Who is to blame for MobileMe?
Steve Jobs is not a manager who suffers fools, gladly or otherwise. In the early days of Apple, he was famous for categorizing employees by their "bozo bit," set at either 0 or 1, and for flipping his assessment from one to the other in the space of an elevator ride.
So what's he going to do about whoever is in charge of MobileMe?
For readers who haven't been losing e-mail, screwing up syncs, tracking the MobileMe discussion boards (96,000 messages as of Friday morning, more than 340,000 views) or reading the reviews (Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal gave it a rare "can't recommend," David Pogue at the New York Times escalated it to "the real problem is how Apple is responding"), suffice it to say that MobileMe, which went more or less live on July 10, is Apple's worst product launch in the 10 years since Jobs returned from exile.
In Apple's defense, MobileMe is an ambitious project — promising cloud computing and enterprise-quality syncing of e-mail, contacts and calendar appointments to millions of users for $99 a year. After a sputtering start (accompanied by a formal apology and a 30-day free subscription extension) parts of it are working moderately well. MacWorld, in the most exhaustive review yet, gave it three and half mice out of five.
But the five or six hours I lost e-mail contact with the world this week were bad enough; I can't imagine what it's been like for the estimated 20,000 loyal Apple customers who paid their $99 (or $149 for a family pack) and haven't had e-mail service for more than a week.
Apple (AAPL) has not said which of its managers was in charge of the development of MobileMe, who chose that unfortunate name, or who decided to launch it at the same time the rest of the company was busy trying to get iPhone 2.0, the App Store, and the iPhone 3G out the door.
At the World Wide Developers Conference in June, it was Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for product marketing, who demoed it, leaving the strong impression that MobileMe would "push" contact and calendar changes nearly instantaneously from Mac to iPhone to PC and back — an impression that Apple was forced to correct last week. And it was Steve Jobs himself who called it "Exchange for the rest of us," as if MobileMe could match the performance of Microsoft's (MSFT) competing product. The company's retail sales staff has since been instructed to stop using that phrase.
It's more than likely heads will roll over this botched roll-out — if they haven't already. But given Jobs' well-documented propensity for micromanagement, it's also possible that he was warned that the product wasn't ready for primetime and wouldn't take "no" for an answer.
If that's the case, the blame for MobileMe may be his.
I don't know about Mobile me, but I have all I can take with the $300. dollar Time Capsuel. It said I was all done, set up accomplished. Now I cannot use my office building with my Mac Pro. The simplest router there is in in my home in Malibu, and only for that cheap little router I'd not be able to write ANYONE or do any work on my high end MacPro. Disgusted.
"My wife is unhappy with the iPhone because there are times when no WiFi is available for her to surf, unlike her Blackberry which never had this problem."
The iPhone uses either Edge network or 3G to surf the internet when no WiFi is available. If she can make a phone call, she can surf the internet.
My wife is unhappy with the iPhone because there are times when no WiFi is available for her to surf, unlike her Blackberry which never had this problem.
@
“Warning – I am NO MS fan…”
There is no person in their right mind who is a “fan” of Microsoft. There may be people who like MS products, some are investing in MS and are happy to drum-up the company but there are NO people who, in analogy to Apple fanboys, have “feelings” to the corporate entity called Microsoft Corp. Apple fanboys have to invent this kind of “MS fanboys bogey” because they would look ridiculous otherwise – the only group of people (outside of sport clubs situation) to support a commercial entity without direct remuneration in a way similar to religious missionary or ideology/political groups.
Warning – I am NO MS fan…but hopefully Apple will be more careful with PC – MAC comparison…one thing which everyone seems to be missing in the MMe disaster is that iphone OS X 2.0 literally 'sucks' – had it not been for the Apps, I would have switched back to the previos version – atleast that was more stable than this half baked untest 2.0….Vista to XP and OS X Mobile 2.0 to 1.1.4 
…..They say People living in Glass Houses (read – Apple stores) dont throw stones at others!!!
I'm one of the few people who just wants my phone to make phone calls (okay, and text also), so Apple's latest misstep doesn't affect me at all. Hopefully the trend won't continue and affect their Mac OS X development which is all I really care about.
I started my MobileMe account on the first day it was launched. I got it set up and running on an iTouch and my Apple computer the next day and it has been fine ever since.
Why are we even giving this corporate criminal the time of day? Don't want to be married to ANY device…so SCREW APPLE, and it's monopolistic MO.
A rare mea-culpa of the Pope and the worshippers. But like all lovers' spats, just you wait for Mossberg repenting in a couple of weeks "All has been rectified by Aaaaapppplee…and now is seamless (lick-lick), elegant (suck-suck) and way better than the unstable, not user friendly and cluncky applications that ALL of the competition try to provide blatantly copying Apple".
