MobileMe Family Pack looks like an “individual” subscription

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I just signed up for MobileMe and bought the family pack — when I activated the account, though, it looked like I had an “individual” subscription, not a “family” subscription.

Their terminology is pretty confusing to the casual observer.

If you buy a “Family Pack”, you’re really buying one “individual” account as well as four “family” accounts. The account that you activate MobileMe with will be the “individual” account that has the 20GB of storage (so choose the username carefully).

To activate the family accounts, first click the account tab (the far right button), then click “Account Options.” You’ll see this:

There’s several scary red things saying stuff is going to expire, and credit card billing information missing. You’re supposed to intuit that the tiny “(Set Up Account…)” link is what you’re supposed to click to add your 4 family accounts:

This experience was not pleasant. Nebulous terminology mixed with user experience mistakes will cost Apple a lot of support calls and emails.

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  • dchao

    “will cost Apple a lot of support calls and emails”

    Nope, it will NOT. Since Apple is not taking support calls related to MobileMe, and emails are standard type of replies.

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    You’re right — I still haven’t received anything other than an automated response when I asked about this.

    MobileMe’s failure to synchronize calendar subscriptions is another disappointment… And the “server error” and double-sync problems with my contacts… And the inability to log in to the “family” accounts on the me.com site…

    Pretty horrid deploy.

  • Betty

    I was wondering how the disk space is segregated among the family accounts. My daughter wants to have her own web page. If I give her one of the family accounts, does she only get 5G for that? Who has access to the 20G? Confusing…

    Thanks.

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Yeah, the first account you create gets the 20gb. If you share your iPhoto album with two accounts, and those account log into different MobileMe accounts, iPhoto will get confused. Make sure you “sync with MobileMe” when you switch between accounts, or you won’t be able to push photos to the right place.

  • Bob

    Finally a simple answer to a question I have been asking for a couple of weeks. Thanks

  • paul

    I agree, it was not very Apple (simple) to figure out the family pack, however after reading this I simply put in my wife’s me info (was on a trial account) and it seemed to figure everything out immediately.
    Thanks for your post

  • tcbritt

    I have a question about the mobile me family pack that I havent been able to find an answer for. does this allow two different people to sync two seperate libraries of information from two different computers?

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    You can share files with “iDisk”, and subscribe to iPhoto albums you’ve published to me.com, but dropbox is an easier way to share files between people.

  • Christian

    in regards to sharing files on “iDisk” is it possible to set up a family account so info can be kept separate on the “hard drive in the sky?” in other words, access to stored documents would only be assessable to the family member who stores them, not to the entire family?

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Yes, that’s how iDisk works. The files on your “virtual hard drive” is only visible to you. If you’re worried about something being seen by the “wrong eyes,” though, please read this post. It’s easy and free.

    If you want to share specific files with other people (and enable concurrent collaboration), I’d try Dropbox, which gives you 2 GB for free, and has this sort of “share this document with only Sally and Fred” functionality.

  • Kathy

    I have a family pack but when I follow instructions to add my daughter it only goes to an upgrade option. This stinks!

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Bummer — I actually decided not to renew my account this year, just because the service was spotty and the integration with iPhoto ’08 was buggy. I switched to picasa, gmail, google calendar, and exporting photos with iWeb to my own server.

  • Raoul

    Hello,

    I am using the free trial for the moment. If i upgrade to the family pack, having 2 accounts, will there also appear seperate idisks in finder? I would like to use me.com as webhost and idisk/Web as interface to upload content…2 separate websites, NOT created with iWeb and both with personal domain names.

    Thanks

    Raoul

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Yes, the iDisks will show up for the currently logged-in users.

    There will be permission issues with those disks if you try to access account “a” while logged in as “b” though.

    If you just need hosting, I’d get a hosting plan with verio or slicehost or lunarpages or someone else, though. I had performance issues and uptime problems with me.com.

  • Phxterp

    If you have a family pack (5 accounts) and you want to allocate the provided space, total 40gb’s, into just 2 accounts how would you do that?

    I have the master account 20gb’s and my partner has one of the individual family accounts 5gb’s…is there a way for me to give 2 of the remaining account’s space to her (10gb’s) and the last 1 (5gb’s) to me?

  • Anonymous

    I don’t believe you could customize the storage allocation, at least a couple years ago, when I had a MobileMe account.

    I actually cancelled my MobileMe account after the first year — with the site instability and cost, it just wasn’t worth it.

    My mail and calendars are now served by gmail/Google Apps (which is free), and I share files with my family now with DropBox: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE5NTExMDk

    DropBox works on Mac, Windows, Linux, AND iPhones and Android. It’s very slick.