Shelburne Falls Mac Users Group 5/14/2010 Meeting

SFMUG meeting 05/14/2010

Thanks to those of you that came by last night. I enjoyed the first SFMUG meeting.

We covered a few items in some depth and came up with quite a list of topics that we would like to cover in future meetings.

Topic covered in detail:
MobileMe Accounts (AKA .me or .mac) vs. Google accounts.

It is pretty commonly acknowledged that the best free services offered on the internet such as email, calendars, address book, mobile documents, etc. The offerings from Google are pretty amazing, but MobileMe services ($99/year) offer a few items that make this a valuable product to use instead of or in conjunction with google services.

Here is a small comparison list we did of some features. (Some of the Google features need MAC OS 10.6.3 and and intel mac to be used)

                                      Google                              Mobile Me                          Summary
Email Sync.                    Yes                                       Yes                        Equivalent Service
Calendar Sync.              Yes (with 10.6.3)                   Yes                        Equivalent service
Address Sync.                Yes (with 10.6.3)                 Yes                        Equivalent service
Online Storage              Yes, but not easy to use         Yes                       Mobile me idisk is way better
Online Photo Album      Yes, with Picassa Software   Yes                      iPhoto and Picassa are similar,
                                                                                                                 but iPhoto has better integration
                                                                                                                 with Mac services
iPhone services                No                                         Yes                      Locate your phone remotely,
                                                                                                                 Remote erase, etc. Important for
                                                                                                                 iPhone users
Web Site                       Yes (limited, built online)          Yes                    For making a simple, but
                                                                                                                 elegant site, you can't beat iWeb
 with MobileMe

Conclusions: A MobileMe account is a great value in an inexpensive services. If you have an iPhone or want to build a simple website then either of these items make the service worth the cost. If you just want synchronized email, address book, and calendar the Google is fine, especially for free. Some combination of the two is also good to consider.


Possible Future Topics for SFMUG

iWork Suite (Mainly Pages Word Processing)

Publishing/Printing
(Lisa Clark can run this meeting)

Google Docs (for document sharing)

Using Google for Search

Iphoto

Backup (Time Machine)

iWeb

Sketchup - 3D service
(Joe Mattei can run this meeting)

iMovie/ You Tube

Keyboard Shortcuts/Screen Shots

Remote Access

IChat