And wait for the loyal Media Collaborators to spread the "news" to masses.
Why does anyone use Mobile Me when there is a free service that syncs between iPhone, PC and Mac equally effortlessly beats me.
That service is called Plaxo (www.plaxo.com) and no one should live without it.
My email has been pretty good. A few short outages but nothing disastrous.
The real problem has been Sync. It hasn't worked since April.
I finally went on the web and IM'd the support. I got some solutions (we're working on it, it's not your fault) but far from what I'm paying for.
I'm sure Apple will fix it eventually, but these things leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths.
I don't know if Apple will lose market share on this one (we Mac fans are pretty rabid) but I'd bet you dollars to donuts they aren't going to gain any market share either.
The PC junkies are really laughing up their sleeve on this one.
Mark
P.S. – I agree that Mobile Me is a stupid name. I know – how about leaving it as .Mac and not confusing everyone. And what's with this "cloud" business. It's data syncing and off-site backup. We don't need any cutesy yet mysterious marketing name. It is what it is – data. Also, what is enterprise-quality syncing? Either it works 100% or it doesn't. Period. I'm not going to be handing out a grade of C+ on a good effort. School is over, this is the real world. If it's not 100% all the time (or at least a vastly huge amount of the time) it's a worthless piece of junk and a waste of my time and money. If I need those types of services for the smooth operation of my business, I'll find something that works today.
MobileMe Rating: Two Thumbs in the eye
Pay attention Apple – That rating is from one of your most loyal fanatics
I have spoke to a few customer relations people at Apple over the course of the last nine days, trying to emphasize how frustrated those of us in the 1% category are at the seeming lack of "prioritization" we have received since Mobile Me (nee .Mac mail) went down July 18. Although, based on the email received last night, Apple has re-committed itself towards resolving the issue, I do not see anything related to compensating those of us in the unfortunate 1% category. When asked about compensation, Apple keeps sticking by its "generous offer of 30 day extension of membership" but I don't feel that is a sympathetic response.
According to articles I've read online, Apple has approximately 2 million members. This means that 20,000 of us have been impacted over the last 8 days (and counting). We represent $2.6M of $256M in annual revenue from Mobile Me.
Apple extended ALL contracts 30 days. This means that 99% of Apple's mail base received compensation without suffering the catastrophic meltdown the 1% of us have been asked to endure.
The 30 day extension "cost" Apple $21.5M. Does it seem fair that we, the 1%, only represent $215K of this amount and yet we've endured the BRUNT of Apple's "serious issue with one of our mail servers that has prevented you from accessing your Mobile Me mail account for the last week"? Is that all we are worth to Apple? $215K?? Do they honestly believe a 30 day extension of our contracts and the statement "We apologize for this service outage and the frustration it has caused you" is enough for the 1% of us that have been impacted, losing email, inability to send or receive email, now currently only able to access our email via the Web, not via our Applications which, thankfully, is the ONLY way many of us will EVER have access to our emails prior to July 18th.
We need to get Apple to see that restitution to the 1% of its Mobile Me customer base above and beyond the 30 day extension is the "right thing to do". Repairing our confidence in Apple's email service is in the companies best interest. And compensating the 1% of its customer base above and beyond what the other 99% also received would be a small start in the healing process.
Tamura Jones gave it a "highly disrecommended" – without even signing up, because it is opt-out! Says it is serious contender for worst product of the year.
Things were rocky at first, but since then I've moved my main mail repository to MobileMe.
It used to be on Comcast, but I'd always have to double-screen my email on my mobile device (then a Palm or Nokia S60) and Mac because Comcast only supports pop3. With IMAP, when I delete or junk a message on my iPhone, it doesn't come back to haunt me on my desktop.
Did this just a couple of days after things stabilized on MobileMe, and everything's been hunky-dorey ever since.
You can not access MobileMe when using IE6 (or below). In fact, lately I can't access it from IE7 on an XP or Vista. It recommends using Safari or Firefox, which is fine at home, but what about when I'm at work and I only have access to IE7? Does Apple want me to subscribe to MobileMe when I can't even check my personal emails from my work computer? There are many problems with this service.
I was really excited to get MobileMe and have only been disappointed since. The iCal, photos, at contacts (though my old phone contacts got deleted and had to be re-entered) work just fine. However, the iDisk constantly fails, and I don't even know where to start with e-mail.
As soon as they offer a full refund for those who bought it, I'm in!
