The last time Macworld reviewed MobileMe was in July 2008, shortly after the service made the transition from .Mac. Since then, Apple’s suite of Internet services has undergone numerous additional changes, but has it has kept up with the competition?

I’ll look first at the three core features—e-mail, syncing, and iDisk—and move on to the remaining parts of the service, with an emphasis on what has changed since 2008.

E-mail

Apple completely overhauled MobileMe Mail earlier this year, although most of the changes are visible only on the MobileMe Web site. The service now offers server-based rules for filtering incoming mail, automatic message retrieval from multiple POP accounts, the option to use the From address from one or more third-party accounts, and an improved Web user interface.

These changes are welcome, but MobileMe still lags behind competitors such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail in some respects. For example, server-based rules are far more limited than what OS X Mail or Gmail offer. And when viewing your e-mail on the MobileMe site, you can search only message headers, not their contents—a frustrating limitation.

Syncing

MobileMe can sync data between your Macs, Windows PCs, and iOS devices. For calendars, contacts, and Safari bookmarks, MobileMe offers near-instantaneous push sync. You can also sync certain files (such as keychains and preferences) between Macs, though not with other devices. Setting up syncing couldn’t be easier: on each device, you enter your MobileMe credentials and select the types of data you want to sync. (Setting up comparable capabilities with Google’s free products is more involved.) You can view and edit your calendar and contact data using either a Mac or Windows application or the MobileMe Web site.

Syncing is largely unchanged since 2008‚ except for MobileMe’s new, dramatically better Calendar, which now uses the more-reliable, industry-standard CalDAV protocol to sync calendars amongst iCal, your iOS devices, and Apple’s servers. You can share a calendar publicly or privately, optionally granting read and write access—a huge improvement over the one-way, publish-and-subscribe method Apple used earlier. The Web-based Calendar app is also much spiffier now.

For the time being, the upgraded Calendar is optional, and the process of converting your data and devices to use the new system may involve a fair number of steps depending on your setup. But after completing those steps myself, the syncing problems I previously had disappeared.

iDisk

iDisk is 20GB of online storage (shared with e-mail), which you can use for backups, file sharing, and other activities. (You can upgrade to as much as 60GB for an additional annual fee.) Your iDisk can sync with your Mac, giving you a local copy of all your files, which you can use even without Internet access.

In casual use, syncing files between my local iDisk and Apple's servers felt slow and finicky compared to Dropbox. However, my tests yielded surprising results. Transferring a 10MB file took almost exactly the same amount of time with each service (56 seconds to send the file to Dropbox, with upload rate set to maximum, and 50 seconds to sync the file to the iDisk server). But a 7.8MB folder containing a couple hundred files took 15 minutes to sync with iDisk but less than a minute with Dropbox. So iDisk's performance depends on what you store on it.

MobileMe now lets you share individual files on your iDisk with others either publicly or privately. The feature works as advertised, but would be more convenient if you could share files directly from the Finder. OS X 10.6.5 added support for SSL encryption when transferring files to and from your iDisk in the Finder; this makes it safer to use your iDisk while connected to public networks.

Web hosting is essentially unchanged; it works fine for basic sites, but you’re limited to serving static files, whereas most other providers let you run server-side code such as PHP scripts and MySQL databases.

iOS features

I've mentioned that MobileMe syncs data not only with Macs and PCs but also with iOS devices. This support deserves some elaboration, because arguably it makes MobileMe more valuable for those with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch than for those who have only a conventional computer.

For starters, MobileMe offers push e-mail on your iOS device. Although that's not the only way to get push email (for example, you can use the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to access an account on an Exchange server or even a free Gmail account), it's easier for individuals to set up a MobileMe account, and also a bit simpler to configure an iOS device to use it. You also automatically get access to any MobileMe aliases you've set up (that is, extra username@me.com addresses that point to your MobileMe account, as configured on the MobileMe Web site) on your iOS device—you can select any of them as the From address for outgoing messages.

Once you've entered your MobileMe credentials on your iOS device, you get not only push e-mail but also push sync of calendars, contacts, bookmarks, and notes. There are other ways (albeit more complicated ones) to get push sync of calendars and contacts, but MobileMe is currently the only way to sync Safari bookmarks on an iOS device with a desktop or laptop computer. Push syncing of notes (introduced in iOS 4) is nice enough if you use Apple's Notes app, but still less flexible than what other apps (such as Simplenote) offer—for example, you can't currently edit notes from the Notes app in a Web browser.

Other features

MobileMe has numerous other components, too, all of which have seen only minor changes since 2008: Gallery (for uploading and sharing photos and videos on the Web); Find My iPhone (for locating wayward iOS devices); Back to My Mac (for file and screen sharing while on a remote network); and Backup (a no-frills backup application). Of these, the only real standout is Find My iPhone, but since Apple has now made the feature freely available to anyone with an iPhone 4, iPad, or a fourth-generation iPod touch, it’s no longer a reason for owners of those devices to purchase MobileMe.

Macworld’s buying advice

On the whole, the current version of MobileMe is an improvement over what was available two years ago, although it’s of uneven quality. But then, not all MobileMe features are equally important to all users. If you plan to use only e-mail and Web hosting, for example, it’s hard to justify spending $99 on the service. However, if you use most of its features or don’t want to register for, install, learn, and configure products from a variety of vendors to get most of the same features, MobileMe is a bargain. (It’s even more of a bargain if you buy a discounted copy, which can also be used for renewals, at Amazon.com.)

[Senior contributor Joe Kissell is the senior editor of TidBits and the author of Take Control of MobileMe, Second Edition (TidBITS Publishing, 2010).]

Editor's note: Updated 12/7/10 with section on iOS features.