MobileMe
MobileMe appeared at the same time as the iPhone 3G. It replaced Apple's .Mac service, which had gained some bad press in Europe and the UK for being slow. Both are synchronisation, backup, hosting and email services, offering a range of business tools tailored to Mac and now, with MobileMe, PC users.
It works by using a server to store a copy of your contacts, calendar appointments and email, which can then be used to update the same information on a range of computers, iPhones or the iPod touch. The trouble with .Mac is that it could not work across the mobile network, so whenever you wanted to update your iPhone you had to dock it with your Mac or PC. Now MobileMe takes care of the synchronisation and updates for you, and you no longer need to manually initiate each update. Instead, the MobileMe server actively sends the updates in your direction, ensuring that you always have a copy of your most accurate information to hand.
MobileMe requires that you are running software version 2.0 on a first generation iPhone or iPod touch, or have an iPhone 3G, and that you are running an up-to-date browser on your computer. On a Mac this means Safari 3 or Firefox 2 under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.4 Tiger, while for PC users it means Safari 3, Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7.
Calendar and contacts
MobileMe works with iCal on a Mac and with the full and Express versions of Outlook on a PC to synchronise your appointments. They will then show up in the iPhone's own calendar application. Alerts and alarms will also be carried across, so you will be given a reminder of upcoming appointments even when you are away from your computer. Any changes you make to the calendar on the iPhone will then be passed back to your Mac or PC when you next switch them on.
Your PC contacts are also managed through Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Contacts, while on the Mac they are handled by Mac OS X's Address Book application, and work in the same way as calendar entries, passing backwards and forwards between the iPhone and any computers registered to your account.
When you sign up to MobileMe, you also get a highly desirable me.com email address (previous subscribers to .Mac will find that their old addresses will still work, and be supplemented by a matching .me address, so if you were previously steve@mac.com, you will now also have steve@me.com). This can be used through your regular email software, through the iPhone, and also through a web interface, much like Hotmail or Gmail.
The online version is a fully interactive application, so you will not have to keep refreshing the page to update it. Instead, it works just like a regular email client on your computer, even allowing you to drag and drop messages between folders.
Best of all, though, because your email is stored on an Imap server rather than locally, it is available wherever you are, and whichever computer you are using, so long as it has an Internet connection, allowing you to access your email from an Internet café when you arc abroad on holiday or business.
Gallery
.Mac always integrated well with Apple's iLife applications — which are sadly not available to PC users — and this continues with MobileMe. The gallery feature has been upgraded with a fresh new feel that now matches that of Apple's high-end photograph management suite, Aperture, and optionally allows visitors to your gallery to add their own photos by email or through the browser. These will then be synchronised with the album on your computer.
As a bonus, you can also add photos taken using the camera on your iPhone, allowing you to post updated images for friends and colleagues back home as you travel.
By posting your photos to a MobileMe Gallery, you can control how they are used and who has access to view them. You can also restrict the ability of visitors to download high resolution versions for printing or using in their own creative projects.
Online storage
In the move from .Mac to MobileMe, Apple has generously increased the size of the iDisk on each account. This is an area of online storage where you can back up files, or store data that you may need to access when you arc away from your computer. Sadly it is only available using a fully-flogged web browser - not the cut-down browsers found on the iPhone and iPod touch — but it now stretches to 20GB for individuals and 40GB for family pack users (up from 10GB and 20GB respectively under .Mac). Paid-for upgrades that previously increased accounts by an additional 10GB and 20GB have also been doubled.
This spacc can be used in conjunction with Backup, the free Mac backup tool for subscribers, and for publishing your own site using iWeb, the online design tool that comes as part of the £55 iLife suite.
Costs and requirements
Sadly MobileMe is a paid-for add-on, and you do not even get discounted membership in return for buying an iPhone. Despite this, we believe the functionality it adds to an iPhone makes its £59 asking price seriously tempting. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, Safari 3 or Firefox 2 or later on a Mac. Windows users require Vista or XP Home or Professional, and Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 or Firefox 2 or later. Your iPhone must also be running the version 2.0 software, which comes pre-installed on the iPhone 3G.
Contacts
Considering the importance of a good address book to most mobile phone users, the Contacts application on the original iPhone was fairly well hidden. It was a sub-section of several other applications, and as such it missed out on a Home screen button of its own.
Since the arrival of the iPhone 3G, and the iPhone 2.0 software for the iPod touch and original iPhone, that has now been remedied, and Contacts now has its own entry on the Home screen.
Contacts arc organised into groups, but you can only set these using the contacts system on your computer, rather than on the iPhone itself. To view the contents of each one, click on the group's name and scroll through the list of names that appears.
Running down the right-hand side of the screen you will see a small alphabet (Mow). Sliding your finger down this will quickly skip through heading letters in your address book, allowing you to scroll much more quickly through your contacts.
