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According to MacDailyNews.com, Apple may make their $99/year MobileMe service a completely free service in the near future. They reported the following on May 7th:
We have received a tip that we cannot confirm, hence our “RUMOR” designation, that nonetheless has at least an air of credibility about it that says, “Apple is planning to make MobileMe free.”
They also said that, though there is no timeframe specified, it was said to be “sooner than later… depend[ing] on certain facilities going operational.”
CNET.com does not think the rumor to be very credible, however. (Though, the writer of the article does wish it to be true…)
I’m not sure what I think. I would love to see that. It’s really a very valuable service in so many ways. MacDailyNews did a good job listing all of the featured included. Aside from all the syncing features across all your devices (data across Macs, PCs, and iPod/iPhone/iPad devices, and from with multiple Mac apps) and file storage/sharing, it—in a way—lets you have the Mac OS, even on a PC. You get web versions of Apple’s Mail, iCal, Address Book, iPhoto (sort of…), and Finder.
If Apple did eliminate the cost (or at least lower the cost) that might interest more people who, I believe, just don’t know what they’re missing. I literally use nearly every service that comes with MobileMe. It would be super neato if it was free!
(You can quote me on that…)
So, we’ll keep watching the Apple news feeds.