“MobileMe has garnered positive reviews for its features and its intuitive user interface. But accessing Apple’s cloud has been a stormy experience for some users,” Rich Parr writes for MIT’s Technology Review.
“Cloud computing has been touted as a potential tool for everything from improving business infrastructure to helping consumers keep tabs on their contacts. Storing data in the ‘cloud’ of the Internet rather than locally allows users to access that information anywhere and at any time,” Parr writes.
“Some cloud-computing applications–like Google’s Gmail, Google Calendar, and the Google Docs document-sharing and -editing service–live entirely in the cloud: users’ data is stored remotely and accessed via a Web browser. Other applications–like the contact-syncing service Plaxo–use the cloud to back up data and keep it up to date across multiple computers and mobile devices,” Parr writes.
“MobileMe combines both approaches, syncing data between computers while providing access to a user’s e-mail, contacts, calendar, and photos via the Web,” Parr writes. “But the service’s troubles illustrate an obstacle to the mass acceptance of cloud computing: the average user has a low tolerance for downtime.”
Full article here.
“Endemic”… that term gives the impression this is about an epidemy, a dicease or something.
If anyone can fix a problem quickly, Apple can. Let’s not forget that some of the problems were due to demand. People got what…30 days free?…lets give Apple those 30 days to get it right. Report your problems to them and they will fix them quicker than most. Apple wants to put .Mac to shame and will do it. Instead of lowering prices on Macs, I would give a free year of MobileMe with a Mac purchase, since it has revealed itself as a beta.
Let’s face it and call it what it is… A bump in the road. It happens. And it will happen again. Just make good on it and it will be forgotten about in a year or so…
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Mine seems to work fine.
Problems endemic to cloud computing or Apple’s newfound approach to life: “Let’s half-ass it now and fix it later”?
If Apple hadn’t fscked up, this article could’ve been a heap of praise for cloud computing based on MobileMe’s thoughtful execution as evidence that it can work. MobileMe could’ve served as a good example rather than cast a black mark on the concept.
It seems Apple is spread way too thin these days. Mobile Me botched, 2.0 firmware botched, launch-day activations botched… The iPhone/Touch 2.0 firmware is the buggiest thing I’ve used since Windows ME. There I said it. I cant believe how many times my iPhone has either forced quit or reboot while doing simple, mundane things. That combined with the buggy iTunes syncing of applications and long, seemingly unnecessary, app syncs.
Apples been missing their dates, or releasing “betas”, on a large amount of products over the last year. Leopard was pushed back months and released with a good deal of bugs, the SDK was pushed back and still seems to be a beta, Mobile Me release was a train-wreck, and the 2.0 firmware is as buggy as a foreclosed houses in-ground pool.
If Apple doesn’t scale their company along with their market growth, they will be in trouble.
Sorry boys. WTF is positive about MobileMe over .mac besides a reskinned UI, calendar etc. The mobileme MAIL APP (the primary app) SUCKS – the worst webmail period and we pay for this crap – no Rich Text edit capabilities or forwarding capabilities. It has to worst apple dev team – I can drag and drop mail but cannot forward a html email to a friend? I can’t remember the time yahoo and gmail did not have this feature – 4 years back?
Back in the day, we used to hook up dumb terminals and the “cloud” was the mainframe. We were at the mercy of IT (called MIS in those days). Your pretty terminal was useless unless they gave you access to the mainframe. Then “Apple ignited the personal computer revolution.”
Now we all have computers vastly more powerful than those old mainframes literally in our offices, living rooms, laps, and palms of our hands. Why the hell do we want to go back in time and relinquish control of our applications and data?
The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.
I hate the old “the network is the computer” concept that Sun used to push trying to get us to do this. I hate the new revamped “cloud computing” version of it.
I can understand sharing my data with web based versions of local apps. I.e. webmail, but damned if I’m going to be caught in the middle of nowhere with no net access and have no ability to make simple changes to documents.
I will not pay monthly fees to use software .
This is a horrible direction for the industry to go in.
The vision that some people have is that you have nothing more than a DUMB TERMINAL again, in this case a device that does nothing but run a browser, and all your apps and data are in cloud.
Sucks the big weenie IMHO.
Apple has screwed up, plain and simple. They should not have rolled out four major new products in the space of 3 days, especially four products which were completely web-dependent for set up, uploads, downloads, registration, sync, etc, etc.
1. MobileMe
2. iPhone 2.0 update
3. App store
4. iPhone 3G
Things would have been much better if they had spaced each new product about a week apart.
Week one: MobileMe
Week two: iPhone 2.0 update
Week three: App store online
Week four: iPhone 3g feeding frenzy
This phased roll-out would have also also allowed even more hype to build for the iPhone 3G and maybe their MobileMe push services would have actually been working by the time the new iPhone came out.
Everybody’s a critic – sheesh!
I propose a moratorium on on all actions by Apple until the contributors of this site come to a consensus as to what Apple really needs to do.
It’s apparent by reading the comments on this site that Steve Jobs and company haven’t a clue as to what they are doing.
I’m sure there are enough brilliant, business savvy strategists here that could really turn around that failure of a company.
Thelonious– shut up we’re havin a party here. Get with the program,the Cloud is Cool, like web2 and teenage mutant ninja turtles… no, hang on, kids have more sense than to follow a stupid idea for more than 6 months…
— and anyway, it’s not a cloud, it’s called a server. What dickheads dream up these words?
“But the service’s troubles illustrate an obstacle to the mass acceptance of cloud computing…”
BS. Cloud computing has already been mass-accepted. It’s called email. You know, where your messages get stored on a server in the cloud, and then pulled down to your mail client (or web browser) wherever and whenever you want to access them.
As for downtime, traditional computing suffers just as much from it as cloud computing. The only difference is that it doesn’t strike groups of users at the same time, so it doesn’t get any press. (“This just in: Susie Smith, of Witchita, KS, was down for 2 days this week when her hard drive crashed!”)
sfunnee.
1% of users experience problems and the launch is “botched”.
even if it’s 10%,that’s still a 90 % success rate.
we have all become so perfectly demanding.
check yourselves humans.
we are not perfect either.
“Why the hell do we want to go back in time and relinquish control of our applications and data?
The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.
I hate the old “the network is the computer” concept that Sun used to push trying to get us to do this. I hate the new revamped “cloud computing” version of it.”
AMEN!
When in the history of computing has any end-user ever wanted LESS power rather than MORE power? It’s so retarded on its face that I can’t believe people are really trying to bring this concept back into popular consideration.
McNealy was wrong then, and his modern-day adherents are wrong now. Cloud computing takes choice, power and control away from users and that’s never a good thing.
Promising “Everything you love about .Mac and more”, then during the “upgrade”, Apple drops both useful and warm+fuzzy services like Apple iCards. That affects 100% of .Mac/MobileMe subscribers, not just 1% or 10%.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsmiley/2652541101/
Then MobileMESS occurs with 70+ IMAP bugs in addition to server issues??
Pardon me for not feeling so warm and fuzzy about Apple anymore.
zek,
“— and anyway, it’s not a cloud, it’s called a server. What dickheads dream up these words?”
Meteorologists. Those SOBs are as worthless as lawyers.