InfoWorld just posted a great entry asking if Live Mesh may emerge as Microsoft 'cloud' platform. At last….I’ve been saying to anyone that will listen that Live Mesh is way more than just the file sync capability you see right now. Of course you have to dig in to Channel 9 and other places to find this evidence that has been there for a while so I’d disagree with Infoworld that this is a new positioning that they’ve only noticed from the PDC session announcements.
Maybe this will also help people finally realise that Live Mesh isn’t the same as MobileMe – for lots of reasons :) Here is what I said about this over on the Hexus blog and Joe Wilcox has written an excellent comparison
Live Mesh is a mixture of both. The 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 Mobile Me could be "built" on Mesh. Unlikely of course but the opposite isn't true. Mobile Me (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 Mobile Me are not synonymous.
Roll on PDC.
The way I've been putting it is:
If "Web 2.0" was the equivalent of replacing the dumb terminals of "Web 1.0" with smart terminals then
Live Mesh is the equivalent of replacing those terminals with a peer to peer network of personal computers.
Steve,
I'm completely with you and back in May posted on my blog the following:
"Microsoft have shipped an initial (and pretty basic) UX for file synchronisation, however there really should be a health warning with this as it may distract designers and developers into thinking that this is where Mesh starts and finishes. The real opportunity (IMHO) will be about how the infrastructure or platform capabilities of Mesh are exposed via the Mesh API's and then exploited to deliver smart and innovative business solutions."
Not sure why you keep posting that quote. Its completely false.
While MobileMe and Mesh are different, MobileMe/.Mac IS a platform. Any 3rd party developer can build on top of it as a sync mechanism for files or data between machines. I have a bunch of apps that sync across devices using .Mac right now, and thats been the case for years now.
MobileMe is not really a platform. The user has to pay a hundred bucks a year to use it. As a developer, you might not want to rely on that. It has no API. How do yyou use it as a platform? You save your config files in a shared folder? Isn't it too hackish? Do I correctly understand that any service that syncs files is a platform? DropBox too? Am I missing something?
Did you watch the Channel 9 video? You should if you have a spare hour. It's first of all interesting and it shows how great API Mesh will have when it goes public. Not just file syncing. File syncing is just built on top of the Mesh platform.
So no, Steve's claims are not completely false. I'm with him. MobileMe is not »built to be« a platform. Mesh is.
Smythe, I keep posting the quote because despite the previous very useful info you have sent me I'm still yet to see MobileMe as a platform - maybe I'm not understanding the difference between that and .Mac and to be honest I'm not sure if there is a difference. Are they the same thing now?
If you look at the Channel 9 video you'll see that Mesh is much more than a sync mechanism. Let me ask it this way, could you build, for example, Flickr on MobileMe? From what I have read about .Mac and the sync services I'd say no. Happy to be corrected.
Also when I go to ADC and search for MobileMe I get nothing.
How many developers are coding against .Mac/MobileMe at the moment and building unique apps over and above the ability to sync data and apps across multiple devices?