Former Apple employee Chuq Von Rospach is offering insight as to what he thinks happened and will happen with Apple’s MobileMe, “Just imagine Steve Jobs wandering the hall with a flame thrower in hand, asking random people ‘do you work on MobileMe?'”
“I expect a bunch of friends and people I know were involved in that project, and I feel really bad for them,” Von Rospach writes. “But the reality is, the thing wasn’t ready and the release got botched. And Steve and Apple aren’t terribly tolerant of that kind of major screwup. I expect heads have rolled and there are a few tanned hides waiting for the welts to go away.”
“Someone [Steve Jobs] depended on to tell him what reality was told him it was ready to roll, and Steve believed him. And whoever told him that was wrong, and made everyone (including Steve and Apple) look bad. That’s not a good way to advance your career at Apple,” Von Rospach writes.
“That this release was botched isn’t about Apple not having a clue, but about the MobileMe people either blowing it (I can think of any number of scenarios — scaling it hard). The ultimate failure seemed to be more capacity planning mistakes than anything else, if I’m guessing right. but the ultimate failure was not being willing to tell Steve “we aren’t ready” and taking that heat. They thought they could release and make it work, and guessed very wrong (or thought they were in good shape, which is worse),” Von Rospach writes.
“And now Eddy [Cue] has been brought in to fix it, which means it’s going to get fixed,” Von Rospach writes. “Eddy’s name isn’t familiar to most apple people, but he’s in his way as important to apple’s success as Jonathan Ives [sic]. His specialty: the back-end infrastructures that make Apple’s online universe tick. His groups did the Apple online store, iTools (later .Mac), iTunes store, etc, etc. It’s the not-sexy part of the company, but it’s the guts that make all of the sexy front ends actually work.”
“Apple has the expertise; this isn’t a case of MobileMe problems crawling out into itunes, but Apple bringing the iTunes expertise into MobileMe. And having thrown Eddy Cue at the problem, that’s exactly what’s going to happen here,” Von Rospach writes.
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
[Attribution: MacBlogz. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
to John C. Randolph:
Yes, from his blog, I can see that he was a dedicated player at Apple once.
It still irks me to see people, and especially Apple or former Apple people, constantly missplling Commander Ive’s last name.
They may have fixed some of the stuff but calendar sync is still NOT working.
But can Eddie fix the upcoming class action suit?
@Synthmeister
Calendar sync is working. If it isn’t working for you, there’s something on your end <not your fault> that is amiss. Maybe it is a permissions issue. Check the permissions on the files in ~/Library/Calendars, or try my fix:
Run Terminal:
cd ~/Library
chmod -R -N *0
@Synthmeister:
Spurious zero. The remedy is:
Run Terminal
cd ~/Library
chmod -R -N *
Eddy Cue, Apple’s version of Mr. Wolf from Pulp Fiction.
Wonder if he’s married to Suzie….
This reassuring piece from Von Rospach completely restores my confidence in MobileMe and Apple. Good luck with the new gig, Eddy. Steve has put you in a great position, now do well!
Andy,
“That also makes me wonder, actually – does Steve have a Sad Mac branding iron? Perhaps failure in Apple is rewarded with the ultimate mark of shame, or perhaps it’s an ‘XP Certified’ sticker for really grievous offenses…”
That made my day. Thanks.
Eddie is my man to take over Steve. He’s got the vision and the brains.
MobileMe was previously under guy also responsible for iLife. He should have been fired already after iMovie 08.
Yeah… Apple dropped the ball big time with this one. But they’ve admitted it and are in the process of fixing it. But it doesn’t matter. Since it’s Apple, the critics (read: MS and PC fanboys) will still use this as an excuse to beat Apple up. Well, I say go for it.
But do you remember PlaysForSure?
I’m picturing Eddy Cue as Harvey Keitel screeching up to Apple, Inc 9 minutes and 37 seconds after Steve’s call in an Acura.
“Name’s Eddy Cue. I solve problems.”
Before the ‘Cloud’, computer companies could sell their goods and never touch the customer again except indirectly through Help Support and software updates.
Today it seems that Apple has become my Systems Admin.
What’s Eddie’s email address at Apple? I want HIS iCARDs back!!
I wonder how Eddy Cue likes his martinis – although, that’s probably how Steve caught the MobileMe team, engaged in endless three martini lunches, with one of them packing a spinning beachball…
“MobileMe was previously under guy also responsible for iLife. He should have been fired already after iMovie 08.”
who IS the guy responsible? (I concur, iMove08 is a POS)
Actually, iMovie 08 is a very capable, CONSUMER focused app. It’s simply an example of apple being willing to innovate in the linear editing space in order to make film editing easier for newbies (the point, btw, of the iLife suite). If it’s underpowered for you, apple has differentiated the market: buy FCE or FCP.
Maybe Steve condemmed all the Mobile Me people to work for 1 week on Dell running Vista to remind them what real misery can be brought upon users when products repeatedly suck for over a decade. Feel the pain!
Bet they won’t do that again.
Don’t you hate it when as soon as you hit “Submit” you see a spelling error in your own post?
Correction: Condemned.
“Actually, iMovie 08 is a very capable, CONSUMER focused app. It’s simply an example of apple being willing to innovate in the linear editing space in order to make film editing easier for newbies (the point, btw, of the iLife suite). If it’s underpowered for you, apple has differentiated the market: buy FCE or FCP.”
Lack of features is acceptable and I love the interface, but there is no excuse for horrible video quality from DV source. (As iM08 can’t deinterlace it just throws away every second line from DV video, resulting in low resolution output. BTW it’s done also with 25p.) DV is still very common camera format and even owners of newer AVCHD cameras have probably old recordings in DV that the might want to use. It’s a shame to Apple company if people show these low quality movies to others and tell that it was done with Apple iMovie.
Apple online services won’t recover form the MobilMess debacle for some time.
It’ll be a couple of generations of software and good reviews before anyone outside Apple fanboys will trust Apple’s wannabe online services again.