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On Monday, Apple introduced a new service that delivers push e-mail, push contacts and push calendars into the "cloud" of native applications on the iPhone, iPod touch, Macs and PCs.

Dubbed MobileMe, the service also provides a suite of ad-free Web applications that aim to deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser.

MobileMe applications -- available at www.me.com -- include Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online.

"Think of MobileMe as 'Exchange for the rest of us,'" said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push e-mail, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get."

Pushing Against BlackBerry

Here's how it works: With a MobileMe e-mail account, all folders, messages and status indicators look identical whether you are checking e-mail on an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac or PC. New e-mail messages are pushed instantly to the iPhone over the cellular network or Wi-Fi, removing the need to manually check e-mail and wait for downloads.

"With the BlackBerry, if you are sent an e-mail, you get it right away. In the previous version of the iPhone, you had to go back and sync up before you could get your e-mail," said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. "If you can get e-mail on your iPhone on the fly now, that's a pretty significant advantage."

Push technology also keeps contacts and calendars continuously up-to-date so changes made on one device are automatically pushed up to the cloud and down to other devices. Push works with the native applications on the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as Microsoft Outlook for the PC. It also works with the Mac OS X applications Mail, Address Book...