Currently these are the benefits Apple lists to having a MobileMe subscription:

• Mail, Contacts and Calendar syncing from your Mac(s) to your iPhone to the web
• MobileMe Gallery that allows you to show off your photos in a very nice looking online photo gallery
• iDisk storage online — store or backup files with 20GB of storage. You can also access this through an iPhone app designed by Apple
• Me.com web apps including email, contacts, calendars, photos and files. Used with the syncing mentioned previously, this allows you to login from any web browser (Mac or otherwise) and access your information. Any changes made Me.com are synced back to your iPhones/Macs. The web apps themselves perform remarkably similar to their desktop counterparts.

For a Mac desktop, these are some additional benefits:

• Back to My Mac is a feature that has gotten mixed reviews. For me personally, it’s worked as advertised. For others, it’s been hit and miss. It’s definitely a nice idea: wherever you are, you can access information back on your home Mac. On the road with your MacBook Pro and forgot a presentation on your home iMac? Just log in and grab the file without having to worry about VPN settings and having someone at home to send you the file. It works well — when it works.
• Syncing system preferences, dock items, Dashboard widgets and more is another feature, though it’s also hit and miss as to it’s usefulness. For example, syncing preferences from a desktop iMac with a 24″ display to a laptop with a 13″ display doesn’t always work but there definitely benefits to be had.

In addition to that, there are added benefits if you own an iPhone or iPod touch:

• Find my iPhone is a killer feature that is nearly worth the price of admission alone. If you lose your iPhone you can simply visit the MobileMe website and using either the GPS built into the iPhone or the last known WiFi access point of an iPod touch allows you to see on a Google Map where your device is. You can then play a sound and display a message to alert someone nearby to your iPhone’s location. Neat!
• If you lost your iPhone and can’t find it, or someone stole it you can also remotely wipe the iPhone and all it’s data, restoring it to factory settings. Combined with Find my iPhone, these two features make a strong case for MobileMe subscription for iPhone owners

The case for MobileMe is very similar to the case you would make for buying a Mac or iPhone in the first place: it’s simple, easy to use and just works as advertised for the most part. Where it breaks down is you can configure your Mac/iPhone with a lot of free software to do similar, if not exactly the same, things as MobileMe offers you for a yearly subscription. The question for you is whether it’s worth it to pay for that or look after it yourself. I won’t list all the options out there here (watch for an upcoming article or see the comments on this post from AboutThisMac.com readers), but the main one would be using Google’s suite of services (Gmail, Calendar, etc.) and their Sync services. This is what I’ve switched to since letting my MobileMe account expire.

It’s been almost two weeks since making the switch and I can’t say that I’ve really missed much. I didn’t really ever use the Me.com web apps and my use of Back to My Mac was fairly minimal — nothing that can’t be done with a free VNC setup. The syncing ability is something I will come to miss as I make more changes on my MacBook Pro that aren’t reflected on my home iMac. For example, any new FTP sites added to Transmit used to be automatically synced to both computers along with the appropriate user name/password. Now I’ll have to remember to add them manually or look at other syncing options. Two of which I’d heartily recommend are Dropbox and 1Password. When used together, these two apps create a great alternative to MobileMe password syncing.

I’d have no problem recommending MobileMe to people if they actually will make use of the services. Take a look at the features and honestly think about whether you’d use them. There’s alos a 60 day free trial that you can use to see if you like it — though I’m sure once they’ve got you hooked in, you’ll be much less likely to stop using it.

I don’t currently have an iPhone so using Find my iPhone or remote wipe aren’t necessary yet. I have a feeling if I do upgrade to an iPhone I’ll probably end up using MobileMe again — just for the insurance of being able to wipe it remotely and/or find it. Other than that, I can live with using a few 3rd party services to keep everything running.

How about you? Do you think MobileMe is worth the yearly subscription?

Meet Genius Mixes. This new feature searches your iTunes library, finds songs that go great together, and creates multiple mixes you’ll love. All automatically. These mixes are like channels programmed entirely with your music. You may discover songs you never knew you had — and rediscover forgotten favorites.

But after upgrading to iTunes 9, I didn’t see the Genius Mixes in my playlist bar. I found the (now obvious) answer over on MacOSXHints.com:

If you update to iTunes 9 and don’t see the Genius Mixes (even though you have the Genius enabled), simply select Store » Update Genius.

Once the Genius update is complete, the Genius Mixes entry should show in the sidebar.

I’m comforted to note that even Rob Griffiths — THE Mac expert behind OSXHints.com — was stumped by this one as well.

Links for Snow Leopard Up to Date program

If You Purchased Your Mac from the Apple Online Store:

• US Customers
• Canadian Customers (English)
• Canadian Customers (French)

If You Purchased Your Mac from an Apple Retail Store or another Reseller (i.e. a Campus Computer Store):

• US Customers
• Canadian Customers (English)
• Canadian Customers (French)

Alternatively, you can download the order form (PDF) and mail or fax it in yourself. Once you’ve sent it in, you can check the status of your order here.