I can show you one line that will explain an Apple fanboy hard at work.
"Friends!
Ran into some trouble with MobileMe when it first went live. Now, except for e-mail, everything works fine. Push, pull, whatever…Apple is doing a fine job."
And for the folks that bash Vista for third-party driver problems when it came out, I know many many people using it and love it. Why can't we move forward and realize that Apple controls the system from top to bottom and well Microsoft doesn't have that privlege since they don't make the hardware, duh. Where have you ever seen an email service go down for a week? That doesn't even happen with the Blackberry service which is a pretty bad service sometimes. My Exchange server has been cranking along for 2 years now with no downtime. Thats right I just got lucky, riiiight.
@DBX
You write: "Avie Tevanian … has never had an equal replacement.
I disagree. Avie did a great job, without a doubt, going back to the beginning of NeXT, but Bertrand Serlet and others at Apple today are doing an equally impressive job moving OS X toward the future.
I don't know what you mean by bloat. I find Leopard's features (data detection, Mail's notes and to-dos, Spaces, Stacks, to name a few) make me more productive. Then there are the under hood advances like centralized data storage for all applications, user account systems based on LDAP, accelerated GPU Quartz rendering, 64-bit processing, the list goes on and on not to mention what Apple has built for developers. Add to that the fact that OS X has been adapted for solid state and mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, MacBook Air. It's truly impressive.
Of course there will be bugs especially when you're evolving so rapidly, but things stabilize quickly with OS X. It's a truism that you never adopt a new system until it is matured. Leopard 10.5.0 was new, but 10.5.4 is very stable. And you don't have to wait so long for the stability either. Apple updates rapidly, unlike Microsoft who makes you wait until a jumbo patch is ready.
As for the not to distant future. The Snow Leopard name is intended to convey that it will enhance Leopard. What will it bring? More threats to Microsoft in the form of built-in Exchange, multicore support (creating a single virtual processor view for applications of all the CPUs and GPUs on a machine), 100% 64-bit, QuickTime X, and OpenCL.
These are exciting times for Apple users to say the least.
"I can’t imagine what it’s been like for the estimated 20,000 loyal Apple customers who paid their $99 (or $149 for a family pack) and haven’t had e-mail service for days — or even weeks — on end."
Oh come on now… surely they have a regular e-mail account, and MobileMe isn't the only way to access it… seriously. You'll live.
ex ped: I can't speak for the 20,000, but my .mac (or .me, if you insist) address is where all my mail gets funneled these days. Went it's down, I'm out of business. I suspect I'm not alone.
With all the mess ups with mobile me in it's opening day, i have no doubt to see mobile me rise up. To deliver a better experience.
Friends!
Ran into some trouble with MobileMe when it first went live. Now, except for e-mail, everything works fine. Push, pull, whatever…Apple is doing a fine job.
Forget anything "class action." Apple does recommend, as others, that you backup your data regularly.
As a doctor I would advise anyone to use MobileMe that is truly mobile. Indeed, there will be problems. Approach this technology, just like the iPhone 2.0 software, with "a plan" to restore back to where you were in case of such a need.
iPhone, and its related smartphone technology, is not something to take lightly. Apple is posting a status update as these issues with MobileMe are being worked out.
When time is money, for now (and probably for the next month or so), keep your Blackberry. Microsoft Exchange is still the best corporate solution for mission critical needs.
However, if you are someone who has taken the iPhone as your only smartphone, prepare for growing pains.
Use Gmail for your e-mail, keep a backup of your contacts and appointments, and sit back and wait for Apple to fix MobileMe. Will not be long, but worth the wait.
Microsoft is developing a similar product, which should be available also for the Mac. To me, I really do not care which platform you use; mobile syncing of data without "wiring up" to the network/computer is something I find worth the wait for all of the these services. Apple or Microsoft will get my business. Exchange as a concept, is really something I can never do without at this point.
I wish you well.
It's not only MobileMe that was launched too early — probably six months too early.
Heck, OS X 10.5 was released 12 monhts too early! So there's precedent.
The iPhone SDK wasn't ready (hence the oddly persistent NDA, no licensee is allowed to talk about it) and Apple broke Outlook sync functions that worked in iPhone 1.0. (especially Outlook sync in an enterprise setting, I haven't dared try exchange sync for fear of wiping my server data).
The iPhone 2.0 itself is pretty good, though less stable for now than the latest release of iPhone 1.
Apple pushed too hard, and it broke. It's bad at admitting major screw-ups, worse at apologizing.
