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.]
Well, it seems to work OK now – supposedly they gave me an extra month for the trouble.
I haven’t any major problems with mobileme, my iMac or iPhone 3G. Guess I am one of the lucky ones. I am really enjoying the mac experience and have been since my Apple IIe
Geez, it doesn’t seem to take much for people to start accusing that “the polish” has tarnished.
The Mobile Me stuff was an uncharacteristic event. Apple has shown a number of growing pains these past ten years, it’s just that now it’s being followed more closely in the news (without the term ‘death knell’ being thrown somewhere in the article).
If Apple has shown anything it’s that it learns from its successes AND failures. And if these past successes have also demonstrated anything, the intention is not to sit still. When .Mac was introduced in place of iTools, it was a service in search of subscribers. It still is, but now that Apple has tied it to iPhone, their push for platform dominance in the mobile age, I’d expect Mobile Me to continue to grow, too. More desktop class apps available through your mobile devices. This really is a 1.0 version.
The majority of dedicated computer users are smart and tech savvy. The majority of cellphone users- not so much. Supporting the cellphone crowd puts you in the crosshairs of a duller group of people who will complain about things they do not fully grasp. Hence, the current whining coming from that crowd.
If employees don’t like being ‘pushed’ then I would delay any raise in pay.
One motto to live by. “Always be worth more than you are making”.
Worked for me, I never asked for a raise, but ALWAYS received one.
Does not work if you’re a government worker or union member.
Any company that is thriving and growing will push its existing employees hard while working to hire and train more. That’s a good thing; Apple is not stagnant, like it was in the late 90’s.
Mobile Me worked fine for me during the transition. I did not notice any email outages, except one after midnight (when I was about to go to sleep). I avoided the new web-based features initially, and now that I’m trying them out, they seem to be working fine. Plus I got a free 30-day extension of my membership when I had no complaints. That’s a good deal.
MIne is working really good now. Mail shows up faster on my iPhone than my desktop. Address book updates automatically all across too. Very nice.
I was one of the 1%. Apple was very slow to communicate what was going on. Despite the frothing of certain commentators, this is uncharacteristic for Apple, so I suspect they were slow to figure out themselves what was going on.
The four-fold launch was a bad idea. It gave Apple multiple points of failure. If more than one thing went wrong they would be hosed. Since they knew that first day sign-ups would overwhelm any reasonable infrastructure they put in place for the other 99.9% of the time, they had to count on nothing else going wrong. A dangerous strategy that bit them this time around.
Being over stretched almost certainly contributed to the problems, either in the run up or in the clean up, but to say it was the cause of the problems is premature. We don’t know what happened, and the list of possible causes includes many that don’t require being over stretched as a prerequisite.
I don’t have an iPhone. I still use 10.4.x. I am not going to be using the new features of MobileMe anytime soon. Apple screwed up and hosed my (secondary) email for ten days when I didn’t want to make any changes at all. Damn annoying. However, everyone makes mistakes, even if it is inconvenient to me. This is the biggest foul-up I can remember from Apple. If they do it again, I’ll start worrying that their commitment to excellence is losing out to a lust for marketing splash, but not yet. One really big screw up doesn’t mean everything is doomed. Let’s see what happens with these rumoured product transitions.
Who ever listened to the opinion of Glen Fleishman?
I mean really, to come up with a line like this:
“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.”
“The majority of dedicated computer users are smart and tech savvy. The majority of cellphone users- not so much”
That’s not fair. You’re comparing “dedicated” users to users. Compare computer users (those who use computers) to cellphone users (those who use cellphones) and you’ll have just as many dullards in the bunch.
One one hand, Fleishman is probably right that Apple tried to unleash too many new things at one time. The planets would have had to be aligned perfectly for nothing to go wrong. There weren’t.
So, Apple did the right thing; they fessed up to the problem, fixed it ASAP, and gave new subscribers a extra free month on MobileMe. 6 months from now no one will remember the screw up at launch. Instead, they will be wetting their pants because all the new stuff Apple released works so well.
However, Fleishman’s assertion that Apple is pushing its employees too hard is a rather subjective judgment on his part. Apple is known for pushing its staff very, very hard. Read Kahney’s recent book: Inside Steve’s Brain for proof of Apple’s approach.
In Apple’s case, pushing people to their limits is what unleashes the fantastic innovation that the company keeps producing. When people finally leave Apple they feel like they have been beaten to a pulp, but they also know they produced the best work of their lives.
Maybe Fleishman should spend more time writing about why his local company (M$) can’t duplicate Apple’s accomplishments.
While I can certainly empathize with folks who lost emails during this transition, I personally just sat out the few days they were having a rough time, and by about 4-5 days after the transition, the web part was working, as was pretty much instant synching, so I really have no complaints.
By the by, I forward all my email to my .mac/.me account now. I have separate accounts to send mail from so that people see my corporate email when I send them messages, but for the past year, since I bought my iPhone, I’ve had everything channeled through my .mac account and have found it to work extremely well, so honestly I want to give Apple a pat on the back rather than a smack on the rear!
I think there is some truth to this article. Some things did seem to be slightly rushed. It appears that Apple is putting so much into the iPhone that other things are being pushed back, as was Leopard. Maybe once the whole iPhone thing stabilizes, they will get more balanced.
ron, according to some recent data, Apple engineers are underpaid compared to others in the industry:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/10/at-glassdoor-find-out-how-much-people-really-make-at-google-microsoft-yahoo-and-everywhere-else/
Quite a few have left Apple recently.
All is not well yet, I have 4 separate accounts and could not send mail from any last night around midnight for over a half hour, even though the MobileMe status was GREEN! 2 of those accounts were in the alleged 1% and 2 were not.
