My and my wife's published calendars don't always update when changes (especially deletions) are made. We have to keep deleting and re-subscribing to see updates. Changes (especially deletions) I make on my Mac iCal do not always get pushed to my iPhone. MobileMe Email occasionally stops sending email to recipients for hours at a time. MobileMe is still MobileMess. --Mike

I need to weigh in on the positive side. I was affected by all the problems the first days, yes, although mail seemed to work all the time - but now it works like a wonder, especially compared with the slow, slow service we had here in Europe when it was dot Mac.
Actually, I am quite impressed now and I cannot be the only one, can I?
Like today; we went to look after my motherʼs house so I brought my iBook and the USB-powered scanner with me, to do todayʼs illustrations there and when I had finished, I dropped them on the iDisk, thinking of getting them down to my iMac when I returnedhome - but I did not have time to start any syncing so I thought I would not have them there. But yes, there they were, also at home. And in addition to that, I had them in the Sent folder on Mail as well, as attachments.

So to me, it is working well. Got my wifeʼs full shift plan on iCal, too, synced with both computers.

I am satisfied in other words - but I agree with Mr. Pgoue in that I hope Apple will never attempt such a huge launch again and concentrate on one thing at a time.

MobileMe$$


Fixed that for you.

While my MobileMe email appears to be working, Sync isn't working so well. This morning Sync started asking to make changes to my Address Book, iCal, and MacJournal files, even though no new changes were posted to MobileMe. I actually reset my PowerBook to sync to MobileMe. From there, I resynced with my PowerMac. But on the return to the PowerBook, MobileMe wanted to make changes, even though there shouldn't have been any.

As for my MobileMe Mail, I uploaded all my .Mac mail from my PowerBook back to MobileMe account, since all but a few files disappeared. I'm keeping a regular back up and have set MobileMe to keep files for offline viewing. I hope that means the files are duplicated on my PowerBook (Apple is not very clear about this). I may have lost Mail files in the migration to MobileMe (I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, even though I'm pretty certain some of my .Mac mail didn't make the move). Push seems to be keeping things updated, albeit very slowly (Tiger 10.4.11).

The speed of MobileMe online has not gotten better. Logging takes a long time and the system is very slow in responding or moving between applications.

All in all, MobileMe has been a disaster from launch. An apology from Apple doesn't begin to make up for all the frustration.

So if the article is correct that Apple has 2 million .Mac/MobileMe customers, at $100 each, Apple is taking in $200 million annually in membership fees. Ok, some people get it on sale at Amazon for $70, Amazon takes their cut, etc. Let's be really conservative and say that Apple only gets half, so $100 million per year.

My company recently rolled out an internal online project that was orders of magnitude more complex than MobileMe. Remember, the "Cloud" and all the Mac-to-Mac sync services were already part of .Mac. Only the online apps, and PC/iPhone sync are new. And we did it for the bargin basement price of $77 million.

I think Apple could have afforded a few more developers and testers and avoided all this mess.

info: Hi, my name is Sarah. Welcome to Apple!

Sarah: Hello Gail, how are you this afternoon?

gail: Sarah, i have not received .mac or mobile me mail

gail: since last Friday morning. this is causing SEVERE HARDSHIP on my business and income. I am a sole proprietor and now i am hemorraging money.

Sarah: i understand that your business is taking losses because of this mail outage. Please believe me when I say that our engineers are working hard to re-establish access for your mail services

gail : What about the financial damages caused to me by apple?

gail : How will Apple compensate me?

Sarah: I'll be right with you.

Sarah: what every agent will tell you is that compensation for this mail outage has not been announced, and neither has an ETA on a resolution.

gail : You should know that I am going to copy this chat and paste it on the internet for all to see. I need my mail service restored.

gail: what is happening to my un-received messages?

Sarah: please understand that because I am not on the engineering side and do not know what the specific server issue is or what their 'to-do' list entails I am unable to provide you with a reliable ETA on when your mail services will be back online. I wouldn't want to speculate and be wrong. It's not like I can flip a switch and have access restored

Sarah: after four days of being undelivered on the server the sender will receive a bounced message pertaining to that email


gail : Is your server storing my messages for me to receive when the problem is eventually resolved?

Sarah: when services are restored any messages that have been on the server for less than the four-day period will be received by your account

gail: Is it possible to forward the presently un-deliverable messages to an alternate account so I don't continue to lose money? I need to buy food.


gail: And so the older messages are lost to me forever unless the person re-sends them?

Sarah: because any messages that your account would receive have to go though the server in order to be delivered and then forwarded to another account this is not possible

Sarah: the sender of the emails will at least be notified with the bounced message that you did not receive the email to begin with, so I would hope that they would at least contact you or attempt to resend it

gail : So what the hell am I supposed to do? It's not like I can flip a switch and get my business mail back.