My experience with the transition from DotMac to MobileMe has gone without a single hiccup. If I didn't read articles like this, I would never have known there were any problems at all. The only issue I've had was the lack of 'push' from the desktop, which has subsequently been shown to be not so spontaneous. However between iPhone and MobileMe it really is fantastic and worth the expense of the MobileMe account IMHO. The best demonstration I have of how well push works is when I add a picture of one of my contacts on MobileMe, and then see it 'magically' appear in the corresponding contact entry on the iPhone just moments later! Watching it happen just makes me want to get out a magician's wand and wave it above and below the iPhone to show there are no wires attached!
But this whole thing is very bad blow to Apple's reputation … and credibility. 'They' always say that one dissatisfied customer tells ten more, but in this case the mushroom cloud of dissatisfaction is more likely proportional to the size of a disaffected customer's email address list. So 1% of affected MobileMe customers has probably more like a 20% negative impact on the credibility of the service. For there to have been such a total disaster for 1% and minimal impact for the others, I can only assume that 1% of the servers at Apple's MobileMe reached a critical mass and were vaporized by the overload!
It all just shows how dependent we have become on all this information technology. A recent altercation between a backhoe and an underground telecommunications cable in Australia took a significant number of mobile phones 'off the air' in one capital city for a day! So I'm dusting off the CB radio and looking in the old boxes for that morse code handset I purchased over 20 years ago, just in case. Nah. Just kidding …but it IS around here somewhere.
Because of vista which came installed by Dell in my computer, I'm going back to Apple. That is THE worst OS I've ever encountered. Microsoft will only get worse!
I new I should have stuck with Mac and ignored the PC people!
I have loved Apple for years and have an orchard of their products but killing my email last week cut to the core. If Exchange doesn't work you can speak to a real person to fix it. The loss of email was bad enough but the inability to get a straight answer from Apple support is an issue that will be a concern to Apple users beyond this debacle.
Jobs once bash Microsoft for "not bringing much in culture to their products". Job's has become a 21st century Dr. Frankenstein, creating a culture of iPeople – mindless cyborgs dependent on a system prone to crash, and when it does they'll be lost without a clue how to survive in the real world; They're minds will "pop" without their little gadgets. You call that bringing culture into your products? More like sucking the life right out of humanity through their ears. Apple and Jobs are losing their soul, if not done lost it already. If you ask me, people are just too damn "plugged in" today. Almost like being in The Matrix.
Later folks – I'm unplugging and headed to the lake to experience some reality – nature, fresh air, sunshine and actual human company!
The press is not getting it. The iPhone was tested with consumers before it went enterprise with 2.0. The same is happening with MobilemMe. In one year MobileMe 2.0 will go enterprise and businesses will no longer need an Exchange server. I think this is amazing that Apple is really trying to capture the enterprise market. They will get it right. Give them a little more time.
I wouldn't worry too much about Apple's problems.
The annoying buzz from the devoted workers can be expected since Apple is stomping heavily against their colony's (Microsoft's) ant hill. But the buzz will fade away.
If Microsoft's success with a buggy operating system is any indication, MobileMe will be a hugh hit.
Nice one macdisser. You are in the 1% that likes Vista and you are laughing at the 1% of Mobile Me people that are having trouble with it. LOL!
Yes we love Apple and think Steve Jobs is a God. You keep on being jealous all you want but we wouldn't switch to Vista no matter how much whining you do.
Boy, some black and white comments here.
The fact is that there has been a creeping disease at Apple over the past several years — the disease of poor quality control in software and the parallel and connected disease of bloatware. From having one of the most bullet-proof operating systems ever in the form of Panther, OS X has descended into having more and more uncorrected security holes, bloat and general bugginess, to the point that Leopard has many of the same problems that Vista has. I think MobileMe is just a symptom of a broader problem at Apple, which is that maybe the software development is getting too fan-boyish and losing its Next-era focus on quality and efficiency.
Avie Tevanian, the very talented VP of software who moved upstairs in 2003 and left altogether in 2006, has never had an equal replacement. It's about time Apple found one, so that their very nicely designed hardware can once again have basic operating software to match. They've shown they can deliver fantastically with certain applications — Aperture and Final Cut Pro come to mind. Why no longer with basic OS stuff?
I guess I decided to do what Apple didn't…I started my mobile me account now on the two month trial to work out the kinks, and won't be getting my iphone till september.
Doing all of that at once seemed like a very bad idea. Especially as I am one of the lucky ones for whom the Me mail functionality doesn't work (just gives a blank screen).
