[Fed-Talk] Alternatives to work with iPhone and MobileMe

I just wanted to share some thoughts in regards to iphone and other mobile devices and for those of us who live by everything in our calendars, phones, etc.

I have YEARS of information in mobile me.. contacts, calendars, etc.

As I do development for other mobile platforms, the need to share this information goes across android, WP7, iOS, Blackberry, etc.

MobileMe will NOT share information with non iOS devices (no push email, no push calendars, etc).  Google does, but their contact management system is so jacked up it isn’t funny.

I didn’t realize until today that live.com (Hotmail) has free active sync services.  And it’s the full features of mobile me… it does photos, calendars, integrates with outlook, and pushes to any device (iOS, Android, WP7).  And it’s free.. I was able to easily sync from mobileme into live.com and it works perfect across ALL devices.  Add a contact on WP7 its on iphone, add a contact to iphone its on wp7 and android (even address book picture).

So until Apple decides to open up the MobileMe architecture, it’s worthy to note that if you have multiple devices (and many of us do.. govt issued, personal, etc). Live.com seems to work with everything.  They even have a 30gb free skydrive.

With the new “revolutionary Mac App Store” coming on line (and that is sarcastic), I see OS X going the same way as iOS.. yes it’s my phone but apple owns it… I’ve been preparing to go to another platform that truly is open, because I am betting that within the next major release or two of OS X, the only apps I am getting are ones that apple thinks I should have, which is not acceptable.

Mike