Subscribers to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service (even cheaper from Amazon
Launch the app and you will be prompted to provide your MobileMe username and password. You will then see a list of all of your MobileMe folders.
Tap on a folder and you will see a list of the files in the folder. Tap on a file supported by the iPhone such as a Word or Excel document, an iWork document, a picture, a video or a song, and the file will be downloaded from your iDisk to your iPhone so that you can view the file. You can quickly see a list of files that you have recently viewed by tapping on the Recents icon at the bottom. In the Settings, you can decide how much space to devote to iDisk files that you download (the default is 100MB) so that when you return to a file that you recently viewed, the file pops up instantly without having to download it again. In addition to viewing files on your own iDisk, you can tap on the Public Folders icon to view the public files of other MobileMe users.
Viewing files works great, and while there are other apps that currently allow you to do the same thing (such as Quickoffice) it is nice to have a free app from Apple. But what makes the iDisk app really powerful is the ability to share files on your iDisk, especially larger files that would be a hassle to attach to an e-mail. I’ll walk you through an example to show you how it works.
In my Music folder I have two songs that my father (an architect by day and amateur musician by night) wrote. Let’s say I am out and about and I want to send the song to a friend of mine. I have the song on my iPod, but of course you cannot e-mail files from the iPod. However, because I have a copy of the song on my iDisk, I can load up this app and tap on the share icon to the right of the song. This creates an e-mail from my MobileMe e-mail account. I choose a recipient by tapping the plus sign to choose from my address book (or just type in any e-mail address).
I now have access to the advanced MobileMe file sharing options. By default, the recipient will have one month to download the file and will not need to enter a password, but you can change those options if you want. Enter any message that you want and then hit send.
The recipient then gets an e-mail that doesn’t have the file attached but instead has a button that can be clicked to download the file to their computer. It looks much like this:
Again, this is great for large files because you avoid dealing with the problems of big attachments such as slow e-mail. Once you are sharing a file, you will see an indication in the form of a green icon that the file is being shared. You can also tap on the Shared Files icon at the bottom of the screen to see all files that you are sharing. At any time, you can change the sharing status for any file by tapping the sharing icon, so you can make the file available for a longer time, or you can stop sharing the file completely.
Apple has also posted this video to show you more about the app, but I don’t think you really need to read any further; if you use MobileMe, then you will want to get this free app. Not only does it give you an easy way to view your iDisk files, but it also gives you a great solution for sharing larger files, even when you are on the go and only have access to your iPhone but not your computer.
By the way, if you want to download the song I am using in my example titled “The New New Orleans,” click here to download it (for free!) from my iDisk. It’s a fun, toe-tapping song recorded in late 2005 which, as I mentioned in my sample e-mail, captures the positive spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans. My father Bob Richardson (who wrote the song) is on guitar, and the other great New Orleans musicians who recorded the song are Dave Carboni as lead vocal and on bass, Jason Lohmeyer on keyboard and Buzzy Beano on guitar and banjo. I’d love to hear from you if you like the song; my Dad will get a kick out of knowing that others are enjoying it.
Click here to download MobileMe iDisk (free): 
Ah, temptation. I signed up for MobileMe when it first became available on a 90 days trial basis and it was terrible. I was most interested in having my staff update my calendar on the fly i.e. without having to sync at my PC. That feature never worked and to make matters worse depending on the phase of the moon (or so it seemed) my contacts would either be wiped out or in triplicate.
A couple of years have passed and I notice fewer and fewer people complaining about it. And now there’s this free app. Tempting.
Paying for 20GBs of server space is not very enticing when nowadays companies like Microsoft are making gobs of server space available for free (although it makes as much sense to depend on Microsoft to keep your data safe as it does to have the federal government run health insurance). The transfer of large files via email is a nice feature but Apple has a free iPhone/iPod Touch app developed by YouSendIt, a plug in for Outlook that, depending on whether you use the free or $10/month version, allows you to seemlessly send (and your recipient receive)large amounts of data via email. It’s making ftp transfer software, even free ones like FileZilla, obsolete. The YouSendIt app allows you to track delivery of the files and some other cool features. (For the record, I have no pecuniary interest in the company.)
Anyway, back to the point, the nightmare that was the trial version of MobileMe left a bitter taste in my mouth and I’m reluctant to try it again unless the majority of people agree that the bugs have been ironed out.
On another (unrelated) note, I’m still yearning and groaning for a Mac of some type, preferably a Pro, like you high priced, high faluten (spell check is having a ball with that one) lawyers down in NOLA have but I still can’t justify it (the price). Someday, maybe someday, I’ll be able to enjoy that OS and all the cool apps.
I downloaded the application. Nothing shows on the idisk, and I assume I have to first upload stuff to it via MobleMe on my laptop. One odd thing, however; you indicate that the idisk capacity should be 20GB, but the program shows only 10GB available on my (so far) empty idisk!
[Jeff responds: My iDisk has 20GB and that’s what the Apple website says that you get. Do you have a trial account or are you a paid subscriber? Also, you are correct that nothing will show up on the iDisk until you upload files. You need to do that with a computer, although there are also some iPhone apps like Quickoffice that allow you to upload files from the iPhone to a MobileMe iDisk.]
Pretty good tune!
Isn’t uploading a music file and then sharing it with a friend for downloading illegal? Isn’t it the same like Kazaa or Limewire? Just wondering…I tried it and it worked great but I don’t want to get busted.
[Jeff responds: Since the author of the song is my Dad, I made sure that I had full permission to distribute this song. He is not looking to make money off of it, and just likes the idea of more people hearing his music. As for any other songs that you may share via MobileMe, you are correct that you will want to only share music (or other) files that you create or have permission to share. The reason I used a song as an example in this post is that it is a good example of a large file that you wouldn’t want to have to attach to e-mail after e-mail to share it; it is so much easier to put it on iDisk and then point people to it.]
@ Charles
Mobileme auto-arranges the 20GB’s of storage to 10GB iDisk and 10GB of mail storage, you can change that in your settings at me.com
as for me; i got a free lifetime mobileme account with 60GB of storage through apple sales program, and i love it. i got an iphone and a macbook pro, the sharing of files is great. i upload my whole itunes library to iDisk, and me and my friends can access it through the public folder 😀
mobileme ftw!
When I open my MobileFiles icon on my iPod Touch, it goes to a screen that shows 2 icons –(my name’s) iDisk and “on (my name’s) iPod.”. Files I’ve uploaded to my iDisk are on the first one , as expected, but there’s nothing on the other one. What’s it for and how do you use it?
Because I have an iPod touch, not an iPhone, my iDisk is not accessible when I’m not inrange of a wifi network. Is there any way around this?