Working great here in Oz after the the first weekend start. Mail always worked idisk also also also worked just the calendar and contacts took till the monday to sync since then no problems works as advertised
I wish you guys would just give it up. What made steve jobs think he could master business in one shot. but of you fanboys have your apple blinders and of course think this is either no problem or the almighty steve jobs will fix this problem before you know it. Grow up ITARDS. and vista is awesome my desktop and loptop run it flawlessly.
I absolutley love how all the Vista bashers are apple users – have you guys even used it? It seems no matter how good you make software it's hard to ship a fanboys' stigma – Thats why the rest of the world learned to ignore you 
I'll go back to synching my iPhone with Windows now – btw Gmail user)
Heck, I'm still waiting to be able to access my iDisk from the Finder again. I haven't been able to do that since I upgraded to 10.5 in October.
Bill, you are priceless. I love you. Please do spend your remaining time on the mortal coil organizing a class action lawsuit against apple because one of their products didn't work perfectly.
Folks like you make fan bhoys like me seem almost sane.
Incidently, you seem a nice guy, but when the revolution comes…. sorry man.
I think we have to compare apples to apples here.(boom boom!)
Seriously, what is the point of comparing Exchange to mobile me? If you want to compare Apple's IT offering for business, look at OS X Server. Which, incidentally, isn't that great. BUT, the point is that Exchange is NOT AVAILABLE TO SLOBS LIKE ME. But mobile me is. You see.
There's the rub. Sooner or later it is going to work as well as the rest of Apple products, and knowing divine one's love of failure, it will be sooner. And at that point, ordinary slobs like me will have a clear choice: buy an iphone and mac and have your life in your pocket when away from your desk, or…. take your own life after sucking on the Vista for while.
Sure, huge corporations with lucrative government contracts will still be able to make Microsuck work. Sure. But what apple is doing is brining the sort of functionality that only corporate execs have, and giving it to the untermensch.
Ring any bells, folks? Like when Apple brought the computer into the home? Way back when?
When this works, it is going to further separate the digital lifestyle available to the unterklass, as they compare life with Apfle or Microblows. If there is a god, apart from Stevo, he will bring this to pass. Remember the 1984 add, folks. Computing is class war. If you don't get that, you have no imagination, and your kids probabaly hate you.
Amen and hallelujah for posting this article! Can somebody say CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST APPLE?!
We are long time .mac (now MobileMe users) and we have had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS since this service went live a few weeks ago.
AT FIRST, we COULDN'T SYNCHRONIZE ANYTHING. No error messages, it just wouldn't sync. It would LOOK like it was syncing, but it would NOT sync. And then, after it STARTED syncing, it would only sync SOME of our data. We never knew which device had the most recent data.
We JUST got our syncing working again a few days ago.
(Not to mention the fact that Apple backpedaled on calling this actually being push technology to begin with.)
BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART! Out of the 5 people that we know who have MobileMe, two (2) of them — That's right! Two of them! A good 40% of them!! — have been WITHOUT EMAIL FOR OVER A WEEK!!! THIS IS A PAID EMAIL SERVICE, FOR $99 PER YEAR, AND THEY HAVE HAD **ZERO** EMAIL FOR OVER A WEEK NOW.
APPLE IS DESTROYING BUSINESSES OVER THEIR BOTCHED & HORIBLEE MOBILEMEss. AND THE WORST PART ABOUT IT IS:
**APPLE IS NOT RESPONDING TO ANY CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE CALLS OR EMAILS OVER THIS DISASTER!**
THEY ARE SIMPLY **IGNORING** THEIR CUSTOMERS AND LEAVING THEM TO HANG & DRY.
PEOPLE'S BUSINESSES ARE BEING DESTROYED OVER THIS — FOR THOSE WHO USE MOBILEME AS THEIR ONLY EMAIL ACCOUNT — AND APPLE IS DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL.
Have you EVER, in your entire life, ever heard of ANY email service going down for OVER A WEEK?
This is TRULY UNACCEPTABLE, and there must be a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT filed against Apple for this criminal behavior.
1. Email, and syncing always worked for for me during the transition.
2. I just did a few email tests from my iphone. Email arrived at my laptop immediately to about a minute or so. And in any case If you need someone to process immediately, call them!
3. It is exchange for the rest of us. No I don't think large corps will use it obviously but then small companies shouldn't be using exchange. They should be using mobileme or igoogle or somesuch. After living in many companies large and small using exchange well enough is enough.
Mobile Me has worked beautifully for me since day 2. As with any world wide software deployment there will be issues and Apple products and services are the best on the market plain and simple. Give the folks at Apple a break. They are the best at what they do. Rest assured If something is broken they will fix it.
I have been without mobileme for a week, and will not renew; I was a .mac customer that switched to .me; as of yesterday I have a new email address and will not look back. Apple really messed-up this mobileme roll-out (DISASTER).
