Apple’s “MobileMe offers a reduced set of services [vs. Apple’s .Mac service that MobileMe replaced] for the same $99 per year, but promised Microsoft Exchange-like synchronization for contacts, e-mail and events, as well as snappy and modern Web applications for a far better experience when away from your desktop or iPhone/iPod touch applications,” Glenn Fleishman reports for The Seattle Times.
“Instead of a clean launch, I and reportedly hundreds of thousands of .Mac subscribers had days of problems. And even when resolved, the problems left what Apple describes as 1 percent of its e-mail users adrift from e-mail for 10 days,” Fleishman reports. “The company’s MobileMe stumble resulted from its increasing busyness and business.”
“Apple has evolved from a has-been to an also-ran to a niche-but-pervasive force in computers, smartphones and digital movie rentals, and it continues to be a dominant force in digital music purchase and portable music and video playback,” Fleishman writes. “This has stretched its resources.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has always been a pervasive force in personal computers. From the Apple I right on through to today. We all use “Macs” today – whether they’re the real thing or the upside-down and backwards, incoherent fake Mac that Microsoft calls “Windows.”
Fleishman continues, “Apple scheduled four events for July 11: the release of iPhone 2.0 software for existing iPhone owners; completion of the switchover of .Mac to MobileMe (which began disastrously two days earlier); the release of the iPhone 3G; and the opening of the App Store, a marketplace for iPhone and iPod touch software.”
Fleishman writes, “Perhaps that was a little much… Apple needs to take a long, hard look at how hard it’s pushing its employees — and how little polish seems to be left on the company’s image right now.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tim D.” for the heads up.]