PSA: Every iPhone owner needs MobileMe

Monday, 23 August 2010

Twice in the past month, I've read about people getting their iPhones stolen. The stories were actually strangely similar: On a bus, some punk just walked by, attempted the grab, and bolted. According to my informal survey, this method has about a 50% success rate.

Let's try this again now that I've disabled everything: my iphone was stolen off the bus today. The fucking kid ripped it out of my hands. 2:58 PM Aug 18th via webDeanna B.
oh_deanna

This fool. Tried to smash and grab my phone as I got off the BART. Please son, who do you think you're dealing with?10:04 PM Aug 19th via Twitter for iPhoneJohan Lieu
iomegadrive

I thought it would be good to take a minute and throw together a quick PSA for all iPhone owners out there who haven't gotten wise to Apple's MobileMe service yet. If you're not familiar with it, MobileMe is first and foremost a service that Apple offers to all their computer, iPhone, and iPad users to help you keep your data in sync. Between the two of us, January and I have four Macs, two iPhones, and two iPads, and the MobileMe service keeps our calendars, contacts, preferences, and setting automatically synced between all of these devices. That's the primary selling point that Apple uses to pitch their MobileMe service. For iPhone users, though, there's an even bigger benefit.

iPhone users who hook up their phone to a MobileMe account get some really invaluable security features. The best one in my opinion is the "find my iPhone" feature. If someone swipes your phone, you can log in to Apple's web site and find where it is through a number of different methods. First, you can track the location on a Google Map like this:

If you need to narrow down the location, you can send a signal to your phone instructing it to start beeping. This will work even if your phone is in silent/vibrate mode. I'm not ashamed to tell you, I use this feature weekly just to remember where in the house I've left my phone. Finally, if your phone does get swiped and you're unable to track it down for whatever reason, there's a final security measure whereby you can remotely wipe everything off your phone. If you've got to lose your phone, you might as well delete your personal information off of it, right?

The big reason I've heard from a lot of people about why they don't protect their iPhone with MobileMe is pretty obvious: the price. An individual account purchased through Apple goes for $99/year, which is a decent chunk up front. What January and I have found, though, is that there's a realy easy way to subsidize this cost: Go in on a family pack with some friends. The 5-account MobileMe family pack retails for $150, but you can get it through Amazon for right around $90. Divide this up with four other iPhone-loving friends, and you can each get these extra features for less than $20/year.

In my experience, there are plenty of iPhone users out there who, at $20/year, are absolutely interested in MobileMe. If you want to get in on a family pack, just ask around and I'm sure you'll quickly find four other people willing to throw some cash your way to get added to your plan. I hope this post doesn't come across as spammy; I'm not getting paid anything for this post, it just seems like there are a lot of iPhone users out there who could benefit from this relatively cheap service to protect their phones. If you're interested, you might even want to just write a quick comment and maybe someone will contact you.

Regardless, protecting your $200+ investment with a $20/year plan just makes sense. If some punk decides to try to pull a smash-and-grab on you the next time you take the bus, you may not make out as well as Johan did:

dodged and pushed him onto the floor. People around me gasped, he got up and ran and I just yelled out of instinct "Yeah fucker!"10:16 PM Aug 19th via Twitter for iPhoneJohan Lieu
iomegadrive

Affiliate link: Apple MobileMe Family Pack from Amazon.com

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PSA: Every iPhone owner needs MobileMe

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