Inside iPhone's Exchange Alternative

AppleInsider has posted an in depth look at how MobileMe relates to Exchange, how contacts and calendars work, and what's still missing.

Shortly after the launch of MobileMe, Apple admitted that it may have oversold its new service as being an alternative to Exchange. After all, there is no mechanism for instant push from desktop apps to the cloud; Exchange is an always-on groupware server. Apple even pulled its "Exchange for the rest of us" line from its MobileMe marketing. However, the iPhone's calendar and contacts do currently perform push updates in both directions. Make a change on your iPhone, and you should see the update immediately on your Mac desktop and from the MobileMe web apps.

For iPhone and iPod touch users, that means MobileMe remains an "Exchange for the rest of us." As we noted in the segment on pricing comparisons, MobileMe offers a ground breaking level of service at a very competitive price, significantly lower than hosted Exchange Server plans that deliver far less storage space and don't provide WebDAV file and web hosting at all, nor MobileMe's other data synchronization features between linked computers.


Read More