I've posted before about the new .Me sync-to-the-cloud offering from Apple. It will give you push e-mail, contacts and calendaring to and from your iPhone, Mac and PC.
BlackBerry has just announced their BlackBerry Unite! product for the United States and other countries. They began a test marketing of this product in Spain in 2007 and in Canada earlier this year. Now at the BlackBerry Unite! website (LINK) you can download what is effectively BlackBerry's answer to .Me.
But what a difference. Apple's .Me is from 2008. BlackBerry's Unite! is from perhaps the year 2000.
Unite! must live on your own PC, that you've got keep constantly on. It is essentially a stripped down version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) without the need for Microsoft Exchange. Intended for families and small business, it doesn't appear to provide any of the ease of use that such customers require. I downloaded it and tried to get it to work but failed. The product uses MS Explorer as a front-end but despite excessive tinkering with my security settings on Explorer, try as I might I couldn't get the thing to load.
Apple's .Me, I'm sure, will be simple to configure. Launching in about a week (early July), it doesn't require you to install it on your own PC (how radical!) because it lives in the cloud (LINK). It's essentially BlackBerry Enterprise Server for the rest of us. And will continue to erode RIM's hold on businesses as well as individuals.
Related:
IntoMobile LINK
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