Sarah: I would love nothing better than to have these mail services restored. 1% of 1 million customers is 10,000 people who are unable to access their mail.

gail: that is 1% too many

gail: Is it possible for Apple to notify people who are sending email to .mac or .me accounts that Apple's servers have melted down and that they can try an alternate mail for the intended recipient?

gail: 10,000 = 1,000,000 annual dollars in charges for this service.

Sarah: to my knowledge this is not something that Apple is considering. It would technically mean sending an email to ANY potential sender of email, which would be every email address possible, not just mobileme accounts

gail: If in fact is really is only 1%. previous reports said it was 4%.

gail: Is it possible that this is messed up beyond repair? six days is a long time to repair a server and get 10,000 accounts back online.

gail: Here's a suggestion: Have apple publish something on the internet notifying the general public of this so people attempting to contact their loved ones and business associates know they are not being ignored.

Sarah: please understand ma'am that we are doing everything in our power in order to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, for everyone's sake. However, the only course of action that i see to be available is to either wait it out until we can get this server up and running, cancel the account so it wouldn't matter, or send an email to those on your contact list from another email address informing them of this outage and where to contact you

gail: The fact that i am talking to you right now means that IT DOES matter.

gail: And I have waited too long, which is why i am communicating with you in the first place.

Sarah: i wish I had more information for you, believe me i do, it would make things a lot easier for a lot of people, but I've told you exactly the same information that I've told to customers that I chatted with earlier, which is all the information that is currently available regarding this mail outage.

gail: That's not enough.

gail: Something needs to be done differently

Sarah: I know that, but I have nothing else to offer except my sincerest apologies for this

gail: I have offered suggestions myself but they are falling on deaf ears.

gail: Apologies are appreciated but they do not fix the problem.

Sarah: no they do not

Sarah: i wish they did though

gail : OK, so please tell me what exactly is being done to restore the service to me an 9,999 others.

Sarah: as i am not privvied to the engineering department's 'to-do' list and as i do not know the precise cause of the outage with the server I am unable to provide you with an answer to that question

gail : Is it possible that this is a permanent problem?

Sarah: in my experience mail outages have not been permanent

gail: This has not been at all helpful.


Sarah: people who are paid much more and who are much higher up on the totem pole are the folks who are responsible for those decisions, I'm just asked to know the product, it's features, how to troubleshoot its issues, and support its customers

gail: How can I be in contact with people higher up on the totem pole and who are paid more than you?

Sarah: i have a link to the feedback page with a webform that you can submit comments, concerns and suggestions directly to the MobileMe development team

gail : That site has been taken down.

Sarah: it loads ok for me

Sarah: http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac/tm.html

Sarah: try this link

gail: Can I have the email address for the Chief of Engineering?

gail : Or is he one of the 10,000?

Sarah: regrettably i do not have access to that information

Sarah: i know I'm not being very helpful but my hands are tied in this respect

gail: So in sum, no more news. There is a problem and Apple doesn't know when it will be fixed. Right?

Sarah: pretty much

gail: That is not acceptable.

Sarah: i could always lie to you and say that it will be up shortly, just wait till this afternoon or some jargon along those lines, but I will not lie to my customers, I let them know exactly what's going on as far as our department knows

gail: What makes you think I would want you to lie to me?

Sarah: the information that I'm providing I do not believe you are accepting

Sarah: but it is the truth of the matter

Sarah: and I won't tell anyone something that's not true just to make them happy

gail: I am saying that the situation and apple's response is unacceptable to me. And probably to the 9,999 others. And I have been honest and forthright with you too, and am not patting myself on the back for "not lying"

Sarah: if this is unacceptable there's not much as a customer suppor t agent that I can do about it as the situation is beyond my control

gail: Certainly telling someone something that's not true will not make them happy. So you are correct about that.

Sarah: Is there any other information that i can look up for you this afternoon ma'am?

gail: I would like an apology for your implication that if I was lied to I would be happy.

gail: Because it is a juvenile and purile statement.

Sarah: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.

gail : Sure

Sarah: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.

Sarah: i certainly will apologize if my statements were construed as such, it was absolutely not my intention to offend you in any manner. I was just trying to find a 'silver lining'. In that I recognize the situation is less than ideal (serious understatement) and my intention was to point out that despite this scenario the information I am able to provide you with is all I that I can do for you at this time.

Sarah: and at least you can depend on what information I am able to tell you

gail: The silver lining is that I have no service and i am not being lied to, correct?

Sarah: the silver lining is that we admit there is a problem, we are working to resolve this problem, and we will provide you with any and all information that we have regarding this problem

gail: Thanks, SArah!

