“On July 16, Apple took the very unusual step of sending an apology to all MobileMe members, saying that the launch ‘was a lot rockier than we had hoped.’ Fortunately, the letter went on, ‘we have worked through those problems and the Web apps are now up and running,'” David Pogue reports for The New York Times.
“It also said that Apple would stop using the word ‘push’ in its advertising until Macs and PCs did their syncing nearly instantly. It concluded with an apology, and a free one-month extension to every member’s subscription,” Pogue reports. “Unfortunately, MobileMe’s problems were nowhere near over.”
“People [have] started calling it ‘ImmobileMe’ and “‘MobileMess,'” Pogue reports.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea for Apple to launch four enormously complex initiatives — the iPhone 3G, the App Store, the iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe — all on the same day,” Pogue writes.
“It’s a little mind-boggling that today, nearly two weeks after MobileMe’s official opening, Apple still hasn’t solved the problem. That’s got to be a record in the short history of cloud computing,” Pogue writes. “But the real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that’s so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “klapka” and “Citymark” for the heads up.]
Just in case anybody missed our Take from Mossberg’s excoriation of Apple’s MobileMe earlier today, we’ll repeat it here: “Apple screwed the pooch with their MobileMe launch. First impressions mean everything. See: Newton. It’s painfully obvious that heads should roll over this mess. To those responsible: you failed. Miserably. If Jobs hasn’t axed you yet, he should have. He probably wants you to try to fix it first, but, come on Steve: “Bozo Alert!” Get someone on this who knows what the hell they’re doing. Apple MobileMe employees: Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, we hear that Microsoft is looking for people; you’ll fit in just fine up there. In fact, so far, this whole MobileMe thing is positively Microsoftian, and that’s being overly kind.”
We’re pulling all ads for MobileMe until further notice. If we miss some or one of them slips through via third-party ad network, please do not subscribe to MobileMe until Apple gets their act together. We’ll resume running ads for MobileMe when we’re more confident in the service.
gotta agree MobileMe is a disaster…even beyond the technical issue it’s branding is suspect…I signed up for the trial and that me.com e-mail domain is just not…well…me.
I’ve been lucky. My mail has been fine. I feel sorry for those who are having so much trouble.
I’m just wondering about their next iPhone launch. Isn’t it supposed to be 20 more countries on August 22? Hope they do better with that.
P.R. manager did, however, offer me this official statement: “The .Mac to MobileMe transition was a lot rockier than we had hoped, and we are still having some growing pains. Some users have been having problems with their e-mail in particular, and we are trying to restore the service as soon as possible. We’re very thankful for our loyal customers’ patience as we work out the kinks.”
Shortly thereafter, that stale, static status message on the MobileMe site was expanded to include this: “We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service.”
That’s about as far as Apple will go in expressing an understanding of the emotional toll the outage is causing those 20,000 people.
It’s amazing that Apple doesn’t recognize this situation. This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
MobileMess, indeed
There are a lot of things to like in MobileMe and also a lot of shortcomings.
First off the roll out has been less than smooth – something Apple has admitted and provided compensation for. The total service affecting some customers for several days now makes the taunts Apple was hurling at RIM for service outages look pretty silly in retrospect don’t they?
These things are complicated and even if everything worked as Apple had said it would and planned it too the service would still be seriously lacking.
BlackBerrys come with push email that works. Push email that does not kill your battery within 8 hours of charging like the MobileMe push email and Microsoft ActiveSync are doing on the iPhone presently (check the forums at Apple if you don’t believe me). Push email that does not cost more than your mobile data plan to use. Push email that let’s you use your own email address in the from field automatically so your colleagues don”t see a ridiculous @me.com email address when you reply to them.
These are simple features that are nonexistent in MobileMe. Apple has a major opportunity here. If they can provide a BlackBerry like service that can be personalized like the BlackBerry service can and also add in the extra sync features as already promised then they would have a killer phone for small business. Right now they don’t and to get close to it they are driving people to use Microsoft Exchange Server to provision their iPhones. People that subsequently learn that ActiveSync is an iPhone battery killer.
Sent myself 4 test emails yesterday at the same time.
Took 2 hours for all of them to push through
Seriously, WTF?
… and I never got an email from APPLE Re: MMe apology. Did they send this to previous .mac clients?
iphone was not syncing for me. then I realized you have turn on the sync settings on the phone. working perfectly for me now.
ZuneTang is suspiciously silent on this issue, the same way Apple was suspiciously silent on the Psystar issue.
I think the App Store is going to be the next target if it doesn’t get its act together soon. For those of us who are taking hand held computing seriously, with or without cellphone, there are updates and fixes being promptly posted by developers that are not getting updated in the App store – and from what I can tell, it’s no small number of apps. For me the iPod Touch is patently not a cute toy, it is already an important tool. There is one app [v1.0], that as soon as I bought it, the developer posted that v1.1 had already been posted, that was two weeks ago. I emailed the developer yesterday and pissed and moaned as politely as I could, and the reply that I promptly got was that v1.1 had actually been sent to the App store before its official opening! Holy cow!
Something’s rotten in Cupertino, and if Apple is not able to carry the load of distributing the products of their developers, then I wish they would release developers to distribute their own stuff – This is ridiculous.
