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It was pretty rocky the first weekend, but it seems to be working fine for me now...

I'm overseas working and my internet access is patchy to write back home to my Mom and Dad / Friends. The very few times that I've had access since MobileMe and I wanted to send me Mom or Dad an email the freaking email is down! Additionally non of my mail messages are syncing and I can't upload files to iDisk - PLUS WHY THE HELL DID THEY MAKE THE NEW IDISK ICON PINK FROM THE COOL BLUE .MAC GLOBE!!! What the hell is going on Apple!!!

Jul 24, 08 - 04:01 pm Comment from: Olmecmystic

Wow, Steve may have to hustle back from vacation on this one...if he hasn't already.

Once he gets back, I'd hate to be on that MobileMe team. Once he gets back, the MobileMe team may not be on the MobileMe team!

Peace.
Olmecmystic

great article. glad the tech writers are hearing about this. apparently, apple seems to respond better to them than they do to their customers. maybe he can get them to actually do something.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:07 pm Comment from: rahrens

I'll say it again. No glitches here. A few the first day, but almost perfect performance since then. My iPhone even gets my mail sometimes faster than my Macs.

I am a happy customer.

Yeah the mobileme team is pretty much toast. Steve is probably going to stomp the guts out of whomever is responsible for the failed launch. Or more likely he will have his security detail beat the crap out of them so he won't have to.
I have sympathy for Steve on this one.

However, what I don't have sympathy for is Steve insisting on continuing the NDA on the iphone developers when it should be lifted by now. The iphone dev community needs the NDA to go away so they can build their community and network and teach each other how to program for the iphone.
Right now their hands are tied.
This oversite by Steve is unforgivable until he drops the NDA on it.

Finally someone is pointing out how Apple's "we don't talk about stuff" policy is really hurting it now that their market share is up.

Interesting to note also, that the "1%" refers to the 20,000 or so people without any email at all. I have had email since the beginning, but it's unusably slow, error prone and randomly deletes my mail. I have heard the same from so many others that the real figure of how many people are screwed by MobileMe is more like hundreds of thousands.

Also, as many others have similarly wondered ... Even if one of the main mail servers went down, why oh why would they not have a backup server? It boggles the mind to think that with all the money they collected for .Mac over the years, they didn't think to buy another server to back up the mail.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:12 pm Comment from: IKON

I can't see subscribed calendars on my phone, pretty annoying.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:12 pm Comment from: FloydPink

Received an email from apple for a MobileMe trial, perhaps I'll wait a bit longer before giving it a try.

I still believe that even on Apple's worst day, they are vastly superior to Microsoft on their best.

Not a great rollout, but for what MobileMe does today(not tomorrow, which I hope is even more) I'm pretty pleased. Push email happens very nicely to the phone, as well as contacts and calendars pushing down very consistently. I want better To Dos and Notes syncing (for about a year now), but otherwise the rockiness is over. Nice service. Needs to grow.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:16 pm Comment from: Brau

Right now it's a steaming pile of crap for me. Can't access my mail at times. None of my Smartmailboxes, rules, or signatures work. iCal event colours are all screwed up on my iPhone IF they update at all. Add in all the iPhone2.0 bugs, Leopard instability, and it's a pretty lousy all-round experience that's making me pine for the days of Panther (10.3).

Now I hear Apple is planning another "transition" after still not getting the bugs out of the last two OS releases.

What happened to "It just works"?????

You know what I've noticed? David Pogue basically repeats everything Walt Mossberg says. Just a few hours later.

What separate MobileMess from MobileMeGreatness? Answer: A couple of months.

MobileMe works fine for me. I have had a couple of MobileMe mail outages, but nothing that wasn't easy for me to work around. This isn't my only mail account.

I've been using this service from the beginning, and its reliable syncing has kept me in the fold.

I think we're seeing that Apple needs to expand it's workforce. There simply isn't enough personnel (or qualified personnel) to handle all of these new products at the same time. Quality is suffering, and that will drag down Apple's reputation of "It just works."

I would hate to see Apple's market share expansion derailed by quality issues. This MobileMe rollout is a huge black eye. Apple screwed up handling people's most important data, and some people won't forgive Apple for that.

If you're a business who was thinking about switching to Macs and iPhones, you now have to think twice about having Apple handling your data. You at minimum need to wait until the MobileMe debacle gets corrected and then wait several more months to see if any other problems develop.

