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  (Source: Reuters)
You can say one thing for Apple's MobileMe team -- they realize nothing says "sorry" like something free

Apple is known for developing stylish and intuitive products.  Among these well working products was its .Mac service which simplified web hosting, email, and online storage for Mac users.  So when the new MobileMe service was rolled out as essentially a free replacement upgrade to the .Mac service, the over 100,000 users of the service were thrilled.

The following months yielded nothing but disappointment to the service's many users.  The quality was so abysmal many users couldn’t even login and a majority of components were broken.  Multiple times Apple wrote apologies to customers and issued them free service for a month, while proclaiming that the problems had been fixed.  And each time more problems piled on.

It became so bad that recently Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself personally apologized on behalf of Apple and said that the service had not been living up to Apple quality.  He alluded to "shakeups" of the MobileMe team, indicating someone might be getting canned.

So did the problems get fixed?  Somewhat, but many critical problems still persist and many users continue to have difficulty with the service.  The MobileMe team yesterday rolled out another apology note.  The latest note reads:

We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

Anyone that obtained MobileMe service before August 19, 2008 0:00 is eligible for the free two months.  Apple even hopes to lure more customers aboard the MobileMe ship by offering those currently in a free trial another two months free.

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Ouch
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 8/19/2008 9:04:07 AM , Rating: 2
Not one month free but now a total of three? The problem must be worse than originally expected if it's still having plenty of problems and they are having to give more freebies out to satisfy people.




RE: Ouch
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 8/19/2008 9:07:48 AM , Rating: 5
Apple + Multiple Freebies does not compute :)


RE: Ouch
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 8/19/2008 9:16:16 AM , Rating: 2
In the case of the original iPhone there were some heavy metal strings attached..... This looks not quite as bad.


RE: Ouch
By dcalfine on 8/19/2008 9:20:44 AM , Rating: 3
I agree. I was one of the people who bought the iPhone when it was $600 and I had a .Mac account that was automatically transitioned into a MobileMe account. The iPhone was more of an outrage. I think MobileMe needs work, but whether it's a $100 gift certificate or three months of extra service, Apple has made sure that I return as a customer. Dag, yo!


RE: Ouch
By omnicronx on 8/19/2008 9:33:49 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
I think MobileMe needs work, but whether it's a $100 gift certificate or three months of extra service, Apple has made sure that I return as a customer. Dag, yo!
I have absolutely no problem with Apple products, for me they just cost too much and that is a personal preference. But terrible service is a red flag for me regardless of who makes the product.

My I ask what exactly makes Apple so appealing when its becoming pretty obvious that their overly expensive products, don't always 'just work'. I am not trying to call anyone out here, I just don't understand why an apology and a gift card is more than enough (or in the case of the iphone 3g, an apology and a promise for a software upgrade that probably wont do anything), but a company like Microsoft extending their warranty to 3 years and giving out a billion dollars worth of xbox 360's is blasphemous. (not defending MS, they royally f'd up, just making a point).


RE: Ouch
By dcalfine on 8/19/2008 9:45:31 AM , Rating: 2
And I understand the point you're making.

MobileMe is something that you can only really appreciate if you've complete bought into Apple, which I admit I have. It syncs your contacts from Apple's Address Book, it syncs your calendars from Apple's iCal, it syncs your mail rules from Apple's Mail, it syncs your bookmarks from Safari, iDisk and Back to my Mac built into Mac OS X… it's hard to own a Mac and an iPhone but not have a MobileMe subscription. The only people Apple is letting down here are loyal customers. The reason why I haven't gotten off the merry-go-round is because I haven't had any major issues with MobileMe. I guess I've been lucky: the only problem I had was a ten-hour outage when they transitioned my account from .Mac to MobileMe. But if I start getting half the problems mentioned in this article, I'll be using my Gmail for a few months.


RE: Ouch
By afkrotch on 8/19/2008 10:10:14 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
it's hard to own a Mac and an iPhone but not have a MobileMe subscription.


It's hard to pay for a service that Microsoft gives out for free. Get a Smartphone/PDA and Windows. The two can sync up together and do it for the low low price of FREE. ActiveSync will sync up with Windows Mobile, Windows CE, PalmOS, and Symbian.

Also doesn't the iPhone sync up via iTunes? Or do they screw you up the butt and only let you sync up a small list of items? If that's the case, then the truly stupid ppl pay for MobileMe and do it happily.


RE: Ouch
By dcalfine on 8/19/2008 10:29:31 AM , Rating: 2
What? Yes, they screw me up the butt. What the hell are you talking about?

Syncing via iTunes works fine. MobileMe is Apple's Exchange/ActiveSync. Exchange costs a lot of money. A LOT of money. And Exchange wasn't exactly perfect when it came out, either.

MobileMe has 20GB of email storage and web hosting, you know. And offers support for up to ten email aliases. The features that aren't working so well are just a few of the important features that make MobileMe worthwhile.

Don't start mindlessly bashing Apple when you don't know what you're talking about. Apple may not always be right, but you aren't either in this case.


RE: Ouch
By afkrotch on 8/19/2008 10:48:14 AM , Rating: 4
quote:
Syncing via iTunes works fine. MobileMe is Apple's Exchange/ActiveSync. Exchange costs a lot of money. A LOT of money. And Exchange wasn't exactly perfect when it came out, either.


You can use ActiveSync with Windows Live Mail. Free. Connect Live Mail up to Hotmail. That's unlimited storage on your machine or 5 gb online free. Windows Live Spaces 5 gb free storage.

quote:
The features that aren't working so well are just a few of the important features that make MobileMe worthwhile.

quote:
Don't start mindlessly bashing Apple when you don't know what you're talking about.


