Now it does not appear this feature works. Anyone know why or when it was changed?

Thanks,

Soop

Yes, I did assume you were not using a local iDisk, and now I’m more confused than ever.

A local copy is… a local copy. Why would your Mac access something off a local iDisk much slower than off a local, say, Download directory? I’d call it a bug except you’re seeing it everywhere. Anyway, if my local iDisks worked as yours do I wouldn’t be happy either.

However, my experience is the exact opposite. The local iDisk on my two Macs is accessed as fast as anything else on the hard drives.

You’re making the assumption I only use the web based iDisk, but I never said that. For the record, I normally avoid the web based iDisk whenever I can.

I own three Macs and all three have a mounted local copy of my iDisk.

That said, my original statement stands; iDisk is painfully slow and unreliable.

In daily use across my machines, iDisk sync starts, seems to take forever, and still ultimately fails for reasons that are never explained. Other times, it works – or at least, *appears* to work, happily reported it is synced even when I can see changes have not migrated.

This is the same whether I choose to sync manually or automatically. This is the same on Leopard, Snow Leopard, across three different models of Mac and even with fully deleted and resinstated local copies of my iDisk.

And it’s not my network; I enjoy a 20mb connection, with consistent, high up/download rates.

End result – after using it extensively, after trying all manner of tests to make sure I’m not being an idiot, I’ve found in my personal experience, iDisk is a time-vampire that works only when it *wants* to work, and syncs only when it *wants* to sync.

So as I said – I’m glad to see Apple is trying to improve the feature set, but until they can offer performance at *least* as good as DropBox, it’s a big old FAIL to me.

But, of course, YMMV :-)

Why in heaven’s name are you using iDisk via the Web instead of a synced local copy? That makes zero sense to me. I have lots of data on my iDisk, and it’s synced locally to my MacBook and iMac. I always have the same data no matter which machine I use, and it’s local so speed is not an issue. I also love that it’s local so if I can’t get on the network, or lose a connection, etc., I can go on about my business unaffected, knowing it’ll sync back up when I re-connect.

If you use more than one Mac, and especially if you add at least one iPhone in the mix, there is no better deal MobileMe. Its cost is trivial for the features it provides.

For file sync, use DropBox or maybe Windows Live Mesh/Sync. For calendar and all other services, use Google. You probably already have a Google account anyway and Apple has kindly built all of these services into their OS. They even use much of the same internal plumbing that MobileMe takes advantage of. Not to mention that iPhone is supported completely.

In fact, I’d argue that my “frankenlist” has actually saved me time. In the 30 days that I used MobileMe, the service was consistently slow, unavailable or throwing bizarre errors. I’ve been happier and more productive using alternatives. It just goes to show that “mileage may vary.”