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WSJ: MobileMe Flawed, Ragged

WSJ: MobileMe Flawed, Ragged

by , 12:30 PM EDT, July 24th, 2008

After a week of intense testing, Walt Mossberg with the Wall Street Journal reported that he cannot recommend MobileMe in its current state. It has too many flaws to keep its promises.

Mr. Mossberg took care to point out that he wasn't referring to the many glitches users experienced at launch, e-mail outages, slow servers, and so on. The WSJ technical editor, usually positive about Apple products, believed that the problems he found are systemic.

After a description of how things are supposed to work, Mr. Mossberg pointed out that: "while changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best. Apple has admitted that this is a problem, and says it is working on it."

There's more. Mr. Mossberg found the MobileMe Website to be sluggish, and some calendar entries wouldn't load at all. Address book groups on the Mac showed up as separate address books in Outlook. Synced contacts on the iPhone were incomplete. Mr. Mossberg's e-mail rules didn't migrate to the MobileMe e-mail server. Finally, MobileMe mostly failed to sync his bookmarks, but when it succeeded, they were scrambled.

"Apple patiently explained each of my problems, sometimes helping me with workarounds, sometimes claiming they were rare, other times saying that it was working on fixes," Mr. Mossberg concluded. "If Apple does get MobileMe working smoothly, it could be a terrific service. But it's way too ragged now."

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1922 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Subject:

I'm using MobileMe Mail exclusively. There are some really cool things. It works better than most other WebMail systems I've worked with. That said I keep getting odd errors and sometimes unpredictable behavior. It's been a little odd at times. I also have been unable to upload my address book from Mail.app on my PowerBook to MobileMe. Fortunately I only have a dozen or so addresses so it was not a problem to rebuild it, but that's just me.

I have noticed that my Control Panel still says .Mac. It hasn't updated to MobileMe, as I understood it would. I'm running 10.4.11 so that may be some of the issue.

Overall MobileMe should grow into something great. Right now it isn't ready for prime time. IMO they shipped too early.

Close Name:Shoaf Posts: 37 Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Subject: As a "1%-er"...

I would say it's DEFINITELY flawed.

I'm one of the claimed-by-Apple 1% that has been without MobileMe mail for a week as of today. I've had rock-solid email service as a .Mac subscriber for the past several years... until last Thursday.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: calendar sync

my calendar hasn't synced correctly. Only when I delete all items and add just a few new ones does it work. The sync is terribly slow and there is an apple service that is almost constantly running at 20% of my processor speed eating up cycles for no apparent reason.
So far this is a pretty terrible solution and we should demand sync with google calendar and contacts.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: No problems here...

In fact, since Apple migrated to the Mobile Me e-mail servers, the PUSH e-mail capability of my diminutive SonyEricsson W580i phone is working! No iPhone needed!

Hey Apple! Keep working on fixing the service for others. For me, it's working just fine.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Walt is too kind

As a long time Mac owner (I still have a Cube in use!) and admirer of their product genius, I am appalled at the state of the MobileMe service. I was a .Mac user for about a year (I just wanted a succinct email domain name), I'd come to appreciate the integration of .Mac with my Macbook's native mail application. When word of MobileMe came along, I was excited that the seamlessness I've come to expect out of Apple would be evident in this "upgrade" to their mail/hosting service.

Instead, I'm left with less integration with my Macbook and I must say that the iPhone "push" aspects of this are completely overrated. So I don't have to manually check mail or check based on a schedule -- so what! I'd much rather have a manual check and actually be able to synchronize contacts and calendars between Mac, Iphone and my work PC (this simply doesn't work -- it's an abomination and Apple is completely ignoring this failure, refusing to admit that it exists). I've become so frustrated trying to make this service work across my essential platforms that I've discontinued MobielMe sync with my PC and just use Exchange Active Synch. The flawlessness of this Microsoft product working with Apple hardware is ironic and should be cause for intense shame among infinite loopers.

Another glaring, jarring flaw with MobileMe is the utter lack of support for email aliases. I can send email only from my main MobileMe account, not from the alias I've been using for a year, this at Apple's suggestion as a means to reduce spam and enhance .Mac account security.

What did Apple do, hire a bunch of Yahoo rejects to build this?

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Someone should be beat for this

.Mac is not a free toy.

It's a $99 tool many use for home businesses.

This is a time when I think Apple deserves all the bashing it gets for it's arrogance.

-an Apple fanboy

Close Name:Guest
Subject: 1% Movie Poster

Been with no mail for 7 days. Can't work so thought a little humor might help.

For your viewing pleasure:

http://www.twhweb.com/dl/mobileMe.jpg

Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 3149 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Subject: Re: Someone should be beat for this

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
.Mac is not a free toy.

It's a $99 tool many use for home businesses.

This is a time when I think Apple deserves all the bashing it gets for it's arrogance.

-an Apple fanboy


People really need to look up the word "arrogance".

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

Quote:
"People really need to look up the word "arrogance".

those people may be you...let me help: "offensive display of superiority or self-importance"

A company that feels they break my email service without an explanation is...?

A company that sells millions of phones that can't be registered on opening day (also without an explanation)
is...what?

Read David Pogue's NY times article.

Apple feels little need to explain itself ever.

Hope this helped.

Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 3149 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Subject:

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
Quote:
"People really need to look up the word "arrogance".

those people may be you...let me help: "offensive display of superiority or self-importance"

A company that feels they break my email service without an explanation is...?


...probably trying to figure out why it isn't working for approximately 1% of its users. If they intentionally broke it and said "pound sand", THAT would be arrogant. You make it sound like Apple is intentionally messing with your e-mail as a personal attack. That could be construed as arrogance on your part (see self-importance).

Quote
A company that sells millions of phones that can't be registered on opening day (also without an explanation)
is...what?


AT&T?

You haven't explained how they are being "superior", or "self-important". Slow to respond? Yes. Is that, by definition, arrogant? I don't think so.

Quote
Read David Pogue's NY times article.

Apple feels little need to explain itself ever.

Hope this helped.


I never said that Apple isn't, at times, arrogant. They can be. However, the previous guest post does not point to an example of it. It does look like MobileMe was either rolled out too early or has crumpled under the onslaught caused by all of the iPhones trying to work with it. I don't know which (and neither do you, I would guess). In either case, I seriously doubt that this is what Apple intended to happen. Mistakes are unfortunate, but not necessarily arrogance.

I do sympathize with those who are experiencing problems. I've been fortunate that I haven't been affected by these outages, and I sincerely hope that it gets resolved soon for those who are suffering through it.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: MobileMe

Expecting to get $99 a year for crud like MobileMe proves that Apple's success has gone to its head. Or that the bean counters are running the show. I had no service for days at a time and couldn't find a way to cancel my subscription until I started sending letters to the state's division of consumer fraud. To charge for a service that everyone else gives away for free and then not deliver is more than fraud, more than arrogance, it's a return to Apple's stupid years.

Binky 123

Close Name:Guest
Subject: WSJ: MobileMe Flawed, Ragged

To geoduck:

Geo, MM does not work with Tiger. That is why you see the .Mac Preference Pane. Get Leopard. It pays off in many other respects, as well.
In agree that MM is awesome, despite the current glitches.

Jukka Helsinki

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