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.]
Oh, forgot about the polish wearing off… I certainly have lost those warm, fuzzy feelings I had for Apple when they axed the iCards.
Ha! Finally got MM mail online tonight after an efficient Chat person sorted me out, unlike the previous braindead chatperson named D**i (you know who you are).
True enough though, that MM doesn’t offer the suite of goodishness that .Mac purveyed.
On the other hand, did I actually use any of it? Answer: not a lot.
So, just as long as it works reliably…
I totally agree with this article. He makes particularly compelling arguments about the demise of Apple’s quality control. Start with Leopard’s major bugs, continuing with the Time Capsule and other bugs, and continuing to this day with MobileMe.
ron,
a lot of your posts have a sort of “I’m all right Jack” flavour.
I don’t think I’d enjoy drinking a beer with you.
Come on, haven’t the Polish had enough turmoil, with the all the jokes and the Nazi invasions? Let’s cut them a break ferchrissake. I’d rather take a little more French off the image. Rendezvous? Bonjour? Pu-leeze.
And the girl with the books on her head could Polish the chrome, ah, nevermind…
Hey Man, I’ll buy you a pint, the hell with Ron and his corporate subservience.
Harry
I’ve said in many post that Apple “can’t handle the truth!” It’s run by a high-functioning paranoia-schizophrenic SNOB. Jobs has always been unwilling to take the necessary steps to compete against Winblows. Now that they have the products and software and non-users attentions, they still lack the resources – or the will – to invest in growth of production/marketing necessary to take thieving Microsucks down.
Marketing: Come on, the snobby BS ads they run for the Mac shows nothing the OS/hardware can do, just that the truly hip and cool don’t use Windoze. Should take a tip from the iPhone campaign, show the Mac in action.
Production: $21 billion in the bank and still Apple fails to contract for the necessary production to meet growing demand. Sometimes, in business, you go to throw the dice and stock the shelves. If you build it, they will come.
Yet as Apple has grown corporately, they adopt the stale and incompetent business practices of abandoning service and quality to satisfy shareholders.
Microshits needs to buy Apple and put it in the nuthouse where it belongs.
MDN… Please get your head out of Steve Job’s ass. It is quite obvious that it is so far up there, you can’t even offer non-biased reporting on this website.
During the mid-1990s, Apple was no pervasive force in computing. In fact, they almost went bankrupt before Steve Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor.
The wax Apple is using these days has streaks of brown in it’s translucent white- what they used to call polishing a turd.
The last 2 paid OS upgrades were betas for months after launch- not exactly a professional launch for a company that used to be known for ‘it just works’. The last hacker fest featured an Apple running a fully patched OS X client hacked and owned in less than 2 MINUTES- so much for the most secure OS. The OS has been hacked in every incarnation server, desktop, iPhone/iPod Touch and it’s Safari for Windows was so insecure it made IE look good by comparison.
Apple has ignored QuickTime as it chased the consumer electronics space and has seen it’s lunch eaten by Adobe (Flash/Shockwave) after they picked up Macromedia for 3 Billion and change. It has so pissed off the big media companies that music available without DRM elsewhere comes wrapped in FairPlay on iTunes- for a higher price.
Hardware quality, long a given on Macs has taken a dive with the transition to commodity junk made in Communist China. Apple has been sued more times over quality, performance and advertising claims recently than a used car emporium.
The in-store experience in Apple Retail has taken a serious dive, with many new hires so ignorant of basic Mac stuff that they make the folks at Best Buy look like Einstein. If I had a nickel for every dead iPod owner I have seen waiting at the local Apple Store I could buy the Virginia Tech Mac Supercomputer.
I love my Mac, but it’s not what it should be and what it could be. At 20 years old (NeXT) and counting it is no longer light years ahead of other stuff available. Apple, once a forward thinking source of innovation has gotten rich repackaging open source technology and putting behind a shiny aqua face, in the process trampling all over much of what made NeXt special in the first place.
Finally, Apple is, relatively speaking, a sweatshop. They pay low, work people like slaves, gag them like a Guantanamo Bay detainee and turn them over like french fries at McDonalds.
Pull all the open source technology Apple largely got for free, software gained by acquisition and what you have is a less stable and secure version of a 20 year old operating system developed elsewhere. That’s hardly worth applauding- that’s trading on your name.
