“Pablo Calamera was announced as the new lead tech for Thumbplay, a cloud-based data-syncing product for Macs, iPhones and PCs. Starting March 8, Calamera will work from the company’s headquarters in New York,” AppleInsider reports. “The recruitment of Calamera comes as the company recently launched its own all-you-can-eat music subscription plan, Thumbplay Music, currently available to select users in beta form. The company was previously focused on ringtone sales.”
AppleInsider reports, “Calamera worked with Apple for 10 years, where he oversaw MobileMe. He also spent six years at mobile services company Danger and two years with WebTV, both of which were acquired by Microsoft. In all, he has worked for more than 25 years in PC, mobile, set-top box and cloud computing.”
Full article here.
Thumbplay’s press release, verbatim:
Pablo Calamera has been appointed to the newly-created role of Chief Technology Officer for Thumbplay, the leading mobile entertainment company in the U.S. Calamera joins Thumbplay from Apple Inc. where he oversaw technology development for MobileMe, a pioneering, cloud-based data-syncing product for iPhones, PCs and Macs. As of March 8, 2010, Calamera will be based in New York, reporting to Evan Schwartz, Thumbplay CEO and Co-Founder.
Calamera brings with him more than 25 years experience in PC, Mobile, set-top box and cloud-computing–this includes a total of 10 years at Apple, six years at Danger (acquired by Microsoft) and two with WebTV (also acquired by Microsoft). Calamera will have oversight of all technology initiatives for the company, including its recently launched Thumbplay Music. Thumbplay Music is a cloud-based service that provides unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs and is now offered in the U.S. in Private Beta by invitation-only.
Commented Schwartz: “We are thrilled to have Pablo join our team. He has unique experience with Apple, Danger and WebTV in delivering and syncing content across multiple platforms for a scaled customer base. He has also managed major integrations with U.S. and international carriers; an area of ongoing strategic importance for us. Over the course of his career, he has done an extraordinary job of building state-of-the-art consumer products and services from concept to completion. Technological innovation is paramount to Thumbplay, and Pablo’s talent, experience and commitment to excellence will play a vital role in keeping us at the forefront of mobile entertainment offerings.”
Remarked Calamera: “Thumbplay has an incredible talent pool, and they have done a remarkable job in building robust, feature-rich services that deliver beautifully across multiple platforms. This is a very difficult thing to do, and I have been consistently impressed with the energy, smarts and creativity on display. I am greatly looking forward to working with Evan and the entire Thumbplay team to deliver against our very ambitious goals for the future.”
Calamera most recently served as Director of Apple’s MobileMe, a mass scale premium consumer service providing client/server solutions that are integrated into devices, operating systems and desktop applications. MobileMe supports millions of worldwide active users on a daily basis. Prior to Apple, from 2001–2006, he was the Senior Director of Service Engineering and Support for Danger Inc., where he lead the service engineering team for the first real consumer smartphone – the Sidekick. Before that, he was at NotifyMe Networks as CTO and Vice President of Engineering for a trailblazing voice alerting application service provider (ASP) which, for the first time, brought the dynamic/interactive power of the Internet to every telephone. He has also served in critical roles at AT&T Labs, WebTV Networks and also held previous positions at Apple early in his career.
Thumbplay’s latest offering, Thumbplay Music, is currently available on select BlackBerry smartphones and its companion app for PCs/Macs is available through a downloadable Adobe AIR version. Thumbplay Music is a next generation service, built by experts in mobile content delivery and will be available for BlackBerry, Android and iPhone smartphones within the first quarter of 2010. Today, the service has more than 8 million tracks under license from EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and more than 25,000 independent labels.
Thumbplay Inc., which enjoys sustained profitability, has an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.
Source: Thumbplay, Inc.
GREAT!
No maybe they can find someone to make it work right…. and make it work FAST
jltnol beat me to it… this has to be good for the beleaguered MobileMe customer – I’m one and I can tell you, we are the stepchildren of Apple! Damn.
The “vocal minority” has spoken.
I have a feeling a lot of peoples’ knee-jerk reactions to this news will be, essentially, “good riddance!”
And while the botched MobileMe launch is no doubt a prominent stain on his resume, keep in mind he *was* with Apple for the past 10 years – in other words, through the bulk of Apple’s resurgence to where they are today.
