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July 26, 2008

internet

Direct from the horse’s mouth, information on MobileMe

Posted Jul. 26, ’08, 12:12 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Internet

mobileme.jpgHark, what’s this! Could it be? A missive directly from Apple headquarters? Amazing, but true. It seems that the ongoing problems with MobileMe (which we have been documenting at length) have finally blown back to the office/meditation sanctuary of the one, the only Steve Jobs. And now we have the MobileMe Status Page to show for it.

An unnamed Apple employee has been asked by Steve himself (who I presume said “pretty please with sugar on top”) to keep MobileMe subscribers updated about the fluctuations in service. Here’s what our nameless friend (who we’re considering dubbing “MobileMel”) has to say:

One issue we encountered was a mail outage affecting 1% of our members. Last Friday a serious problem with one of our mail servers blocked those members’ access to their MobileMe mail accounts. As of today a team was able to restore limited web access to those accounts so the affected members can use their browsers to read mail that has arrived since last Friday (though not before) as well as send and receive new mail. The team has already begun rolling out restoration of full access for all the accounts and expect to finish by the end of next week. We particularly regret to report the loss in the affected accounts of approximately 10% of the messages received between July 16 and July 18.

You know, it’s not good news, but I’m glad that they’re at least being forthright about it. According to our new buddy MobileMel, the updates will continue “every other day or so” with information about how MobileMe is doing—the next is scheduled for later this weekend. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed for the most up-to-the minute information.

This may be cold comfort to those who have been affected by the problems with MobileMe, but we see it as a rare and welcome step from Apple. What do you think? Are your concerns assuaged at all, or is this just Apple digging themselves deeper?


5 Comments

scotty said:

I think we all owe David Pogue a big thank you.

July 26, 2008 1:36 PM
Rick said:

A new status page doesn't change the fact that Apple rolls out products without adequately crash-testing them.

Enough with all the secrecy and communist-style management.

July 26, 2008 3:05 PM
Dr Paul Martin said:

It does come far too late but better late than never.

If I were to withhold the truth from my patients on an adverse event I'd be sued without question - the reason? People just want to know the truth, no matter how ugly.

There will be some that will be furious anyway but most reasonable people are just that - reasonable. As long as humans are involved (and they always will be on some level), mistakes will happen. That is life and it is unreasonable to expect perfection. You can strive for perfection, but don't *expect* it all the time.

Kudos to Apple, albeit a bit late. Keep us in the loop and set an example for other companies.

Now, as compensation, I'd like to see subscribed calendars appear on me.com & my iPhone, attendee requests & invitations on my iPhone (with iCal, not Exchange) and Notes syncing with my Mac, Me.com & iPhone. Any other ideas on compensation?

:)

July 26, 2008 4:00 PM
Grant said:

I think Apple is handling the matter as well as it can be handled. Though if I were a subscriber, I would demand a refund and a free year, lost email is inexcusable. They are handling the mess like Apple but they created it by acting like MS, MobileMe was obviously released way early, just like 2.0 beta firmware on the iPhone, both of these products are behaving like Vista instead of a big cat. I wasn't one of them, but there were numerous people who lamented the iPhone because they were concerned Apple would start behaving like this.

*Side note: commenting here in MobileSafari is seriously broken!

July 26, 2008 4:30 PM
Kelmon said:

"Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date."

The issue that I have with this is that the communication is written personally but at the end we don't know who the author is. Just seems a bit strange to me.

July 27, 2008 12:48 AM

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