To all the people mourning the loss of iCards… take a look at the top of the MobileMe homepage (where your Mail, Contacts, Calendar icons are) – there’s a lot of space there to be filled by new (or maybe old) features. Watch this space, MobileMe is only a few weeks old – I think iCards will make a return soon.
@Disaster Capitalist,
Do you get out much?
Yep.
The heat Index is 114℉ outside, my allergies are acting up and my GF is out of town.
Just not today.
Thanks for the vigorous discourse!
To the folks who agree with me, bravo!
To those who think I wrote only about a few MobileMe glitches — you read the summary, not my article.
To those who suggest Apple workers are probably overworked, I’m not using my closing paragraph (quoted above) to critique their working conditions. Rather, to show that with failure after failure to execute to Apple’s own previously super-high standards, it’s clear that they need to slow down on releases.
Ah, shoot, I meant “properly” overworked — as in, many commenters seem to think that Apple employees should work their behinds off.
..YEAH! They need a UNION! They’re just like Wal-Mart. We should double tax ’em! Take up all the money and the redistribute it out to the poor and middle class. You know, people making less than 100k per year. Then we should regulate everything they do. Why? Because we want Change!!! No need to worry about what kind of change. Change in and of itself will be good. If only our Government would take better care of us all.
</sarcasm>
@Disaster Capitalist
“, gag them like a Guantanamo Bay detainee”
??? Hey, lets make some more stuff up to support your “agenda” shall we?
If only I had a TelePrompTer I could make more sense!
Long Live Apple-Mart!
Look, no one can dismiss the fact that Apple bungled this launch. I’ve always been a Mac fan and Apple supporter, and their tremendous successes over the last several years are well deserved. But they messed up with MobileMe – big time. I have a PC for work that I have to use, my company uses Outlook and MS Exchange for email AND forces us to use Blackberries (yeah, it sucks to be me).
I did add that laptop to MobileMe, and thank goodness I backed up everything. The syncs for the first ten days messed up my contacts, calendars and bookmarks on all of my computers. It was a disaster. If Apple is advertising push for both Macs and PCs from the same “cloud”, they should have tested this longer and made sure it worked before release. This was bar-none the worst release of an Apple product or service in years. Look I can be biased all I want, but not this time.
It’s all working now, so no complaints since earlier last week. So that’s the good news. But these guys had better get their act together or the press, pundits and consumers will be all over Apple for this.
And @Disaster Capitalist, it isn’t that bad yet. It’s not like it’s Vista or something, so relax.
Working for Apple, I would definitely agree with this statement:
“Apple needs to take a long, hard look at how hard it’s pushing its employees”
Add to the list:
With such phenomenal growth rates, sales is not being paid out. Management has asssigned overly aggressive stretched quotas that ensures they don’t make their revenue numbers.
It’s another form of controlling cost. 🙁
While there’s plenty of polish left, the article is right in its fundamental premise. Apple’s biggest challenge is scaling to meet its opportunities and keeping quality.
It’s a problem most business dream of.
That said, if one looks at the R&D;line in the financials, Apple has certainly BEEN adding resources. Probably as fast as it can. You can’t scale engineering the way you do iPod Shuffle production.
The advice I would give to Apple is to take its time and make sure things are ready. The press loves to beat up on a company for schedule slips… but real users have lives and hardly notice. What they notice is quality.
But if you look at things like the Snow Leopard concept, it seems like Apple–known, sometimes unfairly, for glitz–understands that the road between here and its full potential lies in solid product implementation. It’s all about making sure users who flock to its products have good experiences there.
“Anyone else want to see the rest of that girl looking at the MacBook sitting on top of her head?”
Hand back your fanboy card. Apple fanboys would rather jerk off looking at Apple hardware than jerk off looking at women.
Actually, we would rather jerk off looking at a woman using Apple hardware. The best of both worlds.
I have restored my iPhone 3G 5 times since day 1. Un-friggin-acceptable. I’m on my 2nd, probably gonna take it again for a 3rd.
2.1 better be awesome.
I work at an apple store, and i will tell you from personal experience, we all are a little exhausted from this launch, have recieved no benefits, and yet have increased responsibility.
Things have got to start changing. We are losing about 15 people this months…
Only faggots use the word “fanboy”.
My Mac is now three times as fast. Thanks Apple!