Not good for Apple. Hire and train more people to get the job done right (and on time!).

Amen MDN.

You can't take the word of a man that can't find his ass with both hands anyway.

I've had no problems at all. In fact, its been working really well for me.

I'm pretty happy with it too. A few glitchy things like a contact showing up twice after an edit sometimes, but otherwise reliable and quick.

My email is working fine but, I have three friends that have there email down for several days now. I only have two other friends that have .mac email addresses so that puts it at a 50% failure rate for the people I know.

I wish Apple had already come out with the iTele so I could just teleport myself into the future where everybody is happy again.

Does anyone know what the percentage is of people having problems? I don't know anybody who is having an issue.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:31 pm Comment from: Naik

Check out the comments on the other MDN article!

Jul 24, 08 - 04:32 pm Comment from: John Gee

I realize that I had trouble viewing my 14+ calendars' content last time I checked yesterday.

I was thinking that mine was screwed up as well only to find out that freaking Comcast decided to start blocking port 25 I had to switch ports for my SMTP

Not perfect at first but working great right now. I love that I can take snapshots from my iPhone, send it to MobileME, choose the gallery I want to sent it to and poof, it's there! Pretty amazing IMO.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:35 pm Comment from: MacBill

BRAVO, MACDAILYNEWS, FOR BANNING MOBILEME!

We urge all people to do the same!

BOYCOTT MOBILEME!!

I know 2 people (out of 5 people) who have had their MobileMe email down for AN ENTIRE WEEK now!!! That's a 40% email failure rate... for an entire week... for a PAID SERVICE!

APPLE, THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

GET YOUR FU**ING ACT TOGETHER, APPLE!

IN THE MEANTIME:
BOYCOTT MOBILEME!

Jul 24, 08 - 04:38 pm Comment from: Jubei

Mine has finally been stable since the last outage. I can't say the same for others. Pogue is right. Apple SCREWED up royally on this one. It will take a miracle to win over new customers for this service or keep the olds ones after their service expires. BAD job Apple!

Jul 24, 08 - 04:39 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@ goddess

I know of two..
Pogue and Mossberg

Jul 24, 08 - 04:44 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@bizlaw
Throwing more people at the problem does not work with software related projects, like it does for example for building pyramids. Increasing the number of programers can actually have the exact opposite effect. If you don't believe me, ask Microsoft Vista team.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:46 pm Comment from: John Crawford

@MacBill

Tut tut! Just a little bit extreme, and loud too.

Jul 24, 08 - 04:50 pm Comment from: ericdano

Mobile Me is working fine for me. True, computer changes don't happen right away (unless you force it to sync NOW), but it does work.

I have my calendars working on 2 macs, and an iPhone, and I am sharing Bookmarks on 2 Macs, a Windows XP computer, and my iPhone. Works fine.

Still not having any problems with MobileMe.

Is has been working great for me. I love that I don't have to physically sync my iPhone and Mac together - that was very inconvenient when I had to run out to a meeting. But I feel really bad for those who are still having problems with the service...

Jul 24, 08 - 04:56 pm Comment from: malpaso_man

Even the best, most trusted companies can make mistakes. We're all human for God's sake. Apple has proven their reputation for producing wonderful products that consumers love.

I agree that it was too much for Apple to launch so many separate offerings on the same day. But in the end, the problems will be worked out and it won't take too long.

We all just move on. No need to make such a big deal out of this really. Hasn't Apple always strived to give consumers what they asked for? They normally come through in the end. I don't fault them too much. In a month, it will all be water under the bridge.

For the entire first week after it switched over from .mac, MobileMe was a total nightmare for me. However, for the last several days it has finally been working just fine here. But I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone until Apple gets all of the bugs out, as its obvious some users are still having major issues.

Jul 24, 08 - 05:03 pm Comment from: THE.MAC.GOD

Only thing that doesn't still work is the commenting system from iWeb's published sites.

I think people are over exaggerating the real problems behind mobile me. It's been working just fine for me this so far. Everything syncs just fine and the speed has improved dramatically since the first weekend.