Hello everyone, I am a fanboy, oh just like you! Well what do you know? I think I know a little more about the reliability of Microsoft's products than many on the blog because I have worked in companies that have 1000's of desktops and servers running their OS. The one thing I hate is people that lie, and when you read alot of these comments you see the truth take a back seat in most cases. Sorry I made the statement "Just look at the biggest companies in the world, most are using Exchange and will not be parting ways for MobileMe anytime soon or ever." I should not have said that since it is consumer based and not corporate based. I think most people get stuck in the year 1998 – 2001 because I have been a network admin for 4 years and the biggest problem I run into these days is hardware issues. I hear about all these problems from MSFT and this and that and the other thing. I don't know who you talk to but they must be in over their heads when setting this stuff up because my microsoft products work very well 99.999% of the time. Those are my uptime numbers for the production network, so I guess I need to re-think how important that .0001% is for the bottom line. How dumb of me to use a product I can't get that little percentage back from. I guess I better listen to the lies and re-think my strategy. I can't remember the last crash, but someone said it was gonna happen so I better prepare. I only defend, and I never lie. Oh and you won't see me bashing your lovely products either, its not my style. Its called leading by example not brainwashing.
As an AT&T Mobility employee, I'm suprised we haven't been blamed for this.
Did I just open Pandora's Box?
I feel bad, Mobile Me is working fine for me. It was a little rough the first couple of days but since then I have had no issues. I stopped syncing my iPhone with the computer for the most part because I don't need to unless I need to update an iTunes list or a software update.
I don't doubt some of you are having problems and I feel bad for you. Look on the bright side. It gives the Apple haters something concrete to bash about instead of the usual boring comments like "The iPhone is just a pretty paper weight ." The iPhone has been my favorite device I have ever owned. My brother in law is happy too because I gave him my Treo. I figured why not, I'll never use that piece of crap again, might as well give it to somebody that will use it. Of course he can't get the email, mp3s or the web to work on it, but I'm sure if he keeps messing around with it he might get one of those things to work eventually.
Yep, MobileMe continues to work great for me. No problems in email. Pushes instantaneously to my iPod touch. I sent a test e-mail to a separate address which forwarded it to my MobileMe account which pushed it to my iPod touch faster than I could hit send and pick up the iPod to see it was already there. Impressive.
Oh man!!
Why you are constantly blaming Apple.. Actually you are blamed for it..
1) You guys should have drag and drop these emails into a local E-mail folder instead of remote Inbox! That is a backup reason to keep all of important emails at my end, never leave them at the server..
2) If you dislike MobleMe server, iPhone has decent offers for you with many different E-mail server, AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo, and others! A plenty out there!
I would not whine about it! I can live with it going through the transitions.
Oh, and Eric in Cincinnati, one more very very important point, with MobileMe we are now using it happily, effectively and reliably in our business, AND we don't need an "Exchange Administrator" like yourself – more of the ridiculous tech overhead required by MSFT products…
Throw the garbage iPhone out the window…its a FanBoy's toy and not a business tool like the BlackBerry. What's funny is that Apple really thought that they could master push email overnight…Give me a break…Jobs go back to selling songs for $.99 and making cute videos on your machines and leave the heavy business lifting to the experts that know what they are doing!
Benjamin Plaut, from Hollywood, you cannot act properly even behind a keyboard. and being from hollywood does not help you either….
you are the typical basher that has never touched an apple product in his entire life.
So AAPL screwed up – big deal! People, get over it. They'll get it fixed a lot faster than M$ ever would. Like a previous poster said – "Can anyone say Vista?"
I actually had no problems with my email at all, and I use it a lot!! I probably get more then 100 emails a day. The only real problem I had was that there was no easy way to get the mobileme software activated on my mac. I had to go to my .mac settings sign out and sign back in which triggered a upgrade(lame). The other problem I had was with the online calender. I could easily enter in a entry via phone or computer and sync and it would do it just fine. BUT!! If I entered it into the online calender sometime the entry would disappear, sometimes it would sync in 5 minutes, others times 24 hours later.
The good news is that for the last few days everything seems to be happy and working now. The is definitely not a typical apple thing. And I seriously wonder why they waited till the phone was out until they did this. It should have been rolled out at least a few weeks prior. The iPhone roll out and the advertisement caused a ton of new subscribers. They should have tried to do this with their existing base they can quantify then ramp up with the new roll out. Oh well, you live and you learn and I'm sure some heads are gonna roll.
