“Intended to supplant the company’s aging .Mac Web service, MobileMe is meant to make Apple a player in the online portal world now dominated by Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. So far it has served only to tarnish Apple’s reputation for producing solid, pain-free, software,” John Markoff blogs for The New York Times.
“Fumbling MobileMe has revealed a previously hidden side of Apple that suggests that a decade of increasingly strong products has left the quirky computer maker with a bit too much hubris. Apple obviously bit off more than the company could chew two weeks ago when it shipped a second-generation iPhone, updated six million existed iPhone customers to a new software version and rebranded its .Mac service all within the space of a 24-hour period,” Markoff reports.
“It was particularly unusual for a Steve Jobs marketing event. In recent years there has increasingly been One Big Thing insuring that consumers aren’t distracted from the message of the moment,” Markoff reports.
“Obviously a better strategy would have been to stage the software and hardware and to have launched MobileMe as ‘beta,’ giving the company air cover to patch the more than 70 bugs it has acknowledged in just two weeks of being hammered on by frustrated Macintosh devotees,” Markoff reports.
“One thing that has been interesting to watch has been Silicon Valley’s reaction to the MobileMe meltdown. There has been no shortage of schadenfreude. At Google, for example, two executives separately noted with some glee that Apple might have considered outsourcing the service to the search-engine provider,” Markoff reports.
Full article here.
Also blogging for The New York Times, David Pogue writes, “It would have been a lot better if MobileMe had worked great from Day One. It would have been better if Apple had been this candid from the beginning.”
Pogue writes, “But at least Apple has finally provided what thousands of people have been aching for: honesty, transparency, and, above all, a sympathetic ear.”
Full article here.
They might as well call it beta — they offer the same level of support (practically none) that Google offers, and Google shrugs and says “it’s a beta” ALL THE TIME.
Weasels all around.
Just like Jim Cramer usually says on Mad Money, woulda, shoulda, coulda, is BS mentality..
This is the past, mistake is done, now it’s about fixing it and focussing on today’s opportunities.
It’s really about what Apple should do as off today to deliver everything that was advertised and more.
No, I don’t think they should have released it as a beta. If it was ready then they simply messed up the launch by not properly preparing for it. Then again, I think the problem might have been that the mobileme team promised Steve it would be ready on time but it wasn’t. Because if mobileme was not ready Steve Jobs would not have announced it as launching at the time that it did. He would have waited.
Yup, I think its a case where the mobileme team lead either lied or incorrectly determined the product was going to be ready.
I’m sure Jobs is still feasting on this guy’s ribs as we speak.
Windows users have been beta testers since Windows 95.
Also, how do you beta test synchronization solution. yikes. I wouldn’t want to sign up for that.
…or synchronization solutions for that matter.
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The poor, sad little ” The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre” fanboi says “in typical Apple fashion”.
Please elaborate what’s “typical” about this situation?
Either that, or get out of mommies basement and get a life.
TGAFM,
All well and good except for the minor point that Apple has given the first 30 days free to all MobileMe subscribers.
Nobody has paid a cent for the service, yet.
By the time we do, it’s a good bet that the majority of the problems will be solved.
You were saying?
“… if mobileme was not ready Steve Jobs would not have announced it as launching at the time that it did…. ” – Olternaut
Perhaps even his majesty Steve Jobs didn’t expect that much of a traffic overload…
People rushed in high numbers from minute 1, to use MobileMe like it’s a gold mine.
…The classical “Trap of success”… One can easely feel immortal in a time where everything seems to smile and leed to a bright cloudless futur… But Apple is working hard on it and will pull out some wisdom of this experience, i guess.
“Nobody has paid a cent for the service, yet.” – Fred Mertz
But they’ve lost something more valuable than money in some case: Data!!! And that’s terrible.
In 6 weeks time ALL OF THIS will have been FORGOTTEN…
Boring.
Its running much better now. Emails and other services are updating just about real time, within seconds of each other.
I could not agree more!
This has been and continues to be a beta implementation – I have calendar events I add on a MacBook Pro – they show up on MobileME and the iPhone, but don’t show up on either the MBP or my MacPro! I have reset and re-synced off of the cloud and the events just don’t show up.
Very disappointing.
We’ve lost Data, Number One. He’s more valuable than money!
Take us to Warp 9, Engage!
I have said it a few times before, but it bears saying … Apple is *not* being open, honest, or transparent in any way here. It’s just a PR exercise that has (apparently) worked.
Only a fool would believe that only 1% of users had problems and only a fool would believe it’s “fixed” once that 1% can (technically) access their email.
iTools, .Mac now Mobile Me….. I think I am done being a test monkey for Apple. They make great software and computers but they suck at online networking.
What concerns me about this mess is that Apple is starting to get tarnish on its reputation for outstanding products. Leopard has had how many patches and Mobile Me is still a mess (no sync with subscribed calendars for example). They need more people I would thing judging from the openings on their website.
“But they’ve lost something more valuable than money in some case: Data!!! And that’s terrible.”
It’s called BACKING UP , quit blaming other people for you not doing it …. Somethings vastly more valuable than backing up….. Common Sense, and personal accountability… Extreme shortage of both of these out there. It’s pretty easy to backup iCal and Address Book. If you use the Craptastic Entourage, backup up the Microsoft user data before embarking on a sync expedition. Common Sense
For people that haven’t had email that stinks.
@Macaday,
Maybe. But it will be added to a growing list of Apple screw ups that render “It just works” all but useless.
Still no MM mail for this user though.
Good job I use someone else for my regular e comms.