No problems here. In fact, I've now taken a renewed interest in the iLife apps, been tagging photos, making web pages, uploading to mobileme, doing fun stuff. I just can't wait until the iLife apps are rewritten so that only changes are synced, rather than having to upload the whole website because of a type-o. It will come in iLife 09 and will probably only run on Snow Leopard. Boy, I can't wait for that pussy.

Since day four after the mobileme launch, I have had absolutely no problems at all with the web application (I use mail, contacts, and synching). MobileMe may have some bugs, but I have not experienced them. I recommend MobileMe to everyone.

Love my MobileMe!!

Syncs everything beautifully.

Despite some initial confusion on my part, all the pieces of MobileMe that I care about have worked flawlessly from day one.

Don't see entirely what all the fuss is.

But I use Google for email.

Google had a glitch the other day too (independent from the phone as far as I can tell).

All the sudden it just put a whole month of my emails in the trash.

Yikes!!!

Compared to that MobileMe's been a saint!

Jul 24, 08 - 05:17 pm Comment from: Eric

Excoriation???

How's that word of the day calendar working out for you MDN?

Geez... You really think 99% of the dweebs who read MDn know what that word even means? Just say "tore 'em a new one" next time... hehe

Jul 24, 08 - 05:19 pm Comment from: TowerTone

My luck has been pretty good.

I did have a problem with calendars syncing like others here, but by deleting the MobileMe account on my iPhone, and then adding it back, I then got all my calendars back on my iPhone, save for birthdays.

For that, I am trying "Dates to iCal".

http://www.nhoj.co.uk/datestoical/

If after the free trial, Apple hasn't found a solution, then I will buy it. Gotta have birthdays on the phone!

Jul 24, 08 - 05:19 pm Comment from: ron

My 'Address Book', my MobileMe 'Accounts' and my iPhone 'All Contacts' are all different. As are my 'Calendars'. Must be me. Apple tech reps, second level, suggest leaving it a week or two before calling back. Not a great answer.

Jul 24, 08 - 05:21 pm Comment from: Ampar

"Excoriation???"

I thought that was what Feldman did to Haim on that lame A&E;reality show.

Jul 24, 08 - 05:23 pm Comment from: Ampar

Oops. Make that A&E.

I'm not exactly sure what mobileme can and cannot do - just as long as my .mac addres is ok, I'm good.

Another happy customer here too. I read somewhere that only a very small percentage of customers are experiencing problems. Sounds like the typical Apple crowd: it's only the very few that make the loudest noises....

Jul 24, 08 - 05:38 pm Comment from: sperryj

Come on people...

It seems that there are a bunch of fair-weather fans out there. I have not been exempt from some problems with the move to MobileMe. Mostly, I just prefer the sound of "@mac.com" to "@me.com" That aside though...

I still have some intermittent issues but I also know that Apple has been a much better company to deal with than many others (including other industries.) I certainly appreciate a free 30-day extension to my account and I have definitely enjoyed the nearly error-free experience with my new iPhone 3G.

If you're going to rail on the company that has brought you such great products in the past because they stumbled on a product (yes it was big stumble and unexpected but if it was expected, it would have been advertised) then maybe you should get off the bus and go back to Windows.

Simply firing everyone involved with MobileMe is not a realistic solution, they created it, they should fix it, who else has better knowledge of the design and the build? Besides, if you think there are problems now, imagine if all the people involved were suddenly gone...

As for pulling MobileMe advertisements...are you serious?

Jul 24, 08 - 05:43 pm Comment from: T-Man

I was on .mac and was ported over to MobileMe without choice. That would be okay but it's still not working well. It's a lot better than the first day, but my calendars have to work between three computers, and it's not reliable. That's kind of scary since I rely on synching accuracy and having synch failures is pretty unnerving. Also, I upload movies from iMovie 08 for friends, family, and business associates, and am having connection problems between iMovie 08 and my gallery with a pop up screen asking me to either sign in to MobileMe or try a trial...and I'm signed in already but still can't upload to the MobileMe gallery I've have already been using. That's frustrating. Dot Mac worked fine.

Although it's going much better now, I still don't trust MM to handle my data right, so I keep paper copy backups for iCal. It has definitely been an unApple-like mess, and irritating.

I'm not going to cancel just yet. I believe Apple will solve these difficulties and it will eventually be a fine program. Next time, give me a choice before I have to be "upgraded" to a new computing paradigm. I don't want Apple or anyone making those choices for me. I prefer to volunteer.