Oops, my mistake – looks like he’s worked a total of 10 years at Apple, but not consecutively, as they mention he was at Danger from 2001-2006. D’oh! That’ll learn me to read all the big chunks of italicized text first before firing off a comment…
One more thing. Apple will never achieve the level of greatness that MDN and so many posters on this site claim it is until they have brought MobileMe around to be worth the price they charge for it. Never.
For the dissenters to this statement, let me ask you: AppleTV? iMac 27″ yellow screens? New Aperture launch that renders elements of iLife useless? MobileMe? Stuff like that.
“Apple will never achieve the level of greatness that …”
It already has. Now move along.
MobilMe is an absolute JOKE. Easily one of Apple’s greatest failures.
I’d rather pay for a service, get it sans advertisement, etc. and have usable interface than get something for supposedly free and have to work around all the advertisements and have a difficult interface.
Apple has had some weaknesses in its product lineup, and I would agree that MobileMe is not nearly where it could be (or should be) in terms of functionality and integration with the Mac experience.
If AppleTV is a hobby, then MobileMe is a casual interest.
By publishing that statement, I have probably guaranteed that Apple will roll out a fantastic update to MobileMe in the next few months that will make me look like an idiot. But that’s OK.
I am one of the first users of the .Mac service, now MobileMe. I signed up within an hour of it being available. Other than providing push services for the iPhone I am not at all impressed with what Apple delivers for that price lately. You would think that they would have delivered something having much more value for their customers by now.
But there is one other technology severely broken: iChat. I have also been using that since it came out and it seems that every year the failures are becoming more prominent.
So we got 2 technologies that are not up to the quality that we as Apple customers would expect from them: MobileMe and iChat.
@Good Move
What exactly is wrong with the Apple TV? Do you own one, have you used one?
You failed to mention the TREMENDOUS success of the iPod and the iPhone, iTunes. The resurgence of Apple Macs, and 5 years of record braking sales that have translated in Apple being bigger the HP, Dell and any other PC manufacturer as far as Market Cap. Apple is addressing the iMac 27 problem and it has addressed Aperture with a patch. Now, you want to explain Vista, LMAO. Now there was a dud.
@Jeeve Stobbs
I disagree with you. And I am right, without any shadow of doubt!
John
I’m somewhere between the naysayers and the fans on .mac.
On the one hand, .mac works well enough and and I find the value acceptable. Generally, I guess I’d say I’m pretty satisfied.
On the other hand, it seems like it could be so much more. It could be another thing that makes using Apple products together “killer”; another must-have. Like the computers or iPhone or iPods, it could be the thing you’re happy to spend the money on because it’s just that kick-ass. But, it’s not.
It’s gotten better, but I’d still say it’s just OK, and certainly not up to the quality or desirability of most of Apple’s other products.
I have had MobileMe since it was iTools… I keep it just cause I like it when System Preferences says I have been a member since 2001.
I like it, push works great.
I love how easily people throw around the word “failure” when talking about Apple TV and MobileMe. I’m assuming we’re grading on a curve, where the definition of “success” is skewed into the stratosphere by Apple’s other products?
@ Good Move – Speaking of grading on a curve… can you provide the correct context for Apple’s “failures” by comparing how they’re doing against their competition?
For example, you mentioned the 27″ iMac screen issue. Is Apple doing better or worse than their competitors in the area of screen reliability? For software updates, is Apple doing better or worse than Microsoft when it comes to breaking stuff?
This is not to absolve Apple of these problems – obviously, they shouldn’t happen – but in case you hadn’t noticed, this technology stuff isn’t all that easy. Apple just makes it look easy much of the time. If Apple starts doing significantly worse than their comparable competition, then sure, you’ll have a valid point.
But I’m not sure how any of that relates to whether MobileMe is worth $8.34 per month.
I’ve had MobileMe ever since it was iTools, and free… For life.
So much for that.
Although I would have preferred it if Apple would have allowed their iTools members to keep their email accounts at no charge, I upgraded to .Mac when it came out, and now MobileMe.
I use the features, and I will continue to subscribe, but I would like to see the benefits increase.
I would love to keep my music in sync over the cloud. iHope.
GREAT NEWS! Maybe now they’ll bring someone in who will make the http://www.me.com email experience worth a darn. As is, it sucks so badly. And also, photo galleries on MobileMe are a disgrace.