MFMauceri- LOL get a clue. You are an apple user, you would defend a peice of dirt if you had a chance. The I-phone is already yesterdays news. SApple ripped off people last year by selling them old technology and this year couldn't even put in a better battery? They are ripping people off and you are falling for it- LOL stupid tree huggers
I was an @ mac.com e-mail subscriber, a paid customer from July 2005 on. It soon after became my main personal and business e-mail. On the morning of July 18, I no longer had operational e-mail, and have not had access to it since. The disruption– which came without warning and is still unfixed eight days later– has decimated my faith in Apple.
I cancelled plans to buy an iphone, and am now looking at returning to the windows-based world for e-mail communications. I advise people to avoid any sort of trust in Apple-based servers.
There are tens of thousands of people like me who lost their main point of business and personal contact– apparently permanently (at least eight full days and counting without word or explanation.)
Apple is no longer the type of company that can be trusted with key data or in any business sense, at least as far as I am concerned. I like the ipod, and understand its devices allow certain creative freedoms and tools. But when you pay for what was essentially a premium e-mail service (when so many exist for free or come with internet connection), and it implodes without warning and is never fixed or explained, it leaves a pretty bitter taste while the damages mount.
Eric of Cincinnati – how ironic that a MSFT user would be gloating about percieved "product problems". MobileMe is a brand new service that was rolled out, right or wrong, to MILLIONS of users at one time, causing server overload. And these initial problems do not make the product a disaster, nor a bad product. (I had trouble accessing it only from a browser for the first couple of days, but it was working perfectly on my phone and desktop.) It is a great product that has some kinks to work out for a small percentage of its users. While you're gloating, can you say VISTA!!!
If any of you doubt this issue exists, check out the offical notice by Apple of the MobileMe Support site. The problem does exist without Chat support.
It is almost as if Microsoft managed this process. By the way, I'm a loyal Apple customer and have always been served well, except this time.
I have been a .Mac customer for the last three years and and all five accounts in my family plan went through the mobileMe transition without a hitch. Our e-mail was always accessible to us from the desktop mail client. It never went down. I didn't mind that the webmail client was inaccessible for a day or two while they made the transition to mobileMe. This was expected as Apple had sent an advance outage notification.
I bought an iPhone 3G and love push e-mail from mobileMe. It is running right alongside my corporate Exchange account with nary an issue.
While some users may have had problems, for most folks this was a seamless transition. I think this is getting blown way out of proportion.
Eric – I think MobileMe is intended for consumers and small businesses, not large corporations. That's why they said "for the rest of us" and didn't call it an Exchange replacement. The launch may have been problematic, but I expect Apple to fix it, and Ithink long-term this has a lot of potential.
Eric,
The errors in your comment highlight you for the Apple-bashing Microsoft fanboy that you are. MobileMe was never supposed to replace Exchange; it is intended to give an Exchange-like experience for HOME USERS that don't associate with companies that use Exchange.
The fact that you've had to endure this long for Apple to make a mistake that you can criticize belies how well they're doing. Like any other roll out, Apple will fix the issues, and life will go on.
That said, in all fairness, the weak link for the former Dot Mac and now MoblieMe servces always was and continues to be the complete and total lack of human phone support.
I can appreciate so many others frustration with MobileMe. So far my experience has been virtually flawless. I down loaded the iPhone 2.0 to my iPod Touch last week, I have been on the road and so far my iPod seems to be getting emails quicker than my MacBook. I initially had some delays in syncing the calendars and contacts, but for the most part it has gone smoothly.
The real issue here is that this is out of character for Apple to have problems. In the PC/Windows environment, these problems are the norm. We need to give them a chance to unscrew this mess and based on S Jobs' character, I feel certain someones bozo points are maxed out, and will be looking for work shortly.
Elmer-Fudd-Dewitt
You've managed to yet again, get the story half right. In your 5th paragraph, you state …"20,000 loyal Apple customers… Haven't had e-mail service for two weeks."
Not true. Not even close. We've all had email working every day… It hasn't been 100% remotely accessible from a web page (but most of people use a mail client) so it's an inconvenience, not an unmitigated disaster.
Q-U-A-N-T-I-F-Y.
The same holds for iphone syncing. The phone works, the web access works, they're working out the kinks on an ambitious sea-changing enterprise syncing system. Have you reviewed 'Vista' or Microsoft lately?.. Or are you just an Apple watchdog, with one bad eye?
Do you have and editor and a fact checker there at Fortune who proofs your posts? On gaffs like this, you demote yourself from journalist to hack.
Consider the NFL, the refs now have video playback to cover their ass on bad calls; plus you'd get to work outdoors.
