The Zune isn’t all bad. First of all, there’s the Zune HD, which at least looks really good. And then there’s the ability to share music and other media content via Wi-Fi with your other Zune-toting friends (is there really a group of people where more than one member has a Zune?) so that they can check out what you’re into without making a purchase they might regret or getting your headphones all gross and earwaxy.

Apple looks to be thinking about borrowing a page from Microsoft’s playbook for once, in that if BusinessWeek is correct, the company is planning on doing a similar thing with apps downloaded from the iPhone and iPod touch’s App Store. According to BusinessWeek’s source, who is listed only as someone familiar with the technology, Apple has baked into iPhone 3.0 the ability for users to share software with one another.

The apparent intent behind the app-sharing service is that users will then be prompted to buy apps they enjoy that their friends have shown them. The source seems unsure whether Apple plans to flip the switch that would render the sharing services active. An Apple spokeswoman, when contacted, said only that the company has “made no announcements at this time.” I wish I was an Apple PR rep. You spend all day coming up with new ways to say “no comment.”

The ability to share apps via peer-to-peer connections helps Apple in two ways. First, it solves the problem of not offering try-before-you-buy limited versions of all apps for users to test out (”lite” and other duplicate apps released at the discretion of developers notwithstanding). Second, it builds a “street team” that’s millions of users strong, so to speak. Why pay for promotion when you can enlist your own users to do it for you?

Sharing will definitely be temporary, so don’t start imagining an app exchange community where you pool your resources and split the cost of, say, every major game release that comes out. Little else is mentioned about the program’s specifics, though. In a perfect world, you’d have the option to purchase right away following an instance of app sharing, and you’d be able to set strict privacy settings to prevent just anyone on the street from trying to share apps with you.

I agree with BusinessWeek that the future of the iPhone (and all smartphone devices) lies in more and improved P2P functions, and a way to share content directly between devices without any third-party intermediary definitely seems like the next logical step. Then again, opening those doors could also open the floodgates to more and improved piracy, too, which maybe explains why the tech is lying dormant for now.

The MobileMe trial began to seem like it was going to go on forever, since Apple kept tacking on more time to make up for having released a half-baked service to begin with. Sadly, not so. My own trial term recently came to an end, but by the time it did, I’d become fairly dependent on the service, so I quietly acquiesced while Apple charged my credit card for the full subscription.

Some others did not go so quietly, and promptly canceled their account rather than be caught paying. The result? All of their data not only no longer synced, it no longer existed. Part of the downfall of storing info in the cloud is that when you stop paying for said cloud, it has a very short memory. What had happened was that users who’d forgotten to disable sync in their devices’ settings had indeed synced. With their information gone from the MobileMe servers, what replaced it was blank information. Long story short, sync with nothing and you end up with nothing.

It looks like the only way to recover the data is to pay for a full year’s subscription, and then cancel said subscription. Alternatively, you can just remember to turn off MobileMe syncing before canceling your account, if you haven’t already done so.

I’m conflicted as to who’s to blame here, but I’d say Apple should probably have made people more aware that this sort of thing might happen if they didn’t continue their MobileMe subscription or at least disabled the ability to sync to the account. A perfect time to do so would’ve been in those reminder emails they send out shortly before your trial subscription runs out. As a cautionary tale, the whole mess is a good reminder that the cloud is not yet the be all and end all of computing.