I had a Mac.me account back in the day.  The annual fee was the deal breaker.  I got a Dropbox account earlier this year and love it.  I have an iMac and a HP laptop and the syncs are seamless.  Moving files to family members that don’t have the service is very easy.

So keep your money in your pocket.  The first 2 Gigs of Dropbox space is free.

Sideloading solves everything guys. Of course, it would also cut significantly into $1B of revenue with over 25% profit margin, but that will ultimately be the last ditch effort by Apple to save its iPhone business in the face of next year’s Android explosion.

What Apple needs to get through its head is that once the phone lands in the customer’s hands, it’s the customer’s phone, not Apple’s phone. You do not beat the carriers at their game (walled garden) by playing the same game with a bigger board. Google knows this, Apple doesn’t. What the carriers who customize Android too much are finding is that it’s expensive work that yields a sub-par phone and does nothing to capture revenues. Google’s hands-off approach plays to its strengths, while Apple’s control-freak approach guarantees continuing controversy and alienation of a portion of its fan base.

Sure, Bosco. “Most desired,” “Best Rated,” “Top-Selling,” “Best Customer Service.”  Apple’s model is so terrible. How can the Apple corporate bozos and all their unwashed masses not appreciate all you’re trying to tell them?

@farmboy: The reason you don’t hear the backlash is that you’re only listening to your sheep.

One common complaint about Android is that there is no single Android phone that has sold a lot of units. Not true any longer. Samsung announced that it has sold 10M Galaxy S phones. And Sammy will be introducing a Galaxy Player (“S minus phone”) at CES. The player, when it has Gingerbread on it (either official or from the hackers) will actually be a better smartphone for my office than my Nexus One. Gingerbread has a SIP client built in, and my office is in an AT&T dead zone.

The backlash though, will come in small chunks following rejections and removals from the App Store. It’s like an evolutionary process, with the examples becoming more controversial and more egregious. And you’d expect that, as developers will continue to have a perverse incentive to get their apps rejected and get more value from press and blogosphere discussion than they would from sales. Don’t hate the players, though. Hate Apple’s game. It’s not necessary for anything but securing an exclusive revenue stream for Apple. Not security, not safety, not “the children”, etc.

Bosco, can you show us the downturn in iPhone sales directly related to the “controversial” and “egregious” rejected apps (overly dramatic much?)?  I think not, and you know it. In the big picture, nobody cares. Nobody jailbreaks, nobody roots. Nobody misses ads in Flash. Nobody wants a Boobs App. Nobody cares if they are denied a Boobs App.

I noticed you went from Apple trying to “save its iPhone business in the face of next year’s Android explosion”...to “the backlash will come in small chunks.” Well, what is it—tsunami or trickle-down? Or a trickle-down tsunami? How many more times can they offer BOGO—which tells their customers either it’s only worth half of what you just paid for it, or we can’t sell these so we’ll give them away?

Apple clearly has its devotees and fanboys, and has product shortcomings, but do you really fail to see the herd mentality in Andro’s as well? “Sure it’s flawed but wait ‘til next year…2.1…2.2…Honeycomb…” Whatever. And what’s to be made of their attempts to reduce their cognitive dissonance over their choice of OS, computers and hand-held electronics by endlessly posting in internet forums who denizens are known to generally view favorably a competing OS and its devices? No love in AndroWindowLinuxville?