I’ve been using Apple’s MobileMe service for years—even way back when it was called .Mac.* I remember when it was free a free service; it’s now a $99 annual subscription (though we often have coupons, rebates, and other offers for up to $30 off MobileMe).
I continue to pay for MobileMe because, for the money, it’s a very useful service. It offers synchronization of email, contacts, Safari bookmarks, and calendars between Macs, PCs, iPods, and iPhone. It also offers a very attractive online photo gallery, 20GB of online data storage, and my favorite feature, Find My iPhone.
The Find My iPhone feature helps you locate your iPhone (or iPod touch or iPad) if has been lost or misplaced. It also allows you to display a message on your iPhone to help someone return it to you.The Remote Passcode Lock feature lets you remotely lock your iPhone and create a new or replacement 4-digit passcode. Finally, the Find My iPhone features Remote Wipe, which lets you erase all your information on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch in case you don’t recover it.
Apple famously used Remote Wipe to “brick” the prototype iPhone that was “found” in a bar in California a couple of weeks ago. Just today I watched Don use MobileMe to remotely reset his iPad in advance of selling it to upgrade to iPad 3G. All he had to do was log in to his MobileMe account, click the “Find My iPhone” button, enter his password, select his iPad from the list of his registered devices, and select “Remote Wipe.” Within a minute, his iPad had automatically erased all data and reset to the factory settings.
To enable this feature, you have to turn on Find My iPhone in your MobileMe account settings. iPhone OS 3.0 or later is required to use Find My iPhone and the Remote Wipe feature; iPhone OS 3.1 is required for the Remote Passcode Lock feature.
You can learn more about Remote Wipe by clicking here. See MobileMe on Smalldog.com by clicking here.
Here’s Apple Support article to help you troubleshoot Remote Wipe: MobileMe Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe
*Editor’s Note: Actually, I think both of us have been users since it was called iTools in 2002!