MobileMe upgrades .Mac email on the iPhone to use rapid push updating. Here's how it works, and what's new and different in MobileMe mobile mail, how to configure junk mail and security, and what's still missing.
Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push (Friday)
Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push (Saturday)
Inside MobileMe: Apple's Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google (Monday)
Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail (Today)
Push vs Fetch
The original iPhone software supported push email through Yahoo but .Mac email functioned like any other standard IMAP account�on the iPhone. With the new 2.0 update, there's now support for Exchange Server via ActiveSync, offering push email, contacts, and calendar. MobileMe similarly now provides push email, contacts, and calendar, along with bookmark updates.�
On the iPhone, Apple distinguishes between "Push," for automatic updates that are delivered as they appear, and "Fetch" checking for new updates on a schedule:�hourly, every 30 minutes, every fifteen minutes, or only manually.�MobileMe allows for all its message types to be delivered as push, or to be set to a fetch schedule just like a normal IMAP email account.�
Email can also be set to push or fetch independently of calendar and contact items. The interface for setting this up is under Settings : Fetch New Data (below; it hasn't yet even been rebranded ("we didn't update our account label to reflect") to the new MobileMe name yet).�Turning off push can be useful when roaming internationally where constant data access could wind up getting expensive, or simply to conserve the battery anytime messaging updates are less important than other functions.�
Configuring email
Account related settings and preferences are configured under Settings : Mail, Contacts, Calendar (below left). If your email accounts are already configured on the desktop, iTunes will sync them over for you. You can also configure settings manually.�
The iPhone presents a list of setup templates for popular email account types, including Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL (below right). If you want to create a new account with one of those services, you'll have to do that yourself from the web. For most accounts, all you need to provide is an address, username and password once you've signed up.
Missing: Unified Mailbox, Alias support
While you can set up multiple accounts on the iPhone, it does not present a unified mailbox, as Mail does on the desktop. Instead, each mailbox is presented as its own set of folders. This can be confusing because the Mail icon is badged with the total number of new messages on all accounts. You have to navigate through the mail accounts to see which ones have new messages. Mixing messages together in a unified mailbox would be difficult to manage within the limited resources available on the iPhone however.�
Each account you set up on the iPhone for either periodic fetch or push updating also has an impact on battery life, as Mail continues to operate in the background. It may help that MobileMe can be configured to check email from another account (such as Gmail) and present all new emails centrally. MobileMe will not attempt to maintain sync with another account's IMAP folders however.
The Mail client on the iPhone also currently does not support MobileMe aliases, so you can't send messages from the iPhone using one of the five alter ego addresses the service allows you to set up (you can use these from the MobileMe web apps). Currently, the only reliable workaround is to configure a Gmail account to send its email out using your MobileMe email alias address and then configure that Gmail account on the iPhone, which is ridiculous. The iPhone only allows you to send mail out from one of your primary account addresses (below).�
Apple has started supporting Gmail's
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