It looks like MobileMe might be in for some improvements next year, given Steve Jobs' purported response to one frustrated customer.

I love my iPad and iPhone 4 and am a huge fan of yours and all that Apple does. I desperately want to stay inside of Apple'e ecosystem as much as possible. However, MobileMe is making it very difficult for me to do so. Unreliable/unpredictable syncing, creating duplicate entries (sometimes scores of them), etc. It's almost unusable. And I know from forums (including Apple's own support boards) that I am not the only one experiencing these very real and frustrating problems. Please tell me it will get better, and soon?

The Steve Jobs response:

Yes, it will get a lot better in 2011.

Sent from my iPhone

I'm sure we've all had our ups and downs with MobileMe at one point, given the service has had some reliability issues since its re-launch (previously named .Mac) in 2008. With one of its most valuable features (Find My iPhone) recently going free, some wonder if the service is still worth the $99/year cost.

What sort of improvements do you see Apple bringing to the table with MobileMe? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

[MacRumours]

BGR is reporting that one of their reliable sources is claiming to know Apple's iTunes is going to the cloud and soon. The source states these cloud capabilities will be broken down into 3 separate groups:

• Streaming music and movies from Apple’s servers to your computers, devices, etc.
• Streaming music and movies from your home computers to your other computers, remote devices, etc.
• Wireless iTunes syncing with devices

Is this the fabled iTunes.com we've been hearing about for a while now, and if so, when can we expect all of these exciting new iTune features? Our best guess - Apple's yearly fall event, which as you may already know is all about the iPod and music. BGR's tipster even added we will see Apple introduce “two new devices with camera/camcorder capabilities.”

One might be that new iOS Apple TV we've heard rumored before. The other...? Speculate in the comments below!

[BGR]

According to CNET on Gizmodo, Apple is once again rumored to be considering a streaming, cloud-based (iTunes.com?) movie service.

Apple has told the studios that under the plan, iTunes users will access video from various Internet-connected devices. Apple would of course prefer that users access video from the iPad, the company's upcoming tablet computer, the sources said. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Apple doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.

Combine this with streaming music, and CNET's sources claim Apple wants to eliminate the need for local storage (hard drives, but also the far smaller, more expensive NAND Flash drives on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad).

Studios haven't signed on yet, however, since they're worried they'll be locked into Apple's proprietary system. (Is that supposed to be funny, seeing how iTunes Music is now DRM-free and can play on anything, while Hollywood still insists on DRM and that's what makes iTunes locked in?)

The CECE consortium, Disney's KeyChest, and Google are all listed as competitors, but Apple's iPad might give them the edge if it takes off with consumers -- especially if it offers apps from "rivals" like Netflix, Hulu, etc.

In fact, that might just make Apple the best of all worlds. Now that would be funny, wouldn't it Hollywood?

The important thing, however, is consumers. In the wake of Sidekick outages, Playstation Network outages, RIM BlackBerry outages -- and of course MobileMe -- are we ready to leave our media to the cloud?

In a guest-post on TechCrunch, MP3.com founder and MP3tunes CEO, Michael Robertson cites a "wide variety of insider sources" when saying Apple will NOT offer subscription services any time soon, but rather leverage their recent acquisition of Lala to take iTunes to the cloud:

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.

This, Robertson maintains, will allow Apple to sidestep new licensing agreements and still provide content to the tens of millions of iPhones, iPod touches, Apple TVs, and (presumably forthcoming) iTablets/iSlates. Lala's involvement in specific, he says, will give Apple a jump-start in rolling out the service, essential in competing with the likes of online-powerhouse Amazon.

And Robertson states flat out we can expect mobile iTunes in 2010.

You want?

This is how it works: You install the Zumo client on your PC or Mac. Once installed it can automatically look for your music and photo libraries. You can also add your own files and folders to sync too.

Once your data has synced to the cloud, it is accessible on your iPhone over EDGE, 3G or Wi-Fi. One nice feature I particularly like is when playing music, it displays the album art of your song; this is really a nice touch. Your data is also accessible via a web browser too when the iPhone isn't enough. To learn more about ZumoDrive, click here. [Free- iTunes link]

The Wall Street Journal is weighing in on Apple's purchase of online streaming music service, Lala, saying Apple is using it to explore taking iTunes to the cloud:

Lala.com lets users buy and listen to music through a Web browser, meaning its customers can access purchases from anywhere, as long as they are connected to the Internet. Apple is considering adopting that same model for songs sold on iTunes, a change that would give consumers more ways to access and manage their iTunes purchases—and wouldn't require them to download Apple's software or their purchases.