;((
Hasn’t the MobileMe team leader stated that email lost on one of the Servers has already been loaded onto a new Server and the process is ongoing. They have only recovered 40% of the mail so far of the mail that went AWOL for 1% of the users. What else went missing?
If everyone gets their mail back – after a short delay – it won’t have been much slower than snailmail for once. This’ll be a great opportunity for Apple to learn lessons.
I agree with the post’s suggestion that Apple was reading its own press notices and probably overreached in trying to perform multiple product rollouts on the same day. But if I were those Google execs, I’d beware of casting stones in glass houses. At least Apple’s mobile phone platform is being used on actual mobile phones.
I was one of the lucky 99% and have not experienced any missing data. Then again I’ve not relied upon this new updated service heavily yet – heh heh – I was and am continuing to be justifiably cautious.
.Mac has always been my primary email.
But I also keep a gmail account as a backup.
Plus, I use Time Machine to back up EVERYTHING, just in case of catastrophic failures.
So, while I did not lose anything and MM has performed fine since day one, I was prepared just in case it failed in some way.
Gripe about it all you wish, but if you lost anything, blame yourself. Apple TOLD us to back up our stuff in the beginning!
Yeah, things have been rocky, and they finally admitted that they hadn’t expected it to be that bad. But they are trying to put things right, so give them at least that much for effort. Especially since they gave you a free month!
Yep Apple made a mistake. Hang Steve. Hang them all.
In fact while we are at it, why not string up our mothers while we are at it.
Has not anybody sat down for Thanksgiving dinner when all of a sudden Uncle Charlie and his new wife dropped in with her 6 kids. As a result, you didn’t get to have a piece of pumpkin pie until the next day when mom made one especially for you to take back to the dorm.
Let’s just put it up to a fantastic success. The turkey was moist and plentiful. The dressing, only mom could make. We just ran out of desert.
Mom didn’t send out an email announcing that unless they registered for the holiday dinner, they weren’t welcome or turn away her nieces or nephews when they surprisingly ended up on the front doorstep. Heck, mom didn’t didn’t even flinch when the new sister-in-law grabbed all of the crispy turkey skin.
@rahens
“Especially since they gave you a free month!”
Right on.
However, you have to have a MobileMe account to get the free month. Most of the complainers here aren’t qualified as such.
Uh, yeah, you had to have an account – either .Mac converted to MM or that MM account. Mine was a .Mac converted to MM. (BOTH got that free month!!)
Still works, and did from the gitgo.
If you don’t have an account, you have no right to complain.
I think it was fine. It is much better to launch something, have some bugs, and get them squashed right away than to let something be BETA for a long period of time.
It would have made more sense to have .Mac -> .Me happen a week or two before the iPhone 3G launch…….oh well. Retrospect is 20/20
I have one friend with troubles… everyone else is running along just fine. Another case of the media blowing things WAY out of proportion. Apple is working hard on the fix, and I am sure in a month all this will be a blip in history… and MobileMe will start gaining ground as end user confidence builds. It is quite powerful stuff in the hands of mere mortals IMO.
Not trying to start trouble, just a bit of a word curmudgeon…
@rahrens – I think you meant to say that it worked for you from the get-go. @ericdano – Did you perhaps mean to say “Hindsight is 20/20”?
I have had a bit of trouble but absolutely nothing catastrophic, and I use time machine so everything would have been recoverable if anything had been lost.
I also think that it was a huge mistake for Apple to launch iPhone 3G, MobileMe, and AppStore all on the same day. I think that they should have launched them over the course of a week or so, and they should have done some kind of rolling switch from .mac to me.com rather than moving several million people over 24 hours. Hopefully, things will continue to work properly and the remaining bugs will be squashed in short order.
While some have had tons of trouble with MobileMe, the vast majority have used the service without a hiccup. I have never lost access to my email during the many hours I spend on my computers. I have had no problems with synching to either of my first and second generation iPhones. Other than one afternoon in the week before roll-out, I have been able to access my iDisk. My web pages have been fine–and on and on and on. In our family, there are 9 other Mac/Mobile Me users. They too have had no issues. Sounds like we are a part of the 99% who have every reason to love and trust MobileMe!
You know everyone is knocking mobile me. I have been a .mac customer since I switched over from a pc 3+ years ago. Grant it mobileme has some major issues. Those issues from what I have read are configuration issues on servers and network appliances. Its not like they released a crappy operating system onto the world that are causing people to update to newer machines and is dog slow. OH wait that’s microsoft. Remember that apple always improves after a first release…
Rather than making it beta, they should have just staggered the cut-over of existing .Mac users. Migrate a few percent a day, provide easy channels for feedback, and adjust up or down depending on how it goes. Give the people who have to wait for the migration a free extension of their service based on how long they waited.
The that surprises me most is that Apple and Steve don’t seem to have learnt anything from the iPhone 1 introduction. They just scaled everything up and got burnt even more.
“thing”
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Apple has pretty much falling upon a common crack in the internet world. The problem with web-apps is no matter how many times you test it, on however many browsers stuff still goes wrong. As a web app developer I come across these problems all the time. There is the odd user with identical stats to the next that just won’t get the same functionality for some unknown reason. Only it’s usually, 1 out of 100 if any, not quite on the scale of Apple’s glitch.
Apple hitch was trying to swap .mac to mobileme in one stint instead of releasing mobileme then a month or two later removing .mac so if anything went wrong in mobileme, users can still use the old .mac temporarily. I assume there was reason for a direct swap, but it’s not a good situation to put yourself in or your customers.
The damage has been done, lucky I didn’t sign up for MobileMed straight away! I think I’ll give it another month before I jump on the mobile me wagon.