Have you ever been experimenting with iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and your free trial has run out leaving you unable to make any changes to your documents?

There’s a quick way to get around that restriction, say if you needed to have a fully functional keynote for an extra day of free trial for that important presentation.

Head to your harddrive directory, in my case Macintosh HD, then go to Library, then to Preferences, then look for the file com.apple.iWork09.plist (also works for iWork0X.plist, depending on which trial version you are running)

Macintosh HD -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.iWork09.plist

Then simply delete the file. Open up any of your iWork apps and with you can start a new 30 day trial.

I do not condone doing this endlessly; however, it’s very useful in those instances when you need some extra time.

By the way, there’s plenty of good reasons to pull a key off your keyboard (cleaning being one of them). If you just pull it off because you’re wanting to avoid doing other work, just look at the pictures below instead. It’ll save you a lot of hassle.

Keychain “name” cannot be found to store “sampleitem”
Your keychain may have been renamed, deleted, or it’s on a unmounted volume.
You can then click Cancel or Reset To Defaults. The alert may appear again.

Here’s a link to the Apple support document on how to resolve that.

The keychain is where Safari stores all of your passwords/logins that you have it save so you don’t have to remember them all the time. For some reason, the Flash upgrade seems to be corrupting your keychain and then Safari thinks it has to create a new one. Hopefully you catch it before it completely erases your keychain!

The site was dormant for awhile, but recently woke up and has resumed posting.

Interesting side note, it’s run by Tim Gaden who is Dean of the Theological School , College Chaplain and Stewart Lecturer in Theology at Trinity College within the University of Melbourne. He also teaches Greek.

For iPod touch users though, due to the way Apple does their books on the iPod touchs, it’s a $9.95US upgrade. Which begs the question — is it worth it to upgrade your iPod touch to iPhone 3.0?

Unless you just bought your ipod touch you probably don’t already have the iPhone 3.0 installed but it might worth it to double check. To find out which version you have:

• Tap the settings icon
• Tap General
• Tap About to see the version number

Apple lists the major new features for iPod touch users as:

• Buy Movies, TV Shows, and Audiobooks via Wi-Fi
• Stereo Bluetooth (only for 2nd generation iPod touch — to tell if you have a 2nd gen or not, you can easily tell by whether your iPod touch has a speaker built in or not. If you can’t hear anything from your iPod without headphones plugged in, you’ve got a 1st gen iPod touch)
• Peer to Peer Gaming (also only for 2nd gen iPod touch)
• Landscape Keyboard
• Spotlight Search
• Cut, Copy & Paste

There’s a few other upgrades worth mentioning as well including parental controls, automatic wi-fi login, iTunes store account creation, new languages, push notifications, third party accessories, Safari improvements, sync notes and shake to shuffle.

After initially installing the update on my 1st gen iPod touch I wasn’t that impressed with everything to think it was actually worth it. Cut/copy/paste is nice, but not a feature I’d use a lot. Same thing with the landscape keyboard. The push notifications and third party accessories will be nice, once software/hardware developers start supporting them but as of now there isn’t a lot that are — though that’s sure to change in the coming months.

The Safari improvements are nice and it’s definitely a quicker browser, but it’s not wouldn’t be enough for me to warrant an upgrade either. I knew I’d like the fact that the Notes app would finally sync to Mail.app but it also wasn’t a deal maker/breaker for me.

So my initial impression was that I wouldn’t really recommend it to folks at this point. If $10 could be better spent elsewhere, then do so.

After having used it for a couple weeks though, I think I’ve changed my thoughts. The Notes syncing has become something I’m using much more (though to be honest, it should have been there from the beginning). Same goes for the landscape keyboard — it’s nice to have but not something that should have taken until version 3 to arrive, in my opinion. Spotlight search is also a very handy tool to find information/apps on your iPod touch — I just need to remember to use it more often instead of manually trying to find it.

At this point I can say that I’d recommend upgrading. Besides the few major features, the behind the scenes improvements/optimizations are well worth the $10 price. If you think of the money you’d spend on a Mac OS or, heaven forbid, a Windows OS upgrade it’s a pretty cheap OS upgrade. Once more apps start making use of push notifications and the peer-to-peer connectivity (connecting to another 2nd gen iPod touch or iPhone), it will be well worth it.

Click here to visit Apple’s iPod touch software update page for more information.

What do you think? Will you (or did you) upgrade your iPod touch?

Enjoy!

Apple’s on their way to having sold 1 billion apps (!) from the iPhone/iPod touch App store and they are holding a contest where you could win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. Each time you download an app, you are entered but you can also enter without having made a purchase by going here and giving Apple your information. You can actually enter up to 25 times a day — an easy thing if you’ve got a program like 1Password to fill in all your details automagically!

Make sure to check the official rules to make sure that you are eligible before filling out the form 25 times.