criticising Apple”. Far from it – I like what they have done and my aim is to explain the differences.
the comparisons with Live Mesh are inevitable but there are some definitive differences that the casual observer - not you Scott :) - could miss. before I go in to that though, I would agree that what Apple has done here is package a cloud offering up pretty nicely for consumers. A number of questions remain in my mind about their service in particular but I'll save that for another time. Since you mentioned Amazon, I'd also point out that AWS provides more of a utility compute service to developers whereas Mobile Me is much more of a "finished" or end user oriented service. Live Mesh is a mixture of both. The (Live Mesh) application many have seen is but one example of how the underlying Mesh platform could be used. Given there isn't a lot of detail on the platform available it's logical that many people have focused on comparing Mesh and Mobile Me thinking they're tackling the same problem. They sort of are but one way to think of it is that MobileMe could be "built" on Mesh. Unlikely of course, but the opposite isn't true. MobileMe (as far as I can tell) isn't a platform. That's not to say it isn't useful, I just wanted to point out that Mesh and MobileMe are not synonymous. I need to find out more about Mobile Me before I could offer a more detailed comparison but I hope this helps for now. meantime, Joe Wilcox has written an excellent comparison at Microsoft Watch and touches on many of the points I would make about Mobile Me so no point in repeating him :)
the comparisons with Live Mesh are inevitable but there are some definitive differences that the casual observer - not you Scott :) - could miss.
before I go in to that though, I would agree that what Apple has done here is package a cloud offering up pretty nicely for consumers. A number of questions remain in my mind about their service in particular but I'll save that for another time. Since you mentioned Amazon, I'd also point out that AWS provides more of a utility compute service to developers whereas Mobile Me is much more of a "finished" or end user oriented service.
Live Mesh is a mixture of both. The (Live Mesh) application many have seen is but one example of how the underlying Mesh platform could be used. Given there isn't a lot of detail on the platform available it's logical that many people have focused on comparing Mesh and Mobile Me thinking they're tackling the same problem. They sort of are but one way to think of it is that MobileMe could be "built" on Mesh. Unlikely of course, but the opposite isn't true. MobileMe (as far as I can tell) isn't a platform. That's not to say it isn't useful, I just wanted to point out that Mesh and MobileMe are not synonymous.
I need to find out more about Mobile Me before I could offer a more detailed comparison but I hope this helps for now. meantime, Joe Wilcox has written an excellent comparison at Microsoft Watch and touches on many of the points I would make about Mobile Me so no point in repeating him :)
hope that helps! I ought to track down what Steve Gillmor thinks as he seems to “get” Mesh.
MS has always built "platforms" and Apple always direct consumer products/services. Probably, why the drain is towards Mac OS X. MS used to build products direct to consumers in the 90s. But of course, Live Mesh appears better than Mobile Me, unless it goes free.
So when is Microsoft going to build MicroMe on Mesh?
Mesh to me is more of a dev platform and experimental offering while, MobileMe is a cloud storage and sync system with some application integration (well picked app's at that) that will most likely be the selling point for all of those folks with iPhones. I think that Apple has created an easy entry point for people to adopt this technology.
I would love to see this kind of app integration in Mesh and realize that it's just to early. After all Ray just announced it at MIX08. They both have great potential (Mesh probably has a broader playing field, enterprise, consumer and as a development integration point).
What do you mean by platform? And thereby infering that .Mac/Mobile Me isn't?
Because developers have been able to build on .Mac for a long time now and take advantage of the syncing capabilities so that their apps become synced across devices. A 3rd party application like OmniFocus for instance lets you send your data on the desktop app to the cloud and the iPhone app picks up that data and vice versa so its two way.
I honestly think the differences to the end user between the two aren't as big as you'd think. I mean, I have two Macs and using .Mac I have the following synced and identical across them:
- bookmarks
- keychain (passwords and login details)
- dock (what apps are in it and in what position)
- about 6 third party apps
- my documents folder (id have more but there is 20GB limit now)
- system preferences (colour scheme, resolution etc)
- Dashboard widgets
- calendars, contacts, mail
and then there is the other .Mac offerings like Back To My Mac for remote access to my computer and iDisk.
Now I know there are fairly large differences on the back end in respect to implementation of both services. But to the end users I don't think the differences will be that profound. .Mac is at the point now where my machines are pretty much identical from a file and personalisation standpoint.
by platform I mean something that has developers tools (maybe very simple ones) that third parties can build on top of and make money from. Windows is an obvious example of a platform of course.
from what you have explained there may well be more similarities than I had thought. love to know where I can learn more about this
thanks for the insight - precisely what I was lacking
anthony - can you explain more what you mean by MicroMe?
Steve, read this:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/syncservices.html
thanks Project - off to read.
this part concerns me a little in terms of a platform
"You can build a sync client"
ideally the platform should provide all this plumbing ans the app just deals with high level stuff. anyway, on the edge of my knowledge here so will go try to learn and explain.
thanks again
Steve