When Phil Schiller first introduced MobileMe at WWDC he likened it to “push for the rest of us.” Now that the iPhone supports Exchange, and MobileMe offers a consumer-level solution, the debate of iPhone vs. BlackBerry is back. Many of the complaints I had heard were related to the lackluster e-mail service always loading, and the inability to easily manage junk mail.

MobileMe, the 3G service, and the iPhone 2.0 OS resolves these issues and more. During the first introductory days of the MobileMe service, “Push” was choppy and delayed by several minutes. By the end of the weekend, I was able to erase and re-sync/Push my contacts, calendar, e-mail, and bookmarks. Monday morning, I made a couple of changes using iCal and Address Book and the changes were at my iPhone just a minute later.

But, even before this feature, the largest complaint was not calendar or contact syncing; it was e-mail. If you’re wondering if Apple resolved the junk filter issue, you’ll still be disappointed. They have, however, made a small step by allowing users to easily delete multiple e-mails. The 3G network and Push e-mail have made e-mail faster, with no “loading…” screen, which was an irritating feature of Apple’s “fetch” solution. It’s not perfect yet; I hit a terminal “loading…” screen when I dropped service while opening an e-mail. Compared to iPhone 1.x, it’s night and day.

With Apple on the path to creating a MobileMe service that ousts BlackBerry’s Push service, what more is there left to compare? Keyboard? OS?

With the rumors of BlackBerry’s touch screen Thunder device, it’s even more of a debate of operating systems, and I don’t think BlackBerry is suited for an OS war.

- Ainsworth

See Also:
MobileMe on Wikipedia

Last year I made it to the initial iPhone launch. I arrived at a small AT&T store, on Linton Blvd, in Boca Raton, FL, six hours early. I was one of the first 20 people in line and just after 7:30PM I walked out of the store with one of the first iPhones.

This week, I’m on vacation in New York City. Late last night I debated making the trip over to the legendary 5th Avenue Store - I was at that store’s grand opening - but I decided a local AT&T store might be the better bet - I should have remembered AT&T stores sold out last year and Apple stores did not.

This years launch was 8:00AM; I strolled up to AT&T 86th and 3rd street store in New York City at ~8:30. I was about 150 people deep, give or take the handful of people that “ran into friends who happened to be standing in line.”

As many of you know, the activation process was now set to be done on sight. That only worked for the first customer as both AT&T and iTunes (Apple) would crash by 8:15.

As I got to the front of the store, the countdown began: “We have no more 16GBs and only 10 8GBs. We are accepting direct fulfillment.”

At this point, I began running the number of line cutters through my head, realizing I was 11 from the front. No more announcements would come, yet I was invited into the store with the chain closing behind me.

5 minutes later my AT&T salesman was handed an iPhone 3G and told, “That’s the last one.” Alas, I was handed my new iPhone 3G and told that the remaining activation process would have to be done at home using iTunes.

Needless to say, the new phone is sexy… however, iTunes is still struggling through the activation process. Once I’m able to get through the set-up process I’ll be sure to add updates on the MobileMe experience; I know there are a few debates about it’s ability to dethrone BlackBerry.

- Ainsworth