Apparently MobileMe has really been sucking for a lot of people.
It’s not like there was any evidence of it not working properly, but both David Pogue of the New York Times and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal have penned pieces ripping MobileMe and chastising Apple for its poor handling of the continued cloud ‘crisis.’
Pogue pulls no punches:
It’s a little mind-boggling that today, nearly two weeks after MobileMe’s official opening, Apple still hasn’t solved the problem. That’s got to be a record in the short history of cloud computing. But the real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that’s so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management.
And Mossberg wastes no words:
After a week of intense testing of [Apple’s MobileMe] service, I can’t recommend it, at least not in its current state. It’s a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promise.
Seems like MobileMe has just become a running gag amongst tech writers. Apple botched this worse than anything else—at least within the confines of my years as a Mac user—and everyone finally has an opportunity to wail on it for its EPIC failure.
I’m a MobileMe user, and I haven’t experienced any problems at all. Which is typical. Leave it to Apple to deny me an opportunity to jump in on the pissed-off rants, which is a bummer—I’m really good at the pissed-off rants.
Let’s take a roll-call: How many of you in Readersville are still experiencing crippling MobileMe problems? Feel free to unload your pissed-off rants in the comments.
No issues here either (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, 2 Mac Minis (one in the car!), and 2 iPhones).
I guess I'm not a heavy enough user to encounter problems. I mainly want it to keep my iPhone and computer contacts and calendars synced and so far it has done that brilliantly.
No email for over a week. Strangely,email on my .mac account using Mail.app is not a problem. But on the me.com web mail it displays nothing, nada, zip, zilch. No headings, no mail address, none of the icons like 'get new mail' or whatever it should say, or 'action list' or anything at all.
Apple, for shame. We all expected far better from you. This time you jumped the shark releasing four new projects in the same week. Who was it that was demanding this? Certainly it wasn't Mr. Jobs. Whoever it was had better have a current resume. Stockholders (and I'm a very small one) don't like this kind of non-planning.
No problems for me, once the download happened on June 12. Syncing an iMac and Macbook with an exchange server at work.
Let's all try to be specific when we talk about this mess. There is first Mobileme, the Preference Pane app that syncs our computers with the Apple "Cloud?" servers and back down to the computers. This seems to be working OK for most people, me included.
Second is the me.com web apps that are supposed to be using the data that we synced using Mobileme. THIS is where most are experiencing problems, mainly with the Mail webapp.
It will help us all to understand each other if we refer to which side of the net we're talking about, the user side (Mobileme) or the server side (me.com).
Well... I never got my apology letter for the transition mishaps.
I signed up on 7/14 and haven't noticed any problems, but I've only used syncing, not the web apps, iDisk, e-mail, web hosting, etc.
I haven't had any problems with syncing my Mac to MobileMe but it really went badly when I tried syncing my work PC as well. I've decided to just stick with the Mac syncing for now. Disappointing because I was hoping MobileMe was going to be a good solution for keeping everything in sync (as advertised)!
pdkoenig said:
"Well... I never got my apology letter for the transition mishaps."
I'm sorry.
I'm not a Mac user, but I can assure you that the frustration with MobileMe is minimal compared to my frustration with Vista. At least 10 times I've prevented myself from standing up, grabbing my Vista PC and throwing it through the wall. Vista actually prevents you from being productive. Simply amazing bad.
1st Weekend was bad, but after that it has been ok. I can get the web app to freeze up, but overall it is ok, and much better than .Mac.
I have been a .mac user since it was iTools, and other than the extra day it took to convert the system names from .mac to "MobileMe", I haven't had any problems with it myself. I have an iPhone too and haven't noticed an issue with syncing...
1) Alias not working in Mail app for a week. Although it is sorted now.
2) Wrong timezone in webmail. Doesn't matter if I change the timezone in Calendar or Personal info in Account. It's always US time. Still not sorted this.