I can’t upload my iWeb pages to moblileMe today. Is anyone else having this problem?
I have been a member since Jan 27 2000
Brilliant news. Now they can hire someone to make it actually work. And maybe hire some more people to sit on the other end of phones and let you talk to them when it doesn’t. You know, it’s called ‘customer service’. Presumably the lamentable efforts of MobileMe in this area weren’t included in any of those surveys that have Apple coming in at or near the top. Because *man* is MobileMe *rubbish* at looking after it’s customers.
His new job sounds alot like his old job.
I saw a big ripple in the reality distortion field about a month ago. Apple needs to step it up. For the first time in many many years I have begun considering alternatives for getting out of the apple / iTunes ecosystem.
Why?
iPad, MobileMe, appletv
they need to connect the dam dots already. They are sitting on so much potential and I’m getting tired of waiting for them to do the things I expect them to do. There is still a month to go before I get my hands on an iPad to see what it does and doesn’t do so for now I will just keep hoping that apple does something fantastic with it all.
How long before Thumbplay gets acquired by MS?
armchair experts are in abundance on this website…
I would certainly not call MobileMe a “failure”, but the service is inconsistent at times and occasionally downright flakey. This definitely shouldn’t be the case for a hundred bucks a year.
Good this guy’s gone… maybe Apple can make MobileMe work right now. No wonder it was always such a mess… this guy came from Microsoft!
You guys act as though he was the only guy who worked in the MobileMe department. I doubt the new guy in charge will suddenly scrap the whole thing and start over by copying Google or Yahoo!
Very predictable that a bunch of posters would instantly villanize they guy just because he committed the ultimate sin – leaving Apple.
The real bummer is he has to move to NYC from Cali.
Hasn’t Calamera heard that people do not want subscription music?
i love mobileme. it has always worked well for me.
The result of an unfortunate elevator ride, no doubt.
It was either this, or the Kraken!
Gotcha beat, Jamie- I’ve been a member since Aug 16, 2000
MobilMe is a laughable joke. Apple completely missed the boat on this one. What is more, it is a CRIME to charge people for that junk heap of software. MobileMe is utterly and completely, WORTHLESS.
@Bizlaw
“… Very predictable that a bunch of posters would instantly villanize they guy just because he committed the ultimate sin – leaving Apple.”
Really? That’s not what I read. Seems to me that people villanize MobileMe, because it seriously needs to be better.
I didn’t see anybody jumping on the guy just ’cause he’s leaving.
But it does sound like a typical opinion from a pc troll.
Look kids. MobileMe/.Mac/iDisk has been a reasonably nice service, worth the $80 a year (when you buy it yearly at Amazon). I’ve been with it the entire time.
However, MobileMe… has not sparkled or shined or blown any alternatives out of the water. It has not outstandingly innovated. It has merely been timely. That Mr. Calamera has been so closely associated with Microsoft does provoke a sense of irony considering. You can’t deny that.
I’ve also been a member at VersionTracker for eons as well. But comparison, MobileMe does just fine. Beats me what CNET has done to VersionTracker, but some of its basic functions, such as listing whether an app is 10.6 compatible (!!!), do not exist any longer. That’s a fundamental flaw. That’s what I’d call OBLIQUE, to put it mildly, to the point where I don’t see much point in supporting VersionTracker any further.
However, I’ll be continuing my MobileMe subscription at the end of this year because, despite an odd lack of Apple spirit in its features, it works and I’m content with it. Well, until something better and more inspiring comes along. And it’s not Google. Sorry.
what are these issues that people say about MobileMe?
I use iWeb to publish my web page… works fine.
I use iDisk on my phone and on my computers… works fine.
I use Galleries on my phone and on my computers… works fine.
I use Back to my Mac… works fine.
I use push contacts and calanders (bookmarks though not that important) when I went from one phone to another and one computer to a new one… works fine.
I use find my Phone when I dropped it outside when there were no lights… worked fine.
I barely use @me.com mail… yet works fine.
Been a MobileMe user since the fall of 2008. While I realize and understand the initial years of the service has been rough and bumpy. I haven’t seen or heard much about it lately other than people who do not know how to use it and implement it on their devices.
