Debate rages over MobileMe Since its launch on July 11, Apple’s MobileMe suite for synchronizing mail, calendar and contact info between Macs, PCs, iPhones and iPods is struggling with major e-mail outages, synchronization issues and the true definition of “push.”
Rene Ritchie wrote, “’Another day, another MobileMe problem’ is rapidly becoming a — very tired — cliche. This time around it’s with contacts and calendars. Or more accurately — without them. Yesterday TUAW covered how some users’ data would disappear from their iPhone after syncing from MobileMe… Is it safe yet to call MobileMe the ‘rockiest’ launch in Apple’s history?”
Ritchie admitted he hasn’t experienced problems himself. “For my part, MobileMe is doing everything I need it to do — keeping a laptop, desktop and iPhone in synch (I hit the sync now menu item on the computers when I make a change, work-around’ing the 15-minute ‘non-push’ problem)…. But if I was still one of those 60 per cent of the 1 per cent who were STILL waiting on 90 per cent of their e-mail to be restored — yup, easy bet — I’d be feeling differently.”
Dan Pourhadi couldn’t justify an attack on Apple either. “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.”
In support of Apple, Thomas Fitzgerald said of all his e-mail addresses, .mac has been the most reliable over the last three years. “Certainly MobileMe’s failings have been pretty public and for the one per cent of users who’ve suffered an e-mail outage, or worse, e-mail loss, I suspect they’ll be hard pressed to ever fully trust the service again,” he wrote. “But what about the other 99 per cent? I hate to tell you this, especially to all those who’ve written some story over the past week with the words ‘Apple’ and ‘Rotten’ in the title, but Mobile Me is working perfectly fine for me.… People put up with service interruptions from their hosting providers as the technological norm but when it’s Apple that’s at fault it’s the beginning of the Apocalypse.”
Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal supported a negative review in his online piece, “Apple’s MobileMe is Far Too Flawed to Be Reliable.” David Pogue pointed out, “Now, even if 1 per cent is accurate, Apple has 2 million .Mac/MobileMe customers. So that’s at least 20,000 people. And just about every one of them e-mailed me.”
Questioning his move from Gmail to MobileMe, Derik DeLong wrote, “Let’s face it, .Mac and MobileMe have been a black eye for Apple since it dropped its iTools service… This situation has gone on long enough. A free month is a bit too little, a bit too late.”
