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July 14, 2008

internet

More MobileMe! More money! More madness!

Posted Jul. 14, ’08, 5:47 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Internet

dotmacResist1.jpgWe got excited when Apple shut down .Mac to complete its transition to MobileMe. But that excitement turned to frustration when we couldn’t get it work. Then frustration turned to excitement yet again when we thought the MobileMe software went live…only to be crushed to discover that no, it actually hadn’t.

It finally is up (knock on wood), but that doesn’t mean we have to stop complaining about the outage. Not that we ever would. We like complaining.

And so do Macworld forum members, apparently, as they’ve been complaining their fingers off (seriously, they’re just falling off) about the .Mac/MobileMe downtime—going so far as to demand some kind of refund or reimbursement for the days they weren’t able to use the services for which they paid.

One obviously-cranky user summed up the community’s grievances:

Basically I want a refund for the nearly one week without access to my .mac account or email. All I get is the introduction to MobileMe without an ability to log on to check email. I really don’t give much of a rat’s ass for the “push” because right now I feel like it’s being shoved up my ass. I want the service I paid for back, and back now without delay.

Can you smell the anger? Can you smell the frustration? Can you smell the brownies baking in the kitchen? I can. Yum.

That’s not all they’re complaining about, either. Some Windows users—yes, them again—are irate that MobileMe doesn’t work with Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft’s still-Number-One browser. But, as the PC Advisor aptly notes, IE6 is a total standards-laggard, which would force Apple to dumb down its MobileMe services to work properly with it. (MobileMe is also incompatible with my abacus, but you don’t see me groaning about it.)

Boo hoo and whatnot. Look at this way: At least we weren’t charged for signing up for the MobileMe free trial.

Suckers.


8 Comments

Anonymous said:

what i found odd is that even though software update gave me mobileme 1.1 none of the"ilife" suite of applications have been updated. iPhoto, iWeb, iMovie menu's still have entries such as "publish to .mac"... It that how it is for everyone??? I guess software updates for each will be coming out soon?

July 14, 2008 6:01 PM
Scissor Author Profile Page said:

Imagine how bad folks would act if they had to actually do without something important.

July 14, 2008 9:42 PM
Dave-O said:

Let's see $99 a year, 52 weeks a year (I want to see who couldn't access it for a week, but I'll let it slide). That's a whole $1.90. That's what he wants back.

PC users can shut their holes and download the free upgrade.

Was there a reason MobileMe couldn't have been rolled out earlier? Maybe things would have gone a little smoother if Apple had staged all these roll outs.

July 14, 2008 10:25 PM
Matt said:

I like MobileMe so far and I got it with my iPhone for only $69.

July 14, 2008 10:54 PM
krye said:

Funny, it was just lunchtime that someone was telling me that the world was full of whiners.

People need to stop whining about stupid stuff and get on with their lives. Sorry, but MobileMe wasn't down for a week. And not for nothing even if it was, that's less than $2 worth of service. You're going to make a stink over $2? Give us a break.

July 15, 2008 5:41 AM
Tom said:

This Mobile'Meh' debacle is not a mere inconvenience. It is a complete cluster****. They rolled it out well before it was actually ready and now that have a lot of justifiably angry customers on their hands. It is not a matter of just a few bugs and incompatibilities. There are major problems! (Go to the Apple support discussion group for MobileMe and you will get the idea.) There are a lot of people with non-functioning web pages because of this transition. I personally don't appreciate being an unwilling beta tester for this half baked product.

July 15, 2008 6:09 AM
John said:

An email from the MobileMe support team said "I understand you were experiencing an issue in which you are unable to log in. This was caused by scheduled maintenance being performed." It then helpfully sent links so I could tell if and when scheduled maintenance was occurring on MobileMe. I'm not one to point fingers, but bald-faced lies comes to mind. I fully expected glitches during the iPhone/MobileMe rollout, but a little forthrightness from Apple would have been nice.

July 15, 2008 12:38 PM
Picky Author Profile Page said:

Who cares that it does not work with IE 6? IE 7 exists and it's a free download that not only improves some of the lacking standards support, but it also fixes a ton of security issues as well.

It's like saying, why not support IE 5.5? Because it's out of date and IE 8 is around the corner!

July 15, 2008 6:03 PM

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