And to all who repeatedly tells us everything has always worked fine… stick it!
I think someone needs to look up the word pervasive. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
@John Doe,
Wow, I missed that…I love it! LOL with tears…
Trying to use iDisk Public folders over the web,
I cannot access them using Safari (Mac, latest version)
I CAN access them using Firefox 3 (Mac, latest version)
I find it odd that Apple’s browser fails, and Mozilla’s doesn’t.
Has anyone else experienced this? Anything you can add?
“… according to some recent data, Apple engineers are underpaid compared to others in the industry”
“Quite a few have left Apple recently.”
Yes, they went to Psystar. Smart move.
Obviously, Apple is having problems. How else can you explain the fact that the iPhone won’t run CP/M? And its battery doesn’t hold enough juice to power my USB barbeque. No doubt about it, these are bad signs. Very bad signs…….
@John Doe…
“Incontheivable!!”
…thanx 4 the flash-back.
JoshtheiMacGuy,
“And its battery doesn’t hold enough juice to power my USB barbeque.”
You need to disable the rotisserie. It sucks down more juice than 3G and BlueTooth combined.
Anyone else want to see the rest of that girl looking at the MacBook sitting on top of her head?
Cubert,
Only if she’s naked.
Hey, look down and to the right of the comment box.
There’s a guy doing the same thing.
I’ll bet ‘sdjvufuh’ would like to see HIM naked.
I’m still a Machead (what’s the alternative?), but I and many other .Mac subscribers have been very upset by the discontinuance of so many .Mac ancillary services. We have been especially wounded by the discontinuance of Apple’s (great PR) iCards!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsmiley/2652541101/
iWant iCards back online!!
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!
All the bickering amazes me. Yes, the launch was bungled. But is this all it takes for Apple to lose its shine?
By next year, everyone will be complaining about the next latest-and-greatest issue. They’ll use it to build an argument about how Apple no longer is living up to their personal expectations anymore and how this is a harbinger of things to come. People will excoriate Apple as the next Microsoft. Some will issue warnings that this is certainly end of the once great innovator. Others will say they are on the verge of jumping ship– after all, how could Apple disappoint ME like that?
Whatever. It makes a great story on some level because it’s about the fall of the mighty, and we all get off now and then on some shadenfreude. But it’s a manufactured story nonetheless. Mistakes happen. It’s an imperfect world. Apple abides by the same laws of physics and humanity that everyone else does, so when they make a mistake every now and then, it should be expected and understood, not blown out of proportion and personalized.
It’ll all be ok. Apple’s strong. Has been, will be.
“we would rather jerk off looking at a woman using Apple hardware”
I’m sure you all use your Apple hardware to jerk off while looking at woman. The chances of you seeing a live one naked are small.
“Only faggots use the word ‘fanboy’.”
I love how someone needs to get on this site and get racist. To the asshole who left that post, go back to your fucking prehistoric world of shit and off yourself for the benefit of all of mankind. You don’t deserve to be part of the human race.
From a straight guy with a family that is intolerant of racist remarks, no matter how small and foolish.
Freudian Slip,
“I’m sure you all use your Apple hardware to jerk off while looking at woman. The chances of you seeing a live one naked are small.”
That’s true. My wife hasn’t let me see her naked for several years. They get older and put on a few pounds and that’s the end of a guys voyeuristic jollies. Bummer.
R,
“All the bickering amazes me.”
It would amaze me even more if we didn’t, because that would mean that the trolls agreed with us. If that happened, it would mean that all mankind is capable of living in total peace and harmony. Now wouldn’t that be boring?
Disagreeing ≠ bickering.
I rely on MobileMe for one thing, Back to My Mac. Of course it can also Sync Contacts up my iPhone, so I was super dismayed when my wife logged into our home computer when I was on the road last week and MobileMe sync’d her contacts back to my laptop and iPhone. That was mighty distressing on the road.
the MobileMe launch was a PR disaster!
Looks bad for a company like Apple with more profit in the bank than it seemingly could ever spend (unless saving up to buy Microsoft) this venture appears either cash starved or just very low priority!
Still get buggy messages on sync even now!
It should have gone public Beta until Autumn and kept existing services running.
Only faggots use the word intolerant.
@@Ferf,
Only assholes who call other people faggots are really gay but refuse to come out.
I’ve been trying for 2 weeks to renew my .Mac account with a boxed product registration #.
After numerous “an error occurred” results and far too much time searching Apple support I thought my luck had changed when the Apple MobileMe support chat button was hot and I got in.
Waited 20 minutes for a rep, spent another 25 minutes going through all the steps and the final result is…
my registration # is good but the system just won’t accept it.
If I didn’t have family all over the world using iDisk I’d demand a refund and tell Apple to stuff the new MobileMess they’ve created.
Oh yeah, and I want the damn iCards back too!!!!!!!!
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We are worked too hard and underpayed!
1. Apple had problems w/the launches for too long, yes. Jeez, a slip and suddenly they suck?
2. This economy isn’t exactly ripe for big raises everywhere. No matter how a company is doing, they’re always going to be looking to shave costs.
3. I too worked in an Apple store at one time. We were underpaid when I started, and much more so when I left. But, it’s on par or slightly less pay than other retail jobs. Why? Cause lots of folks want to work there.
4. Hopefully this dude is still criticizing MS for Vista and its crap nearly 2 years into its release.
I am really annoyed at losing so many services from .mac. Hopefully they add them back. I can’t believe they did things this way. Other than this mobile me fiasco I have no problem with Apple. I love their products.
“Does not work if you’re a government worker”
True dat, brotha.