The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than Apple had hoped. While the company is making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to Apple’s standards. Therefore, Apple is extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for MobileMe members’ patience as they continue to improve the service.
Apple email sent to MobileMe subscribers:
We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.
The MobileMe Team
• You are eligible if you are a MobileMe member whose account was active as of August 19, 2008 at 0:00 Pacific Daylight Time.
• If you were in your free trial period on August 19 at 0:00 Pacific Daylight Time, your free trial will be extended an additional 60 days.
• Your 60-day extension will be applied to your account within the next few days. You can check your account page on me.com to verify the change when it occurs.
More info here.
MacDailyNews Note: On July 16th, Apple granted a 30-day subscription extension to which this new 60-day extension will be added for a total of 90-days.
Related articles:
Former Apple employee: Eddy Cue will fix MobileMe – August 07, 2008
Full text of Steve Jobs’ memo to MobileMe team – August 06, 2008
Steve Jobs says MobileMe launched too early, not up to Apple’s standards; puts Eddy Cue in charge – August 05, 2008
Apple: MobileMe Mail, contact and calendar sync now working for all users – July 30, 2008
MobileMess weighs on Apple shares – July 28, 2008
Apple’s MobileMe highlights problems endemic to cloud computing – July 28, 2008
Apple should have launched MobileMe as ‘beta’ – July 28, 2008
Apple CEO Steve Jobs orders frequent public MobileMe status updates – July 28, 2008
NY Times’ Pogue slams Apple over ‘MobileMess’ – July 24, 2008
Mossberg: Apple’s MobileMe far too flawed to be reliable – July 24, 2008
Apple’s MobileMe and iWeb continue to have major issues – July 18, 2008
Apple’s MobileMe Team apologizes to customers, gives users free 30-day extension – July 16, 2008
MobileMe users demand refund from Apple – July 14, 2008
Apple’s MobileMe service delayed ahead of iPhone launch – July 10, 2008
All you “full attention to the Mac” dudes better get used to the idea that this business is gonna grow, and it’s not gonna grow just by making changes to an OS and building speedy computers. As it has been said, all this other development is only going to HELP the Macintosh stay ahead of the pack. Just like we just made fun of mikey dell for “skating to where the puck is”, you guys are asking Apple to do the same? I don’t think so.
If you plan to stay with .mac, or now “mobileme”, what benefit is 90 days free? So my card is charged 3 months later than it would have, but the same amount is taken out. Not sure there is much benefit. It seems that the perceived benefit is much greater than the actual benefit. For those planning on dumping mobileme, 3 months free is a benefit. To the rest of us, it simply alter when I see the charge to my card. Woohoo!! I’d be more impressed if the 1% of mobileme users that were hosed for over a week and lost some emails that will never come back were given something tangible, rather than a blanket shifting of when we all pay for the service. If that is still coming, then bravo. If not…thanks for pretty much nothing.
MobileMe email has problems, and the old .mac email was better. When you have a new message window open, the address book icon at the top doesn’t work, so you can’t select an address to insert. On a few occasions I have written long emails that are lost because they are not automatically saved to draft after 20 minutes like the as in the old .mac mail. Also, sometimes the auto complete function for the “To:” box does not work. Sometimes, the send icon doesn’t send the message, it makes the message disappear, there is no “woosh” send-off sound, and the message is gone forever.
So yeah, I’ll take the 90 days. Plus we should get a free day for everyday the web-based email isn’t fully operational and relatively bug free. I can remember no bugs in .mac mail, that’s for certain. A 100 bucks a year is plenty expensive for what you get, especially when it doesn’t work right.
What Apple is trying to do with MobileMe goes so far beyond iCards that it isn’t even funny. But… The iCards feature will be missed by any subscriber who enjoys sending electronic greeting cards for the simple reason that the number of web sites offering a reasonable selection of free ecards is dwindling fast. Many of the sites I’ve used in the past now charge for all but a paltry selection of lame designs. To all the über-geeks out there who could care less about this subject: There are other things in the world besides high technology.
Am I the only one who’s missing Groups? Haven’t seen anyone else talking about this but it really sucks that MobileMe has done away with .Mac Groups with not options to replace them and no ability to add more. This is really starting to piss me off. I have been a long time .Mac subscriber and iWeb user and both are starting to let me down. iWeb doesnt allow users to leave comments – and now with Groups gone how can I support my community…I have tried iComments but can’t get it to work. Apple please offer us an option to replace Groups – the ability to add comments to a page in iWeb would be a nice option.
OK. For many of us who have had ,Mac from the beginning (and iTools before that), the 90 day extension is now pushing our payment for renewal too close to our gift giving time and other end of year expenses. I suggest that Apple extend the freebie an additional 90 days to minimize the financial stresses during that time. Otherwise, we’ll have our new due date at an inconvenient time each year. (How about that?)