3) Problems syncing thru system preferences from 'cloud' to mac. Had to do a clean sync from mac to 'cloud', thus you are s***ed if your data is more updated on the 'cloud' than mac, before you can get it work properly again
4) Frequent webmail outage. Although it's better now
Apparently new mobile me subscribers don't encounter as much problems as us existing customers. Which is another kick in the teeth for us.
Go onto the apple support forums and you will see a lot more people having a lot more troubles than I do with mobileme.
I do not use the iDisk or webmail. I only want the contact and calendar syncing. ...and neither of those two is working. In fact, my Address Book is now jacked-up-- multiple entries for a single contact, some contacts list their phone number 3 or 4 times in a single contact card, and it no longer lists the contacts in alphabetical order. I cannot afford to lose the data in my Address Book; I am losing faith in MobileMess.
If I "get info" on my iDisk from Finder, I am told that the capacity is 2 TB. Although that would be nice, I assure you it is not correct. I am also told that it is well over 99.99% full. The problem this is causing is that I cannot open the accounting file for my office because the system thinks the disk is too full. This problem occurred after the transition to Mobile Me. If I drag the file out of the iDisk onto my desktop, everything works fine.
besides the first weekend being. I have only had 1 hour of not getting email. Everything else works, syncing, email with both mail.app and webmail. All is good. I'm very happy and u love push.
I signed up the day after MobileMe went live. For two days after that syncing was sporadic. After that I have had only one problem with the Me.com website that logging out then back in fixed up.
The good thing is my trial period has been extended to 90 days. So far I'm cautiously optimistic, and I have extra time to decide if I want to actually pay for this service.
I have an iPhone issue - don't know if it's a MobileMe issue however.
Last night and tonight, both my daughter and I (two seperate iPhone 3Gs) have had issues where Maps and all other Location Aware Apps show us to be in Houston - though we are actually in Vancouver, WA. I have called Apple Tech Support several times (none of their suggested 'fixes' worked), I called the Manager of my local Apple Store (x2). 1st Mgr said two of her employees experienced the same issues yesterday, the 2nd Mgr I called this evening simply said this is not a 'known issue' and offered to swap out my iPhone. I can't seem to get through to Apple that since this issue has affected FOUR individual iPhones (that I know of) at approximately the same time of day on two different days in three different physical locations around the Portland / Vancouver Metro area, that it is NOT the iPhones, it's GOTTA be either the 3G Network OR the GPS Network. They won't listen - I have submitted TWO 'Followup Reports', to no avail.
I have an iPhone issue - don't know if it's a MobileMe issue however.
Last night and tonight, both my daughter and I (two seperate iPhone 3Gs) have had issues where Maps and all other Location Aware Apps show us to be in Houston - though we are actually in Vancouver, WA. I have called Apple Tech Support several times (none of their suggested 'fixes' worked), I called the Manager of my local Apple Store (x2). 1st Mgr said two of her employees experienced the same issues yesterday, the 2nd Mgr I called this evening simply said this is not a 'known issue' and offered to swap out my iPhone. I can't seem to get through to Apple that since this issue has affected FOUR individual iPhones (that I know of) at approximately the same time of day on two different days in three different physical locations around the Portland / Vancouver Metro area, that it is NOT the iPhones, it's GOTTA be either the 3G Network OR the GPS Network. They won't listen - I have submitted TWO 'Followup Reports', to no avail.
I've had no problems with MobileMe. My email gets pushed, my address book gets updated as it should. I have no complaints and have recommended to others that they ought to sign up.
Apple's response doesn't surprise me at all.
I've been having freezing problems with my 1-year-old out-of-warranty iMac. It turns out from the forums that it's a known issue with my model, but Apple doesn't want to acknowledge it.
Apple definitely has a quality control problem.
I was a bit apprehensive after so much negative press, but things seem to fine with it for me. I actually think it's pretty good, especially the web interface for mail, etc.