Gail's posting of her interaction with "Sarah", from Mobile Me support infers that she was treated badly in that discussion. I think she confuses responsibility for the foul-up that Apple has created with its botched Mobile Me launch with the relatively low-level employee and, demonstrating clearly that that employee could not satisfy her concerns (of course), suggests that the employee somehow mishandled Gail's problem.
If that indeed is Gail's message, Gail needs to grow up and address reality. People on a tech line, trying to cope with the massive problems caused by the company and left without any resources to help customers, are, at best, dangling in the corporate wind. All they have is their manners and whatever information the company gives them. In this case, Sarah had plenty of good manners, despite Gail's obdurate refusal to comprehend that it was not in Sarah's power to fix anything.
Gail's pretend beef over Sarah's assurance that she would only provide the truth as she knew it is equally juvenile. By Gail insisting that whatever she heard from Sarah was "unacceptable", failing to distinguish between Apple's own failure to solve Gail's problems and Sarah's inability to do so, Gail left Sarah with really nothing she could say, but obligated, under the rules of her job, to attempt to help the customer.
Again, it is utterly fair to rant against Apple for this Mobile Mess. It is never fair to blame a low-level employee for the company's problems. It's like ragging on the ticket agent when the plane is late; the ticket agent isn't responsible for that.

TikTok

I believe both parties showed great restraint.

The main issue is that Gail's business is suffering and Sarah can not (or is it will not?) escalate the issue further up the totem pole. Nor has Apple made any more detailed announcement (the pilot keeping the passengers informed).

It was daft of Sarah to make the statement that she "could have lied" and Gail was probably justified in twisting her tail because of her obvious frustration.

Apple needs to make further announcements if the situation is still bad.

My MobileMe experience so far is fairly good, but my expectations were not high after .Mac sync problems with my contacts just prior to the switch. I lost ~100 names and addresses. Not the end of the world but annoying.

The definition of "push" as implied by Apple for desk- and laptops seems to be the cause of much of the grief. Information clearly isn't pushed up to the cloud instantaneously from such machines!

"The definition of "push" as implied by Apple for desk- and laptops seems to be the cause of much of the grief. Information clearly isn't pushed up to the cloud instantaneously from such machines!"

Apple has apologized for that misstatement, and has voluntarily stopped using the word "push" when speaking about Macs and MobileMe. If you need more instantaneous syncing with the cloud from your Mac, then hit "sync now" after you make those changes, and it'll get synced, immediately. I do this regularly, and it just works. At least for me.

I agree, Gail was, while understandably, irate and unwilling to be mollified. I have had less than stellar experiences with Apple's tech support, yet I did not blame the tech on the phone for the problem, I sent Apple a letter with my complaint. Separately, so as to not get the tech involved in something he had no control over. Gail should know, as a business manager, that employees can only do what management will allow them to do, with only that information they are given. If you've got a beef, deal with a manager, and do it in writing.

I've said this several times in the last two days - I have been a .Mac user since it was iTools and free, and while I also saw some issues in the first day or so, since then, my service has been stellar. I have several thousand emails, and they ALL made the switch intact. Of course, I also had my Time Machine backups in case they didn't, too. Anybody that didn't back up their stuff (which Apple warned us ALL to do!) has no right to bitch that that stuff is now gone. You WERE warned!

If you contract for services, you should have a backup plan should those services go away for any reason, fire, flood, incompetence etc. Instead of berating the support person, she should have been tending to her business.

Is her business to receive e-mails from customers and help them? Then contact those customers and let them know that her main e-mail is off line. There are enough free e-mail services that she could use temporarily.

Is her business web related with people sending e-mail using a web form? Update the web site.

What sort of business is it that causes Gail to lose money without e-mail? I've never heard "the check's in the e-mail".

No, I think Gail was frustrated and wanted to take it out on someone. It was clear in her comment "You should know that I am going to copy this chat and paste it on the internet for all to see"

For all to see what a pathetic business person I am who, relies on a third party to stop me from "hemorraging money"

Oh damn, now I've done it too. I'm a pathetic loser who just wants people to notice MY righteous indignation. OK, I'm sorry, I've treated people poorly also when I've been frustrated. But I don't think I've following it up with a web posting... until now.

But hey, I love the term "hemorrhaging money" I first came upon it when reading Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, great book...

If her PUSH email isn't working to her mobile device, why the heck isn't she going to a computer and retrieving the messages? I've not seen the issue addressed whether that is possible, but hedging her entire business on an email server which invariably go down at ANY second, not to mention a service that is brand spanking new seems incredibly naive and foolish.

It's a major inconvenience for everyone involved that MobileMe is down, but now that it's been more than a week, wouldn't you think users would start finding other solutions to their own problems? What are they waiting for, FEMA???????

I cannot even talk to apple about this - they censored me twice!

