Find My Anything-Apple

Apple's "Find my iPhone" feature is a diamond in the rough within the MobileMe package for small business users. The service allows users to register their iOS-based devices and can help locate a lost or stolen device by using the on-board GPS. But the real power--especially for small businesses that can't afford extensive third-party mobile device management packages--is the capability to lock down or wipe an iOS-based device remotely.

It's not a bulletproof solution, but for small businesses concerned with the proliferation of mobile devices, it's a worthwhile bit of insurance. If Apple can find a way to extend that kind of coverage to its MacBook notebooks, it will have a service that will be both valuable and worth paying for many small business owners.

Make It Seamless

I am a MobileMe subscriber back to its .Mac days. In the early days, its seamless integration with the Mac OS X interface was a big part of the reason it was attractive to me as a writer (and a small business in my own right). Today, that kind of integration has been largely matched by that offered by free or freemium services such as Gmail and Dropbox, so it's not as big a differentiator as it once was. In fact, Dropbox today syncs files between my computers and the cloud much more efficiently than does the MobileMe iDisk.