Some glitches at first but works fine now. I'm actually pretty happy with it (which is a surprise to me since the whole .Mac thing was a crap shoot).
no problems for me here.
I joined .Mac in January and so far MobileMe is functioning the way it should be except for weird glitches in email delivery between the cloud and my Mac/iPod.
One thing I have noticed since the switch is that a LOT of spam is now making it through to my inbox, which is crazy frustrating. The excellent spam management of .Mac needs to make a .comeback! *rimshot*
I've had intermittent problems with the web mail component, i.e. no email. The rest of the service appears to work with the exception that the iDisk file linking service advertised is not present yet. Beyond this, I can agree with John Gruber that it's unacceptable that data is transmitted over HTTP rather than HTTPS, and the interface itself is far slower than the one demonstrated by Phil.
As product launches go, this was a total balls-up. Services glitches aside, that it doesn't even do what was advertised (i.e. actually push if you are using a Mac or PC) is just unbelievable.
1. Sync is telling me that there is inconsistent Addressbook data on the cloud and that I should verify my data on the Mac and reset the stuff on the cloud. But all my new data is ON the cloud!
2. No push for iPhone whatsoever. I have to turn the calendars and contacts on/off if I want them to update.
3. My outgoing messages sometimes show my name, sometimes my email ID, sometimes just the first part of my email ID…
Well at least my email works fine so I should be grateful for that (grateful even though I pay for the service).
And I don't mind it syncing my cal/add every fifteen minutes. I'm not that important. But if it takes a few days, then I'm pissed off.
Apple has a long history of not commenting on issues. A problem is never a problem until they admit it is a problem and they usually only do that when they have a fix for that problem. The forum will show you that there are a lot of well known issues with Apple products but Apple have not acknowledged them, which is a damn shame!!!!
I really didn´t want to buggle apple but I have to :(
I just started my MobileMe account yesterday and althought it seems that most of the service is working...I´m still having pretty tought difficulties with my iDisk. My location is Europe > Czech republic...and currently I have a university 100Mbit connection to the internet so the speed shouldn´t be the issue..lot of ports are blocked but apple ports seems to work fine (except iChat :-)...I tried to upload few files on my iDisk and got myself cooled down when I found out I couldn upload even 1KB spreadsheet using Finder..it was just imposible...I somehow manage to upload 25MB backup ZIP file using Transmit (speeds limited to 50KB/s - althought local Apple store told me it´s not limited - screw them all)...but Finder seems to be really screwed....I really hope the service will get better because this is the worst Internet joke since Y2K :P:P:P:P
My mail's been out since last Friday. It sucks being in the 1 percent. :(
I have been without incoming email since Friday the 18th. I can not tell you how hard it is to be patient when I wake up every morning expecting to be back up only to realize that Apple is not even talking about it. The Forums help a little, like reminding me to backup my mail before the cloud comes on and pushes an empty mail box onto my computers and have it all disappear. There is at least 1% of us out there that are affected and we feel abandoned as orphans.
Aside from the launch delay for the web apps, I've had no problems. Syncing of all info between my iPhone 3G, MacBook Pro and the web apps has been working well.
As a former .Mac user, I kind of miss the iCards though.
After the first day, I've had no trouble at all.
Good example, I just checked mail on MobileMe and it hasn't updated anything from yesterday, while old Mail is completely up-to-date with my iPhone. Some calendars items are updated. Some are not. In terms of reliability, I can't trust MobileMe .
Slow e-mail the first weekend, but no problems since. I am a former .mac person. I am running 10.4.11 on my 12" PowerBook and I have an original iPhone running 2.0.
Mail, contacts, and calendars are all playing nice with the iPhone.
SUBSCRIBED CALENDARS!! seriously. why does mobileMe offer no support for viewing subscribed calendars on the web interface or your iPhone?
MobileMe is a huge disappointment so far.
