Full FeedMobileMe available for pre-order on Amazon
Amazon.com is now offering MobileMe for pre-order on their website at $89.99—about 9% off Apple’s price. This comes after Amazon has apparently sold out of .Mac retail boxes which they were selling for $69.99, but raised to $77.99 after MobileMe was announced at WWDC.
This has to be welcome news for Apple, as their web services have never really taken off in the past. MobileMe is still a little pricey for me, and I’m sure for many others as well, but Apple certainly has added a lot more value into their services with MobileMe. That Amazon feels it can get away with upping the price by $20 over the past month or so shows that demand for MobileMe is certainly there.
While Amazon’s price is still a discount over Apple’s, it’s still probably worth shopping around for one of the remaining .Mac retail boxes while you still can, as they are generally less expensive.
Product [MobileMe]
RelatedRhapsody to launch iTunes competitor
Real Networks and Viacom’s Rhapsody will be launching a $50 million MP3 downloads business to challenge iTunes’ 70% market share, Reuters is reporting.
Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple’s iTunes, offering songs online and via partners including Yahoo Inc and Verizon Wireless, Rhapsody said on Monday.
The songs will be sold in MP3 format, which means users of the Rhapsody service will be able to play them on iPods.
More after the break.
Apple to .Mac Subscribers—Sync your bookmarks by Sunday
With the impending release of MobileMe, Apple has sent out a notice to all .Mac subscribers that they should sync their bookmarks to all of their machines by Sunday, when access to bookmarks will be discontinued.
The decision to discontinue web access to bookmarks (as well as iCards and .Mac slides) has been met with some criticism even by the Apple faithful. While MobileMe does have a very nice bookmark synching feature, it will only work on computers that a member owns. So, let’s say a .Mac member only owns a desktop iMac at home, and is on the road using a PC in a hotel’s business center or internet cafe. Right now, he would be able to log into .Mac to access his bookmarks. But, once MobileMe is released, that will not be possible. He would have to buy a laptop to bring with him and sync his bookmarks to it.
MobileMe has a lot of nice new features, and I would say that overall it is an improvement, but I don’t realy understand the logic behind Apple’s decision to disable web access to bookmarks. If any current .Mac subscribers would like to have web access to their bookmarks after the MobileMe transition, I would recommend Google bookmarks or del.icio.us. Still, this means that they will have to keep their bookmarks up to date on another website rather than having synching and web access all in one.
Via [The New York Times]
RelatedMossberg’s tips for switchers
More and more people are switching to the Mac these days. I, myself, am a “Windows refugee” who came over to the Mac camp in 2006. I am very happy with my decision to do so, as the Mac is so much more intuitive, easy to use, and secure than Windows.
The learning curve is certainly minimal, especially for tech savvy folks. In fact, I’ve found that the most common problem switchers have is that they overthink the issue—generally, solving problems and performing everyday tasks on the Mac is far more intuitive than the average Windows user is used to.
For those of you who are thinking of making the switch, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal has put together a nice “switcher’s guide” on his All Things Digital blog. You’ll probably find that switching to the Mac is a lot easier than you may have thought.
Via [All Things Digital]
RelatedAT&T will let you use your iPhone with another carrier…for a steep price
Well, at least it seems as though we’re making progress. Yesterday I wrote about growing discontent among consumers with the “deal with the devil” Apple made to lock the iPhone to AT&T for a period of five years.
Now, The Washington Post reports that AT&T will begin selling the iPhone to users who would like to use it with a different carrier—that is, if they are willing to pay three times as much for the smartphone; a whopping $599. This is the original price of the iPhone when it was launched.
Apple’s popular iPhone can be yours, no contract required. But there’s a catch—and a pricey one at that.
AT&T yesterday announced that it will offer the smartphone to people who want to use another carrier, starting at $599.
The iPhone 3G, scheduled for a July 11 release, will be available for $199 to new AT&T customers or existing customers eligible for an upgrade—under a two-year contract. The larger-capacity 16-gigabyte model will cost $299 under the same conditions.
For those looking to use another carrier, the 16-gigabyte version will cost $699.
This news comes on the heels of AT&T’s announcement that it will be raising rates on their iPhone plans to $70 per month for the most bare bones plan. If these comments by readers of The Post are any indication, AT&T’s price hikes will probably hurt Apple’s iPhone 3G sales at least a little bit.
“Was going to join the line at midnight,” wrote one commenter responding to a Washington Post blog post about the price plans. “Now won’t get one at all.”
“I will just have to swallow the price hike,” wrote another.
Via [The Washington Post]
RelatedHere we go again; Microsoft mulling another Yahoo! deal
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Microsoft is now seeking big-name partners such as NewsCorp or Time Warner to take another run at Yahoo! This time, however, it seems Microsoft is only interested in Yahoo!‘s search business, with the partner in the deal likely absorbing the rest of the company.
This comes about five months after Microsoft sent Yahoo! an unsolicited bid to buy the entire company. Yahoo! rejected the deal, feeling Microsoft was not willing to pay a high enough price for the company that runs the Internet’s most visited website, according to Alexa.
This news comes on the heels of the reports that Yahoo’s new search advertising deal with Google is under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Justice because of concerns that it is anti-competitive.
Via [The Wall Street Journal]
RelatedApple’s deal with the devil: The true evil of exclusive carrier deals
David Pogue of The New York Times posted a Q&A with an AT&T public relations representative about AT&T’s plans for the release of the iPhone 3G, and it’s clear that they are out to fleece iPhone customers more than ever. Why not? There’s nobody for them to compete with!
We all should have seen this coming when Apple decided to enter into an exclusive 5-year deal with AT&T for the iPhone. Now that Apple has lowered the price of the iPhone in $199 in hopes of making it more affordable for the general public, AT&T has taken it upon themselves to raise their service rates for their basic iPhone plan from $60 to $70—text messages not included.
More after the break.
Save on MobileMe - Updated
If you are thinking about signing up for .Mac in anticipation of the release of MobileMe, don’t be too trigger happy and shell out your $99 to Apple just yet. Instead, check out some of these third party vendors for much better deals on Apple’s revamped online application suite. Amazon is probably the best deal because they offer free shipping, saving you up to $22 on the package.
These .Mac retail boxes will still work to activate MobileMe accounts even after .Mac has been discontinued, but if you hurry, you’ll be able to get your coveted @mac.com e-mail address while you still can.
UPDATE: Macworld seems to have removed Amazon’s listing from its site. To see Amazon’s listing for .Mac as well as customer reviews, click here.
Regardless, it seems as though you can get a slightly better deal from CompuDirect.
Via [Macworld]
RelatedMossberg: Firefox 3 is the best browser on the Mac
Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, believes Firefox is the “new champ in the browser wars.” Is Walt right? If so, will this worthy effort from Mozilla be enough to drag the Apple purists away from Safari?
From a Mac user’s perspective especially, Firefox 3 is a very significant upgrade that current users of the browser will surely enjoy. But for those like me who have been using Safari as our primary browser, this new version of Firefox may not be enough to wow us, especially for those of us who have never used the browser before.
See Walt’s video commentary after the break.
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