Mull it over.
your " conclusion" beginning with "if" seems fabulous speculation. Been having lunch with Mr. Blodget?
It's incredible how times the same news story will get said and I am starting to doubt the credibility. I mean maybe I am just lucky but, since the first couple days after launch I have not had any problems. I got true push last night. when I got a auto response email within a second of sending it on my ipod touch via my mobile me account.
It is unfortunate that Apple has released Mobileme with the quality of Microsoft product. But Apple works at light speed compared to other technology companies. By this time next year the problems will have been just a footnote in Apple's history. Expect Mobileme to be updated often over the next few months as the bugs are worked out. The concept is strong and I am glad to see Apple moving in this direction for its customers sake. I little humble (Apple) pie will be positive for future incarnations of the service.
Exchange may be used by many and loved by many, but it is hated and despised by many as well. I have worked at several companies, some of which have used it and some of which haven't, none of them fell into the 'love it' category, and even the companies where the IT folks were positive about it, the end users were of much more mixed review. 'Exchange for the rest of us' was not seen as a recommendation by a signficant number of people. And as far as 'not parting ways [with Exchange] for MobileMe', that clearly was never the intent – even the phrase 'Exchange for the rest of us' indicates that it is targeted squarely at a different market. Duh.
You know, it's interesting. Just a day or so ago, the blogs are all about Steve Jobs' health, and what a disaster it will be for Apple if he dies. Now we read an article that tacitly suggests he's also a hinderance to Apple.
Actually, the truth is that Mr. Jobs is, like most strong leaders, both an asset and a hinderance to Apple. And product launches are always a crap shoot. There are always going to be failures along with the successes.
At least he, and Apple, aren't afraid to try. That's the ultimate failure, which Steve Jobs knows very, very well.
So what? I switched ISP (from ATT to DSLExtreme) and was promised no apparent downtime. Two weeks later I finally got my internet back. Everything is broken in one way or another but life goes on. Better it happen to a service rather than a product. Hate to get stuck with a lemon of a product that I cant return than a service that can be fixed and extended.
I like that phrase "exchange for the rest of us". I am an Exchange admin and I will say it works all the time everytime. Its safe to say that Apple is not flawless and the more and more exposure they have with the public more will start to realize that. For all the bashing done from the Apple camp, its good to see some obvious things to shut them up. Apple will have a long way to go to mach Exchange, its one of Microsofts best products and is used by many and loved by many. Just look at the biggest companies in the world, most are using Exchange and will not be parting ways for MobileMe anytime soon or ever. Way to go Apple.
I am one of the many .Mac customers who has been locked out of my e-mail for a week with the recent "upgrade" from .Mac to MobileMe. I was given a full refund of my last year fee, $99.
Before being offered the refund, I called the Apple store in Pittsburgh on Monday evening and was transferred to Apple Care. After a 1.5 hours of conversion and various hold times, the Apple Care representative explained that MobileMe support is only available via Apple.com's chat feature, which has not worked all this week. I immediately called the same Apple store to explain the problem and they offered to make an appointment on Wednesday evening at the Genius Bar to resolve the issue. Upon arrival, the expert at the Genius Bar explained that he could not help me and directed my problem to the same chat feature, which is still not working. I expressed frustration not only with the issue at hand, but that I wasted time with the appointment, knowing the Genius Bar would not be able to assist. He offered to take my name and telephone number, as he was offered a rare "Level 2" solution of having someone from tech support call me. At this point, I have not received a call back.
Throughout the entire process I was polite but stood by the belief that I want someone at Apple to take responsibility for this. As a result, I was offered a full refund with receipt of $99 for my latest .Mac annual payment with the promise of continued services. I think many should know about this, which is my point of this post.
MobileMe is a great product. I have had ZERO downtime since launch and syncing is instantaneous from the cloud to PC/Mac/iPhone. Going the other direction is what takes a couple minutes unless you initiate the sync manually (very easy from menu bar). So, per usual, it's the incompetent few who are screaming loud. Could it have been lauched before iPhone 2.0? Sure. But, not after. You need to have MobileMe in place to push to the iPhone. So, if you don't launch it, then you delay iPhone 2.0 – definitely unacceptable to Steve & Co.
Philip, Walt, David.
Where have you been? .Mac was equally, hopelessly, lame. And I thought the problem was me! Thank God this is now pubic.
Larry Fritzlan
I have found NOT ONE person happy about this product.
It actually does you harm! How can a company with such a reputation for quality products come out with something like this!
This is FAR worse than the worst Microsoft release.
Embarrasing. To say the least. This must be costing them millions of dollars.
ex ped: It's working for me these days.