Comments on: MobileMe is live – more or less.

By: Jesse David Hollington

Jesse David Hollington — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:46:27 +0000

(sigh) Unfortunately MobileMe *still* does not allow any personal domain capabilities whatsoever on the e-mail side. While I can understand their reluctance to try and implement a fully MX-redirect-based hosting service, simply offering the ability to reply from alternate verified addresses a la GMail would have been a HUGE step in the right direction.

About the only slight improvement at this point is that you can now set up a “MobileMe” type of account in Mail.app and specify your own FROM address, but of course you’ll have to use an alternate SMTP server for it, since the smtp.me.com servers won’t accept anything that doesn’t end in me.com or mac.com. Frankly, I’m not sure it matters, since I don’t really know what the advantage is of using a MobileMe account type in Mail.app versus a normal IMAP account, but there it is.

On the iPhone, however, you pretty much have to set up using MobileMe as the account type if you want any OTA features for Calendar/Contacts/Bookmarks, not to mention things like web gallery submission from the Photos app. The iPhone definitely does NOT allow a non-me/mac address to be specified as the FROM either, so you’ll have to set up a secondary account if you want to do that.

Mind you, if you’re willing to live without e-mail push, you can set up the MobileMe account for the other types of content, and just turn off the MAIL portion, and then use a separate IMAP account for your e-mail. You’ll get 15-minute polling like before, but at least you’ll be able to very easily use your own FROM address without having to resort to tap-tap gymnastics every time you want to send an e-mail.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:25:17 +0000

@Harry: I’ve tested the personal domain option, but this is only for iWeb. You have to add an alias for your “www.*yourdomain*” which points to the me.com servers.

By: Yann

Yann — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:06:55 +0000

Sorry for the totally unrelated comment, but I didn’t find a general “contact” link…

Wondering if there’s a way to customize the toolbar icons of Mail in Leopard like you could in 10.4 with MailStamps… I seriously can’t take those nasty gelcap icons…

I googled for like 5 mn but couldn’t uncover anything… But the original guy who made it doesn’t seem to even have a site anymore…

I’m thinking, if someone knows the answer, it’s gotta be you! ;)

Thanks!

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:38:01 +0000

@Harry–looks to me like the personal domain option only relates to web hosting.

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:41:48 +0000

Nope. But the web interface remembered me from the first time I logged in.

By: antiorario

antiorario — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:35:04 +0000

Were you able to authenticate in System Preferences?

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:56:26 +0000

Every now and then it sputters into life. Managed to grab a screenshot of the Address Book Preferences this time before it went down again.

By: antiorario

antiorario — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:43:08 +0000

Same here. I downloaded the update via a link I found on TUAW, it installed nicely but I can’t authenticate. I guess we are just too eager to see it work, but we’ll have to be patient.

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:40:22 +0000

I don’t think that anyone has the timezone advantage at the moment.

The whole thing has crapped out again. I can’t even authenticate my account in System Preferences now :-(

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:38:59 +0000

What’s that “Personal domain” option in the sidebar?!

Please, please tell me I can finally use my own domain name for .mac/me.com email!