Friday, June 18, 2010, 03:05 pm

Inside Apple's new MobileMe web and iOS apps

By Daniel Eran Dilger

Apple's refresh of its MobileMe services brings both a cleaner new iPad inspired web interface for browser-based access and a more optimized app experience for mobile iOS devices.

Apple Theme v2

The biggest update in MobileMe's overnight facelift (described in the page code as "apple_theme_v2") was its new mail component, profiled in our earlier report. The same iPad-like interface that debuted in the Mail beta has now been stretched across the entire MobileMe suite of web apps.

Every component web app now presents a blue bar across the top with a few simple monochrome icons borrowed from iPad. Switching between apps is now done by clicking on the cloud icon, which brings up a large "app switcher" popup control similar to Mac OS X (below).

One frustrating aspect of this type of app navigation is that it complicates any effort to open a second app in another browser tab; attempts to Command clicking on the app switcher to launch the link in another tab are ignored. It is possible to open multiple apps in multiple tabs or browser windows, but this requires typing in the URLs for the various apps, such as:

https://www.me.com/mail/
https://www.me.com/contacts/
https://www.me.com/calendar/
https://www.me.com/gallery/
https://www.me.com/idisk/
https://www.me.com/find/
https://www.me.com/account/




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