Several MacDailyNews readers have sent us the complete text of the memo that Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent to the MobileMe team on Monday. Here is the memo verbatim:
Team,
The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better:
– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.
– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.
– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.
We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love. One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe. Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.
The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.
Steve
The whip has been cracked
I think the words “YOU’RE FIRED!!!” have been omitted.
edited from the original text before sending to the MobileMe team was the phrase…
“…and when I find out who’s responsible for these trainwrecks, I’m gonna break my foot off in their ass.”
“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store.”
Not to give them an excuse but I think Apple felt the urge to launch everything at once…
Indeed, fanbois would have complain otherwise that, this feature is missing, that one too, etc.
So who did the Mobile Me team report to BEFORE?? That individual will not be at Apple for long…
He forgot to say “now drink your kool-aid.”
You got that right!!! Steve Jobs took charge of reassigning roles out there… I mean just read this:
“One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue…
… Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.”
Mac+
My e-mail is working fine and I have more storage than before, plus an extra month so as a dot Mac customer I am not unhappy.
Dot Mac was not always perfect either, subject to the odd hiccup.
The additional space is appreciated.
Hmm, my Mac feels snappier after reading Steve’s email!
Oh, .. No, .. He, .. Didnt, …
Regardless of the services not being up to par yet, for a first run and from comparing it to some other services they have done an amazing job nevertheless.
I do not believe a blame should be focused on the MM team, but on Apple not realizing they’re doing everything in one go at the same time.
A clear sign that Apple is new to this game and has a lot to learn. Doubling market share in a few years has consequences.
Glad to read that the goal is to learn from it, and to have everything working smoothly by the end of the year. I will wait for mac world before buying new hardware and new cloud services then. Which should also give me enough time to save up the cash.
Now that is the message of a “sic” man. “Sick” as in very good and cool; as it is used by young folks these days.
How would Microsoft handled this? Denials, promises and a gathering around the big ass globe.
I’m happy with the previous .Mac / new MobileMe service. I just hope they build on it by adding more apps. It appears to be a great platform for web apps, so let’s see them take advantage of that. Then open it up to developers. “Web OS X”.
They’ll get it smoothed out, but so far it is a very good application. Better user interface and more storage than .mac.
I’m happy with MobileMe!
And as a web developer myself, I *love* how they didn’t bend over backwards to support IE 6. Death to that miserable browser!
The memos must have been sent to MDN by ‘yeah right’, ‘Objective Third Party’, ‘QED’, ‘Wrong Again’ and other Applesoft marketing employees who frequent this site.
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Yeah, the head of the MobileMe team has been added to Steve Jobs shitlist, once ya get there you have no future in Apple.
The last two paragraphs were truncated. Missing text provided in {brackets}
One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue {for daily beatings}, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe. Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me {for daily beatings}.
The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will{, through the use of daily beatings}. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year. {Daily beatings will continue into next year.}
I think this is a very calm and measured response given the publicity of the crisis… I think Steve should be applauded for remaining so calm and polite, as well as for admitting it was a team problem… not just the MobileMe, but the entire team.
OK, does anyone else believe that Steve Jobs is playing dumb here? I mean come on, from all of the stories that we have heard about how hard the man pushes, and pushes for perfection form everyone all the time. He had to have know that MobileMe was not up to par.
I believe that Steve made a calculated risk assessment on delaying MobileMe versus the bad press for missing a delivery date, or shipping an stripped down inferior product, just like Microsoft does all the time.
I’m not accepting that Steve puts all the blaim elsewhere. I think that he needs to admit to and accept just as much blaim as the old head of MobileMe as well as their designers. I sincerely hope that one of the lessons learned is the ability to listen.
Growing pains. Far better than cut back pains.
Rock ON Apple.
@Uh Oh
While you might think its cute to use the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid”, I remind you that the mass suicide of the Jim Jones cult, where the phrase originated, is no laughing matter. Hundreds of people died to satisfy one man’s egomaniacal conceit.
Steve Jobs is a lot of things, but I don’t think he wants to kill people who buy Apple products.
I’m with big mac attack. I love MobileMe and it works great for me. I don’t need info to be pushed *instantly* to all my devices. If I change something on my phone or mac it takes some time but it never fails to update within a few minutes. If I need the info to change right away (which I never do), I make changes on the mobile me site. Changes made to that will update my phone and mac almost instantly.
.mac syncing was pretty screwy and mobileme is a huge improvement. The only issue I had was that it wasn’t working for the first few days. Whatever … I was busy enough playing with the iphone and the app store.
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Great job Apple!
iCal is still funky in MobileMe… it’s an on again/off again process when it comes to syncing…
“There are several things we could have done better:”
He is addressing the MobileMe team with this statement.
But none of the following admissions were the fault of the team. These actions were enacted by management and Steve Jobs himself.
It seems like he is trying to share the blame with the MobileMe team. Maybe I’m misreading this, but he appears to be passing (or sharing) the buck.
This is damage control- nothing more, nothing less. This “leaked” memo is Steve’s way of telling us that he’s on it. I don’t however for one minute buy into the fact that he didn’t know anything or approve of the simultaneous rollout with the iPhone 3G, app store, etc.
So Steve- do what you have to do to get MobileMess fixed and in the future- drop the “Mission accomplished”- we’ve all heard that before…