Why is Mobile Me $100 a year??

The phone has three tracking methods in a usual order of accuracy of; satellite gps, cell tower triangulation and ip based location.
In some cases cell based tracking has resolutions on multiples of 100m where wifi may be tighter.
Satellite gps should kick in when ever the phone has line of sight to the sky wether on 3G or wifi.

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Thanks Maketso.
iP5: Your post was neither responsive nor accurate. Save it till you have something important to say.

for me, the best feature of mobileme is real-time bookmark syncing. I'm not aware of any other service (free or not) that can replicate it.

Sure, i could piecemeal various apps together that might approximate the features, but there's really something to be said for having it all provided by one service AND being officially supported by apple.

At the end of the day if people want a premium service instead of free alternatives that do the same then it's their choice for spending their money. I guess that attracts me the most is the email address is very personalised: @me.com and the service is combined as a whole instead of a bunch of little services that you much pop in and out of. MobileMe offers all these services under one service, and the quality of them are par with any of their other products, now that's worth $40 that I spent on my 1 year sub.


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I agree totally. And maybe when the new facility is totally functional Apple will finally conclude it should be free. In the meantime it is worth whatever I pay for it.

My bad, was responding to the earlier comment about 3G and wifi accuracy. Have included the quote to contextualize the comment.

Thanks for your understanding.

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Just reporting what actually happens. If I switch off 3G, it usually locates close to the IPad, about a street away.

Edited to say that I have tried this in 6 different cities and then in between. At my house, where I don't get 3G, both devices locate about a mile away. I asked staff at the Apple store about it, and they said that 3G was needed for the location to be really accurate. So if you've lost your device, MobileMe is helpful because you know where you've been but if you suspect it's been stolen, MobileMe is a starting point.

FoneHome for 0.99cents in the AppStore looks promising. Anyone use that?

Also, the personal info on my phone is more of a concern for me over the phone itself. Especially on theft I actually hope that the thief triggers the wipe.

Does FindmyiPhone or any other locator service survive a wipe?

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Edit: Ive given iGotYa a try and it seems to work like a charm. 2 failed passcode attempts and i received the geotagged photo of myself in less than 2 minutes. Mobile Me obviously does a lot more but this is an interesting security alternative for the €5 (what is that, like 7 dollar?) price.

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The MobileMe / find my iPhone won't. You can implement the wipe remotely using the app but then the locator is eliminated, too.

I have to say that the description of FoneHome sounds pretty comprehensive - though I am pretty apprehensive about how developers describe their products. I will be anxious to hear how it works. It does not appear to have a remote wipe capability. I would think that a remote wipe would remove any locator App the same as it would with MobileMe.

I have both the FoneHome and the Find My iPhone apps and they are both pretty handy to have.

The feature that the FoneHome app has that I really like is the ability to remotely take a picture and send it to your FoneHome website. This is good if someone steals your phone. All you have to do is log onto the FoneHome site on your computer to access your account and send your phone a push message (or siren if you desire) and when the thief swipes the screen to either read the message or turn off the alarm the phone automatically takes a picture of them and sends it directly to your FoneHome account showing their picture along with their location on a map.

The features that I like about the Find My iPhone app are the Lock and Wipe features. With the Lock feature you can send your phone a remote lock password where the thief cannot unlock your phone unless they enter the correct password. The Wipe feature will send a remote command that will completely delete all data off of your phone and return it to factory settings so none of your important info can be obtained. After the Wipe feature is used your phone will no longer be able to be tracked so this isn't something you would want to do unless absolutely necessary.

If the Find My iPhone app would incorporate the remote picture feature it would be perfect. I keep both apps on my phone... just in case.
The Find My iPhone app is free for anyone with an iPhone 4, iPad, or iPod Touch (4th Gen) running iOS 4.2.1.
The FoneHome app is $2.99

Mobile Me to be FREE?

There is talk about MM changing to a free service. Some expected an announcement yesterday but it didn't happen.

There are reports that Apple has removed all the boxed versions of MM from the Apple Stores and when you go to the Apple Website they seem to direct you only to the Free Trial instead of the "buy" option. Not sure what it all means but something is up for sure.

I signed up for MobileMe Last month. I liked it and I heard the rumor about it being free. However they were still going to bill my iTunes account 99 dollars the other day. I quickly found one on ebay for 28 dollars and used the activation key. I can't imagine them giving it away. Maybe a portion of it. Just can't see them giving all that away.

I like iDisk, The gallery and FindMyPhone part. Worth money to me. Maybe not 99 dollars. But they were still going to charge me as of Tuesday. I just got lucky on the Ebay thing.