If it's the important features that make MobileMe worthwhile are broken, then that doesn't exactly make it mindless to start bashing, does it?


RE: Ouch
By omnicronx on 8/19/2008 11:05:17 AM , Rating: 2
I have to agree with the afk here, ActiveSync and Vista's 'Mobile Device Center' are both free, automatically sync when you either attach it to USB or you have bluetooth activated, and it can be sync'd with your outlook email and calendar.

You can also use pretty much any IMAP or POP email account on the phone to access your email, which does not require syncing at all... not that the same can't be done on the iphone with 3rd party google apps (for gmail atleast).. but its not integrated.


RE: Ouch
By dcalfine on 8/19/2008 11:13:40 AM , Rating: 2
I use Exchange and ActiveSync at work and it does indeed work as it ought to. But it's not very elegant, nor is it user-friendly.


RE: Ouch
By omnicronx on 8/19/2008 11:31:56 AM , Rating: 2
And this is why vista introduced the Mobile Device Center, which is the activesync replacement. If you have ever used it you would agree that its pretty user friendly, and far more aesthetically pleasing than activesync.


RE: Ouch
By robinthakur on 8/20/2008 10:47:03 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. iPhones owners can't use the activesync without an exchange server, and if the requirement for all this free functionality is having to use a Windows Mobile 'smart' phone they can keep their active sync. I'd rather have my arms cut off than use a Windows device ever again. Having owned several HTC phones i'd never be tempted back, no matter what the specs or glowing reviews on the web might tell me about handset x being an 'iPhone-killer' Having to use a tiny pen to push tiny buttons, the handwriting recognition/on screen keyboard and wireless connectivity which was very flaky (*Far* more dropped 3G calls than the iPhone 3G on my HTC TYTN, which was unusable unless it was set to GSM-only, and the WLan only successfully worked twice the whole time I owned it) To appreciate the overhyped iPhone you really need to look at where the competition is. Or where it isn't more specifically...

Anyway, the iPhone syncs automatically when you connect it via USB (no bluetooth or wifi yet, sadly) with contacts, email accounts etc. Gmail integrates fine with the mail button on my iPhone, and pulls down all the mail with a minimum of fuss. How's that not integrated or am I missing something here?

Having said that I've not bought into Apple so much that I'd pay for Mobile Me (even if it wasn't anecdotally broken) as it just seems unnecessary. If you owned a Mac as well and Macbooks then it makes more sense. Once its working. Aha.


RE: Ouch
By djc208 on 8/20/2008 7:47:01 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
It syncs your contacts from Apple's Address Book, it syncs your calendars from Apple's iCal, it syncs your mail rules from Apple's Mail, it syncs your bookmarks from Safari, iDisk and Back to my Mac built into Mac OS X


You mean it would if it worked.


RE: Ouch
By kelmon on 8/19/2008 10:23:00 AM , Rating: 2
I think it all rather depends on whether you've actually experienced a problem. So far the only impact I've had from the MobileMe launch fiasco is that I couldn't access my email via my browser much during the first couple of weeks. This wasn't a major issue for me as email continued to work fine over IMAP and just meant that I couldn't read private email at work, which I shouldn't be anyway.

Personal experience is key. If you were one of the users who depended on webmail access and couldn't get your email then I can appreciate that the outages would have been a major problem. A lot has been made about the MobileMe launch but my personal annoyances have been due to the Airport Extreme router and OS X Leopard at launch. It's more annoying that I didn't receive any compensation for those products than the MobileMe outages.

With respect to the Microsoft aspect, it very much depends on how much of an impact a service failure has on you and how long that service failure lasts for. The 360 deserves a lot of flack because if your console dies then it takes quite a long time to get it repaired and running again. In this case the customer is unlikely to be happy for an extended period of time and the 3 year warranty isn't something tangible that compensates for the loss.

Finally, it's worth noting that Apple's stuff used to "just work" but the sad fact is that less of it "just works" now. I don't know if this is because the company is having difficulties trying to keep up with demand for new products and the expectations of shareholders and analysts, or if something else is to blame.


RE: Ouch
By michael2k on 8/19/2008 2:40:35 PM , Rating: 1
Appeal for their products even when they don't always "just work"?
1) When they do work, they work better
2) When they don't work, they STILL work better (than competitors when they don't work)
3) When they do work, but not "just work", they are still better than competitors

The XBox 360 is a case of hardware failure; the iPhone is a case of intermittent failure. When the iPhone works, it is awesome (I've never had mine not work though). When it fails, you wait a moment and try again (since it isn't broken).

When the XBox RRODs, it stops working. It shouldn't stop working in the first place, because if it does it is defective and needs to be replaced.


RE: Ouch
By omnicronx on 8/19/2008 3:19:49 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
When it fails, you wait a moment and try again (since it isn't broken).
Actually the 3G is broken, I consider dropped calls, and not receiving text messages and network drops as a result of untested hardware broken.

I don't think you realize how many people have reverted back to the edge network, because 3g has been a nightmare for them. If you really consider people paying 10$ a month more for a service they cannot use acceptable, then I do not know what is unacceptable.

My point about the RROD was not whether or not it is better or worse than this situation, my point is that MS even paid out a billion dollars to fix things, publically apologized, and pretty much fixed the problem. Iphone 3g users have basically been told that they are shit out of luck, and that apple will release a software update that will 'help' fix some of the issues. Yet Apple still probably gained more customers than they lost in the past few weeks.


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