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled " Censorship," because it contained the following:

* Off-topic or non-technical posts


We are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.

Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa We encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use.

If you would like to send feedback to Apple about a product, please use the appropriate selection here: http://www.apple.com/feedback

As part of submitting feedback, please read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy linked to the feedback page.

Kind regards,

Apple Discussions staff

++++++++++

A copy of your message for reference:



I have just got this!

This is a formal complaint and I wish it to be dealt with by senior management.

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled "Extremely dissapointed and annoyed - Houston, we have a problem," because it contained the following:

* Speculation or Rumors
* Discussion of Apple Policies, Procedures or Decisions
* Off-topic or non-technical posts
* Non-constructive rants or complaints

Here is the post. There are no rumours or rants, I am describing the problem and solutions!

It is completely technical!

Here I am with my reliable powerbook G4 with 10.3X having for years had an enjoyable and sound web based mac email.

Now we are with me I have to search out my email addresses - I used to type in the first two letters and get it - why has that disappeared?

On Friday I composed two lengthy emails, saved to draft and then went to send them - they have disappeared completely into the ether!

I am not happy! It is as if the ability to use me.com as a purely web based mail has been deleted. Why?

Why is my operating system in any way relevant to a web based solution? Because it is not a web based solution!

I was playing with a friend's I phone and thought I would access my email via the web - you cannot do that - when at the me page it does not give you the option of logging in - you have to use the iphone based mail, but I can't do that because it is set up for my friend's email and who wants to go through the hassle of setting up further accounts when all I want to do is check my web based mail!

I think I know what has happened. Apple you have let the curse of microsoft infect you. Your Exchange for everyone is actually the root of the problem. I use exhgange at work and am seriously considering dumping it and going to a simpler system. I thought me.com was that solution - web based - but it actually is not. It is server based, not web based and that is the core problem - old fashioned thinking. I was expecting a move towards the symantic web but we have not got that - this is old mainframe thinking.

I would not have had emails disappear if the basic design had stayed web based instead of making a major design flaw of moving to machine based solutions with their horrendous programming and conflict issues.

You talk of the cloud, but you have not achieved it.

Exactly what part of that post do you think isn't a non-constructive rant or complaint?

Saying "I think I know what has happened. Apple you have let the curse of microsoft infect you..." is not exactly a constructive input. It is a rant. At no point did you offer a constructive solution. You did vent, however.

I don't necessarily agree with their policy of deleting these posts, but since they do state their policy and yours violates the policy, the deletion is not surprising.

Apple is a huge company. If my bank did to my accounts what is happening to many people here there would be serious repercussions, but somehow computer companies are exempt from ordinary quality control standards, and any real anger is personalised and demeaned as venting!

And this is a matter of a basic design flaw. Let us look at this calmly.

What does Exchange for everyone and cloud and similar language mean? It means everything coordinated, synchronised, backed up automatically. It sounds business like, so what is this personal use exemption?

What is the main difference between Apple and Microsoft? The techy stuff is hidden. It is friendly, it is plug and play. it is the CD on your desktop and ejecting it by putting it in the bin. It is minimal viruses because it is well designed.

The future is the semantic web. I thought this was a step towards it, but no, it is a return to machine based apps like mail - which is probably why stuff is getting lost - there is a basic design confusion of attempting to emulate machine based exchange thinking and losing the advantages .mac already had in terms of being web based. Me feels like four steps back. I know this sounds like a rant but seriously it is not as good as I had because of a serious design flaw of confusing web thinking and machine based thinking.


Apple never had the networking problems and complexities and fixes and huge computing teams to fix stuff exchange has.

It is not a rant to say apple have been infected. They have. Bet you me also allows viruses in...

Hi, I'm Gail, the person who posted her chat with mobileme support. I have taken your comments about what I should have done seriously, and you are right, it was naive of me to think I could rely on apple, and to conduct the part of my business designed to roll over new clients on one email server. However, I couldn't forward the un-received mail because it was impossible to do so. Going to another computer only led to a grey screen. I have been a dot mac subscriber for three years and like the .mac domain. I absolutely detest that it is going to .me. DOT ME? It sounds so "Sesame Street"

I don't think I was being abusive to the tech support person. Yes I was asking some tough questions and didn't want to let Apple off the hook. I confess to becoming annoyed when she said she could lie to me to make me happy. Who else was there to complain to? Apple had not put any reasonable or coherent information out to those affected by their snafu.

I have been, and continue to be an Apple supporter. I bought a lot of stock in the company at the end of 2004 and have made enough money on the stock to buy a 7 series BMW. I love Apple!

So I bitched at the tech support person. I wasn't trying to be cool. It's her job to hear complaints and offer solutions. OS X mail still doesn't work . . mobile me is working on my mac. I won't bother to call again.