Once you have located the particular contact that you arc after, you can use their information in a number of ways. Clicking on their name brings up their full contact record and gives you one-click access to emailing or phoning them, if you have filled in those details already. Or, if your contact has a website and you have included its URL then you can visit that too.
By clicking on the postal address, you will launch the Maps application, which will centre on their home or office address, and tag that spot with their name. In addition to finding their address, this information will also be added to their record in the address book.
Bookmarking your buddies
One group that is maintained on the iPhone itself, and has its own button on the bar at the bottom of the phone application's screen, is the Favorites list, where you store your most-used contacts.
Scroll to the bottom of a contact's record and you will see a button marked Add to Favorites. Tap it and when you click on Favorites, you will be given speedy access to their record - and any others you have added — without having to scroll through the whole of your address book.
If you subsequently need to remove a contact from this list, click on Edit at the top of the screen and the red negative symbol appears to the left of their name. You will be asked to confirm by tapping the Remove button that appears to the right. Don't worry - it is not a destructive edit: they are only removed from the Favorites list, not from your address book.
Whether you are using a Mac or PC, it is easy to export your contacts to the iPhone so that you can dial them directly without using the keypad.
Texting from the address book
The Address Book's final feature is integrated text messaging. This is accessed in much the same way as the Favorites list, by clicking on Text Message at the foot of a contact's record. If it contains more than one phone number, you will be asked to choose where the message should be sent and then taken to the messaging application.
Adding contacts
By far the easiest way to manage your contacts is through your PC or Mac. Mac users will do this using Mac OS X's build-in Address Book application, Microsoft Entourage or Yahoo! Address Book. For Windows users, the choices are Windows Address Book (also found in Outlook Express), Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Address Book.
On both platforms, you need to synchronise your contacts with the iPhone using iTunes. Set it running and connect your iPhone. When it appears in the sidebar, click on its icon and then on the Contacts tab in the application's main pane. Here you can select whether to copy across every address on your system, or just synchronise a selection of contact groups.
If you need to add contacts when you arc on the move, and do so on your iPhone, they will be sent back to your computer when you next connect it. To add one, click on the + icon on the top bar and fill in the form that appears with as much information as you can. When it comes to entering the phone number, you may sometimes need to have the phone pause for a while — for example, if you are automatically logging in to telephone banking. This is easily achieved by tapping the '+*#' button on the bottom left of the keyboard, and then 'pause' from the new keypad that appears. Several pauses can be entered in a row in this way to cope with slower systems.
You can also assign a specific ring tone to new contacts, allowing you to differentiate between different groups of people, so you know whether to dive for your phone on a work day to answer a family call, or let it keep ringing at weekend when the boss-assigned tone starts to play.
Calendar
You would have to go a long way to find a more attractive calendaring application than the one that features on the iPhone. It is bold, smooth and ridiculously simple to use.
Navigating your calendar
By default, the application launches as a monthly overview, with the present day highlighted and any events that take place within the next 24 hours shown below. Days on which events will be taking place are marked with a small dot below the date number.
Clicking on an event calls up any associated details, such as its duration and location, all of which is drawn from the original record, as entered on your computer or on the iPhone itself.
There is a choice of three different views: List, Day and Month. Day will give the most detailed view of the selected 24 hours, with meetings and events shown on a grid as blobs blocking out the hours during which they take place. Any all-day events will be sectioned off at the top of the listing and remain visible at all times, like a frozen row in a spreadsheet.
The final option, List, dispenses with graphics altogether and gives a condensed run-down of forthcoming events, which is by far the most effective way to get an overview of future commitments. You can scroll through it at speed with a flick of the thumb. To skip back to the present day from any of these views, click on the Today button at the top of the screen.
Adding and editing events
You can edit all events in situ by tapping on them and then pressing the Edit button at the top of the scrccn. This calls up a form with fields for a title and location, start and end times, a repeat frequency (most events will be one time only, so you can ignore this in a lot of cases), whether or not you
The iPhone Calendar is not only good looking: it is also versatile, with a range of views giving you a quick overview of the current day's events or a list of anything on the horizon.
want to have an alert to remind you of the forthcoming event (if you add one, you will then have the opportunity to add a second one), and a field for general notes.
At the bottom of the form, you will also sec a large red button to delete the event. Its function is self-explanatory, but rest assured that should you tap it in error, you will be asked to confirm the deletion, so it will not be lost by shaky fingers.
New events that don't arrive through synchronisation with a computer or MobileMe are entered using exactly the same form as the editing tool. From any of the three calendar views, click on the + button at the top of the screen, and then tap each of the various fields to step through the different data types required.
Note that by default the iPhone will time all new events to start at noon and finish at 1pm on the present day. Change this by tapping the start and end times field to call up the selection tool, which looks very much like the tumblers found in a fruit machine. Each can be individually rotated by dragging them around their axes until they spell out the appropriate time and date.
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