The Mac Observer

WSJ: MobileMe Flawed, Ragged

July 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 PM - News by John Martellaro

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 wasnit 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."

Thereis more. Mr. Mossberg found the MobileMe Website to be sluggish, and some calendar entries wouldnit 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. Mossbergis e-mail rules didnit 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 itis way too ragged now."

Login. Need an account? Register here.



Auto-login on future visits

Show my name in the online users list

Forgot your password?


Commenting is not available in this section entry.
 

Recent Headlines - Updated March 18th

Thu, 1:40 PM
News - Apple Patents Miniature Projector Technology
12:39 PM
News - Apple Director Jerome York Passes Away After Suffering Aneurysm
12:38 PM
iPad - Rupert Murdoch: ‘All Media is Going Into the iPad’
11:35 AM
News - Apple Highlights New In-store Youth Workshops
11:00 AM
Product News - STM Adds New Colors to Laptop, iPad Glove Lineup
10:42 AM
Dave Hamilton's Blog - SXSW Music Festival Survival Guide
9:54 AM
Product News - CheckUp 2.6 Improves Core i5, i7 Support
9:35 AM
News - Apple Adds Price Change Scheduling to App Store
8:56 AM
News - HTC Ready to Take On Apple in Patent Suit
8:15 AM
News - Amazon Releases Kindle for Mac Public Beta
Wed, 7:26 PM
News - Apple Director Jerome York Hospitalized, in Critical Condition
5:20 PM
Mac Geek Gab Podcast - MGG 250: SXSW, Time Machine, Mail Tips, & Network Performance
 

The Mac Observer Reader Specials

Apple Stock Quote

  • AAPL: $223.7419. Change: -0.3781.
  • (Prices delayed up to 20 minutes.)
  • Discuss in our Apple Finance Board

Hot Topics

TMO Express

Join the TMO Express Daily Newsletter to get the latest Mac headlines in your e-mail every weekday. Find out more!

Top Deals From DealBrothers.com

Recent Features

Support The Mac Observer

We noticed you may be running AdBlock on your computer. It takes real money to run this site and to deliver the news, tips, and opinions you love to read.

If you wish to block the ads that pay for the creation of our content, we ask that you instead support TMO Directly, either with a $5 monthly recurring contribution, or a one-time donation of any amount of your choice. Thanks!

Subscribe with Paypal Donate with Paypal