Friday, December 19, 2008

URL for MobileMe iDisk Public Folder

MobileMe iDisk users can share files Publicly, but it's less than obvious how to do it. Further, the whole MobileMe experience is still a bit buggy as well, in my experience. Apple announced back in the summer when MobileMe launched, that easy sharing of public files via email would be "coming soon", and their site still reflects that notion. The MobileMe launch was not quite Apple, actually, and felt very poorly handled. Maybe if we're good we'll get a nice MobileMe upgrade Christmas present and be able to share Public file URLs easily via email. That aside, here's how you can do it now:

How to Share Files via your MobileMe iDisk Public Folder

First, let's assume your MobileMe login name is awako.kaneyama@me.com. You would simply connect to your iDisk in OS X or Windows, and copy files you wish to share into the Public folder. Then, tell your friends the URL:
http://idisk.mac.com/awako.kaneyama/Public
They can visit the URL and download the AVIs of junior tearing up the yard.

But wait, there's a caveat.

I tried this in Flock, which is built using the Firefox 3 engine, and the Public site just stalls out, with a handsome progress spinner, spinning endlessly. It works fine with Safari, though. Ironic, no? (Please, Apple, don't become Microsoft.) I hope Apple's MobileMe team will work these bugs out soon, but until then, Enjoy!

2 comments:

jr said...

Suggestions: I need idisk to have some additional features and I do not think I am alone in these suggestions. I need to be able to assign different names and passwords to different clients to limit what folders different clients can access. I need to be able to set folders so that files can be uploaded and downloaded but no one other than me can delete a file. Clients need to be able to upload and download folders and not just files.

Until these simple and necessary features are added, the public folder of iDisk in a non functional feature that is so limiting it is almost useless.

Rick Cogley said...

Thanks for stopping by, JR. I agree. You should definitely let Apple know your suggestions. -- Rick