Common Apple, don’t bite off more than you can chew now – Not when things are going so well. And P.S.: Slow down on major OS developments because those of us that are using industrial strength applications are beginning to suffer from some major short comings – especially in the area of OS vs. FCS and etc. Some of the major crap we’ve gone through over the last week upgrading from 10.4.11 has been utterly unbelievable – And many of our issues are confirmed as not being unique via Apple’s support forums. Slow down – get it right – release it. Apple is so far out in front of Windows (developmentally), that there is no need to self-destruct in the effort to win. Please, let’s get our thinking caps on, take a deep breath, and get back on track.
Apparently there are people for whom MobileMe is not yet working perfectly. I get that. For me its been working perfectly fine though. The only problem I’ve had was when I let a friend play with my newly updated iPhone and he accidentally deleted all my contacts. Resetting so that my approximately 1000 contacts would load was more confusing than I thought it would be. There was no indication that I was downloading everything from the cloud and no option of reloading all contacts from iTunes.
You must punish the baby when it missbehaves.
Did none of you get the warning when Apple introduced this product at WWDC.
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-wwdc-announces-mobileme-exchange-for-the-rest-of-us/
“Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is now saying it’s launching MobileMe, which is described as “Exchange for the rest of us.”
WARNING Exchange is from MS and is being licensed by Apple!
Apple did not create there own version of Exchange so you get what you pay for;-)
Mail and Calendar work fine for me. I like the interface a lot although it is slow; however, idisk is still worthless if you want to work with files larger than a standard document.
One reason so many of us bought an iPod was the seamless integration with the iTunes Store. It gave Apple a competitive advantage that enjoys today.
No doubt, Apple wanted to deploy a similar strategy with the App Store and MobileMe. When a strategy like this works, it can be a home run. When it doesn’t, as in the case of MobileMe, it can be a black eye – or worse.
People have long memories of a corporate screw-up, or a launch gone bad. The mistakes made by the MobileMe managers and programmers will impact sales of the iPhone, and damage the broader public’s impression of Apple. If the people on the MobileMe team think that their mistakes are isolated and impact only their service, they are wrong. Tragically wrong.
The upshot of this is that trust, once broken, takes a long time to rebuild. If I were a member of the iPhone or App Store teams, I would be furious. And as someone else above said, this would not be a good time to be on the MobileMe team. If a certain CEO has not visited them yet, I am sure he will. And it won’t be pretty.
People and companies make mistakes. One man’s problem is another man’s opportunity. What is important is that Apple uses this opportunity to lean from it.
@Aaquib Katie Cotton can only write things so many ways:-)
I wonder if this mess has something to do with the bad taste Apple is showing lately with the Time Machine space background, the default Leopard desktop picture and the new name: Snow Leopard. That said: Here it seems to work.
Apple has delivered so many huge hits over the last decade, people seem to expect perfection forever. Ok, I guess. But realistically, this is a goof and will pass.
MDW “respect,” as in “Have some and relax.”
Once or twice experienced abit slow on the syncing but aside from that, its fine for me.
(By slow, I mean it took 1min to sync, rather than a couple of seconds)
MobileMe has such potential that Apple must get it to work properly. It really is a great idea.
But for now it’s best to be at least 6 months behind rather than on the bleeding edge of technology.
I never got the email extending my membership. Been a member since it was started.
Guessing MobileME forgot or failed to deliver the letter.
Was frustrating, bricked my G1 iPhone for a day, I killed MobileMe Mail on iPhone cause did not work well at all.
They will get the bugs worked out.
I had a laptop stolen which synced to my desktop when the thieves tried to use it before I could de register it, then bought a new laptop to replace that one and then got the iphone 2.0 software and while it didn’t integrate perfectly straight away and I lost some calendar information, mainly because the stolen machine kept trying to sync before I realized and unregistered it. Now, after starting again, removing the info off two machines manually syncing everything one machine at a time, its very reliable and nothing else has gone wrong. A step by step guide by Apple might be the way forward, explaining the unregistering, syncing then re syncing process to avoid any mistakes but considering what it does, I think it’s incredible!
I’m gonna blame MSFT. Didnt’ they license ActiveX, DirectX or whatever to Apple for this project? BALLMER!
Been working great for me, even on the first day. (Using Mail app, not web mail on the first day)
Push (using the web, not apps) to and from my iPhone is kind of fun. (Once I figured out how to turn it on)
“IKON” Your right, can’t see subscribed calendars on my phone –
and yes, “It is a mess!!!” that pink iDisk icon has got to go!
Aaquib’s following comment… “You know what I’ve noticed? David Pogue basically repeats everything Walt Mossberg says. Just a few hours later.” ….was ignorant at best. Mr. Pogue is without peer as a technology author. I have read almost all his books, and am constantly amazed at his ability to translate geek speak so that even newbies can understand. When he used to write the back column in MacWorld, it was always the first thing I read each month. Mr. Pogue has been a gifted mac-advocate for many years, and I found Aaquib’s comment reprehensible.
Well, it’s lost all my mail on all three computers for me! Not Happy! I’ve used .Mac successfully for years and now this. Hopefully my Time Capsule backups are working & I’ll be able to recover it all.
good for mdn for their ‘stand’!