In this era of lack of privacy and advertisement intrusion into every facet of the internet, I believe that having my own mobileme subscription, which is not subject to ads and data mining, is worth the annual fee. With the free email sites, I feel like I am only a guest that is subject to the whims of the company’s marketing and sales department.
iDisk works fine? Sorry sir, you have ZERO credibility now. iDisk is appallingly slow. It is in no way shape or form, fine.
I agree with nordic. That is one good reason to use MobilMe.
I don’t know how you use idisc all I put are documents as .pdf’s. Zipped .mp3 files from my iTunes. And very little on my public folder. Zero cred… Just cause your have a crappy experience does not speak for me. For thinking you speak and represent “everyone” yeah I airquoted you… You have 000000 cred.
LOL @ mr. ZERO credibility. Just go read the MobilMe support forum. There are HUNDREDS of posts complaining about the AWFUL iDisk speed.
ROFLMAO
I have worked on and off in IT for 10 years and compared to the Linux and Windows options, Mobile Me is awesome. I lost my contacts several times using exchange mail and well linux doesn’t have a server package that will do what exchange will do, yet. I have found Mobile Me to be slow at times but it’s ability to store settings and preferences have saved me many times. I love the fact it will sync keychains between the iPhone and Mac. Tell me, O naysayers, what else out there offers this kind of efficiency and integrates into your OS and your Phone. And the answer is? I am bothered that this man left Apple. I would have though Apple would have had him sign a non-compete but maybe I’m wrong. The internet is about to change and being a Network Engineer I can tell you that companies are trying to cut support costs and programmers right now. The biggest expense in IT isn’t keeping it running, it is showing people how not to be stupid and Mobile Me is just that, stupid proof!
I have a feeling that this man is leaving Apple and not just getting a better job. Who in their right mind would leave the most successful computer company that made money during a recession. I came from Bell Labs and I can tell you that Apple will take over the market and it is because IT Managers just want something that works. They want an impenetrable product and Unix is the answer for that. Not because Apple made a great OS but because they took the MOST reliable OS in the world and made it better. The best part is, UNIX was built for the Military and Financial sectors, Apple put it in a pretty little box added lots of Bells and whistles like Mobile Me and handed it to the consumer.
Who wouldn’t think that an OS that cost Billions in R&D;would beat the stuffins out of an dying Windows 98, (thats all Microsoft has).
Mobile Me is just the beginning and Apple’s best move at this point would be to either buy companies like Steam and add them to iTunes or to start spreading their market segment by buying Server and Network companies. Either Way, I use Mobile Me and it is far more reliable than any other solution out there.
I like MobileMe but could be so much more! They’ve taken away so much. Apple doesn’t get the personal stuff like iCards, iChat, web communities, or even an MSN-style homepage and has either dropped them, ignored them, or left them hopelessly undeveloped! It’s all about the almighty dollar, so the incentive, or lack thereof, is clear. MobileMe is a big yawner!!!
“Gotcha beat, Jamie- I’ve been a member since Aug 16, 2000”
January 7, 2000
Next??
Jan 7th 2000 here too!
You guys need a hobby. I guess it is better than reloading xp for the 11th time.
I think what most people are complaining about is the web interface for mobileme which is ridiculously slow. No matter how open the environment or how fast the connection it always takes over 10 seconds to load. Consistently mail takes 30-45 seconds to load in on the web.
I’ve been using MobileMe since it was .Mac and it has always been the red headed step child of Apple products. Sure its convenient for syncing your iPhone and some basic file sharing, but it is not up to Apple’s standard.
About 4 years ago all of my mail (years worth) on .Mac vanished. I put in a ticket with .Mac tech support and a couple of days later they got back to me with their solution. The tech pointed out that I had a forwarder set up in my .Mac account to send all my mail to my gmail account, and said that I should be able to find it there.
Apple’s fix was to use gmail instead of .Mac for my mail.
And they were right! I haven’t had a single problem with gmail.
The Rev. Dr. shows once again that MobileMe cannot be counted on AT ALL. MobilMe is pathetic.
I had some time to lookover these posts and I can tell you the issue. Has it occurred to anyone that apple is changing data centers and if you traceroute the dns it is slowly changing to their new data center in NC. The other issue is that, peoples ISP DNS servers may not update as quickly as they should. This last one was a huge break. Has anyone actually checked what ports mobile me uses and the webkit that caches in safari. Clearing that cache is possible and clearing the dns cache fixed several issues for me.