According to the WSJ, Apple paid $85 million for Lala, and that the big brains behind the service would be given "very significant roles" inside Apple.

Even before the acquisition closed Friday, Lala Chairman Bill Nguyen and Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president for Internet services, began making joint calls to various business partners, including record-label groups, discussing possibilities for the music service's future.

Big Media is said to be cautiously optimistic about the concept, "optimistic" about web-based purchases, but "cautious" about adding to iTunes already dominant position in online music. And, of course, with plans still in the early stages, much could change before Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller put sneaker to stage and announce a customer facing solution.

While anywhere, anytime access sounds appealing, they also point out that past services have had problems negotiating "virtual goods", such as Amazon pulling books from users' Kindles, and we'd add Microsoft's DRM services shutting down and placing access to user-purchased content in doubt. There's still that Google partnership to navigate as well.

All in all, however, if iTunes goes cloud, as long as we still have the ability to buy and download music as well if we so choose, TiPb thinks it will be a net gain. (No pun intended). What do you think?

Techcrunch thinks the move of iTunes to the clouds is inevitable. Back in February there were rumors of something called iTunes Replay, that would allow users to store their media purchases -- which can easily grow to 10s if not 100s of GBs fairly quickly -- on Apple's servers and then stream them down to iTunes, Apple TV, or their iPhone or iPod touch on-demand.

Nothing came of it at the time. Since then, however, Apple has begun building a world-class data center in North Carolina, and baked a new HTTP streaming media feature into both the iPhone/iPod and the Mac.

With cost of hard drive storage still falling, and 2TB soon being realistic capacities for standard home media centers, do we -- or Apple -- really need to think about the "cloud" so much?

We do if we use iPhones, iPod touches, laptops... or upcoming iTablet and like-devices dependent on smaller, still more-expensive solid state storage. Sure local copies for backup are nigh impossible for old curmudgeons like myself to even consider giving up, but syncing, deleting, and otherwise managing content can be a pain in our old curmudgeonly nethers as well.

There's one key area, however, it doesn't address -- bandwidth caps. Sure, they're not an issue for most people in the US, but they are in countries where internet service is both more expensive, slower, and far more tightly capped. (Like where I am, in the distant realm of Canada.)

And even in the US, if cable and DSL companies start losing TV subscribers to iTunes, those prices and lack of caps might just change as well.

Of course, letting us sync and manage our content over WiFi could and should be an alternative. iTunes and Apple TV can already sync over WiFi, and the iPhone can download movies from the iTunes Store over WiFi. Why can't the iPhone browse our PC's iTunes library and transfer media over via WiFi?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. That's the future. Maybe. This is now. Do you want your iTunes in the cloud?

During the 2008 WWDC Keynote today, Apple VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, confirmed the rumors of a .Mac maga-revamp in the form of MobileMe.

Apple's answer both to previous critiques of the admittedly out-dated .Mac service, and the expected cloud computing boom (see Android, Google), MobileMe features ActiveSync-like "push" email, calendar, and contacts syncing between your iPhone (or iPod Touch) and your Mac or PC, or via any web browser with some pretty spectacular looking Web 2.0/AJAX style online apps. It also adds photo syncing, clearly targeting consumers.

iDisk (the online storage service) gets a bump to 20GB, and goes fully online as well. Mac user? Still enjoy the Mac sync, iWeb, and Back-to-my-Mac that you know (and I) love.

Launching in July in time for the new iPhone 3G, and priced at the same $99 as .Mac, it still smacks the expensive, but if your don't have Exchange, and value highly polished syncing and web-based solutions, this might just be the service for you.

Existing .Mac customers will be rolled into MobileMe -- see Apple's migration page for details -- with a choice of maintaining their old @mac.com address, or the new @.me equivalent.

For more, go to me.com (which will redirect you to Apple.com/MobileMe), where a handy-dandy MobileMe guided tour awaits!