Analysis - Apple Takes to the Clouds

[HEXUS]

Can MobileMe finally popularise cloud computing, or is it another false dawn for the facility?

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[stevecla]

the comparisons with Live Mesh are inevitable but there are some definitive differences that the casual observer - not you Scott - could miss.

before I go in to that though, I would agree that what Apple has done here is package a cloud offering up pretty nicely for consumers. A number of questions remain in my mind about their service in particular but I'll save that for another time.

Since you mentioned Amazon, I'd also point out that AWS provides more of a utility compute service to developers whereas Mobile Me is much more of a "finished" or end usr oriented service.

Live Mesh is a mixture of both. The application many have seen is but one example of how the underlying Mesh platform could be used. Given there isn't a lot of detail on the platform available it's logical that many people have focused on comparing Mesh and Mobile Me thinking they're tackling the same problem. They sort of are but one way to think of it is that Mobile Me could be "built" on Mesh. Unlikely of course but the opposite isn't true. Mobile Me (as far as I can tell) isn't a platform. That's not to say it isn't useful, I just wanted to point out that Mesh and Mobile Me are not synonymous.

I need to find out more about Mobile Me before I could offer a more detailed comparison but I hope this helps for now.

meantime, Joe Wilcox has written an excellent comparison at Microsoft Watch and touches on many of the points I would make about Mobile Me so no point in repeating him



Steve
blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01