At first I was only having problems with e-mail, but then I had trouble with items not showing up on the website, or being able to use the website. Numerous errors and not seeing the data stay in sync between the web application and my iPhone.
Then Wednesday it seems like something happened, my Sync for Calendars has totally blown up, I was losing appointments, and in one case totally lost an entire calendar.
The worst part is, if you try to go to the 're-branded' support on Apples website and try to find a way to contact MobileMe support at Apple you are sent on an endless loop of KB articles. Even when it says that if nothing helped you need to contact support by clicking here, you are brought back to the main MobileMe support page.
I'm VERY suprised at how bad things are with MobileMe, I did have a few problems with .Mac, but was able to reach support and get the problem fixed.
Right now I've turned MobileMe off on my Macbook and my iMac and I'm just using the web application (well trying too) and my iPhone.
It's such a shame because this was almost as exciting as the new 3G feature on the iPhone to me.
The first few days was kind of rocky, but it's been great so for. A few times I couldn't reach my calendar or contacts. Other than that, everything is working great . I do wish that it was a little faster, especially my iWeb sites.
Signed up for .Mac about two weeks before the transition so I could be sure to get a ".mac" address. Syncing is working fine, but have had NO email since last Friday (7days and counting!!) By no email, I mean nothing shows up when I log into MobileMe mail, and Mail.app on my iMac can't connect to the MobileMe servers. Most frustrating is the lack of communication from Apple. If they would just fess up and tell us what is being done to fix it, I would be satisfied to wait...
I've been a .Mac subscriber for several years, and my service was rock-solid until last Thursday. No .mac/MobileMe mail on any device or any client since then.
I'm starting to think I'll never get it back.
—a "1%-er"
Unfortunately I have temporarily disabled all forms of push.... PLUS I lost my ability to use my .Mac alias which has been distributed to 600 or so clients. A bit like Vista wouldn't you say....
I've had problems with it rejecting emails that I've tried to send. I don't know if I'm not getting incoming emails too. Some stuff has been coming through though, so it is at best intermittent.
Aside from the first weekend, I've had no issues.
In fact (I'll whisper it here) I now find iDisk to be *much* faster than the old .Mac one. I've also been given 100% more storage for free and my membership's been extended by a month for free. What's not to like?!
I haven't experience any problems since the first few days mind you I don't really use the me.com mail since I have enough email accounts. I've actually been really impressed with the web apps especially the photo end of things. Very nice.
Still no mail on my mac mail account. No incoming or outgoing. 8 days and counting. Apple is not communicating with us 1%ers. Shouldn't they??
I am having problems syncing and getting it to work effectively. However, this morning, Mobile Me got a name change and a redesign. It is now known as Mesh. Weird. Why would Apple change Mobile Me so quickly. Go figure!
I can't get ANY email on my iPhone, no .me, no .mac, and when my iPhone syncs, everything comes over except the mail... I LOVED my iPhone because of the mail feature; I am starting to DISlike it for the same reason!!!
Anything I enter into the me.com apps is NOT synching on my home Mac, but it IS synching on my Windows box at work. How's that for irony?
Everything seems to work except...
e-mail!!!!!!!!!!!! What is happening to all the e-mail that my friends, family, services, bank are sending me? I guess I need to go change all my e-mail address on all the online services I use or buy from! God help you if your business e-mail is a MobileMe address. Never again will I rely on MobileMe! It will have to be second tier!
no address book showing up, occasionally I get the drop down in mail that shows my options for a persons name being typed in, but viewing them online in the correct area is a bust.
Jason
my email has been stopped over week.
I guess people who is not affected by this really don't take this serious but if this is most frustrated situation since I bought a mac 5 years ago. Oh my goodness. What upset me the most is there is no information. When and how it will be fix?? All the support people are so useless. They just tell you, oh it is not our problem, it is Mobile me team... Well well, to me, I really don't care which team is handling what... JUST FIXT IT ASAP!!!!