Live Mesh on Leopard
When I first tried Microsoft Live Mesh 13 days ago, I was not impressed. The installation experience on Vista is pathetic:
- It is slow (the installer)
- It temporarily puts Vista into a downgraded graphics mode
- It seems fairly invasive, requiring a reboot to remove
Adding insult to injury, Live Mesh is crippled if your default browser is Firefox. The error page says in order to use that particular feature, use the desktop notifier instead. But when I use the notifier, it redirects me to my default browser, producing the same error message. I promptly removed Live Mesh from that PC. And then I had to reboot.
The Leopard Experience
Because I know how to have a good time, I installed the Live Mesh client for OSX Leopard just now. Here are my initial impressions:
- They provide a normal OSX installation experience. Specifically, you download a DMG file, drag it to the Applications folder, and it’s done.
- It works. After entering my Live username/password, well…that’s all I had to do.
- Using the Live Mesh tool, I created a folder in my Documents directory. The other option is to share existing directories. These are just normal directories that Live Mesh syncs to.
- Now, I can drag files to that directory and they sync to my Live Mesh account in “the cloud”.
What. The. Fuck. The Leopard Live Mesh experience is intuitive and obvious, completely different than what I experienced on Vista. If they can make the Vista client work as well, this will be a killer product.
(yes, I know about Dropbox.)
I’ve used Dropbox and I like it. Though the installation could be simplified, it relies too much on the stupid Wizard pattern of showing only one input at a time, leaving me completely in the dark about where I am and what comes next.
Anyway, could you do a comparison of Dropbox and Live Mesh, at least on Leopard?
Not sure why you’re having trouble with the Vista Mesh install. My install experience was pleasant.
Is there feature parity between the Vista and OSX versions? Mo features = mo complexity…
This would still not be too surprising. MSFT’s Mac software is usually done by a team in Mountain View, not part of the central Borg in Redmond. They usually adhere to the usability standards of the platform, which are obviously different than those in Windows. A lot of folks think that OSX flavor of Office consistently outshines the Windows versions, despite the Windows version usually having a few more features.