[Macworld]

Post your comments for Apple notes continued MobileMe service outage here

[HobbesDoo]

Not only outages, but basic functionality like selecting contacts when using Web mail App still does not work. I'm a developer and it amazes me it's taking them this long to get things right. Specially for a paying service.

[fibercut]

This outage has affected way more than just 1%. Just checkout all the Apple discussions if you don't believe me. Mobile Me so far has been worse than .Mac was in email reliability.

[itskcmac]

My MM works OK now as far as contacts, calendar and mail goes (most of the time). I've demo'd it to a couple of Winboys and it's worked flawlessly while showing it. It would have been a real disaster if it hadn't. I tried to upgrade to a family pack the other day and that's a definite no go. They still don't have the commerce side of things working properly. I was without webmail for a week and can't upgrade. I'm not sure if 1 month of free service is worth the headaches I've been forced to endure.

[Peter Cohen]

fibercut said:

This outage has affected way more than just 1%. Just checkout all the Apple discussions if you don't believe me. Mobile Me so far has been worse than .Mac was in email reliability.

While I have no question that Apple's discussion forums are filled with users complaining about MobileMe service outages, I think it's important to remember, as it has been said, that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Simply because many users have converged at Apple's discussion forums to talk about a common problem -- exactly the purpose of those forums -- one cannot and should not infer that Apple is being untruthful about the percentage of users affected by the issue.

[itskcmac]

I say we blame it on MicroSoft. They're ActiveSync couldn't handle the load and it bungled things.

Anybody for this?

As I've seen in iTunes many, many, many times. Click "Yes" if you agree....

[Adammiller]

Mobile Me has been my worst apple experience ever! In fact the last two weeks have presented a few things that I would call my worst apple experiences. The iPhone backing up deal is extremely inconvenient. It defeats the purpose of the iPhones simple design if I have to sit there for a undetermined amount of time (30min-90min so far) while my phone does something that I already have taken care of. Mobile Me is slow. It took forever for a few photos to upload from Aperture to a album and then they wouldn't load fully after they were up. I have logged in and received a message telling me that I couldn't access my e-mail twice and now last night it said it would take 2 hours to upload 167MB onto my public idisk? iPhone 2.0 soft wear seems to be buggy and still lacks copy and paste? That should probably get bumped up the list Apple... its easy. As a designer I have thought of quite a few ways to get it done on the UI side... so figure out the back end of it start fixing the mess you made by launching all this crap on the same day. If I only owned a iPhone, I wouldn't be that upset about all this mess but the mobile me crap has effected the performance on a few much larger apple investments that I use everyday.

[fibercut]

Quote

While I have no question that Apple's discussion forums are filled with users complaining about MobileMe service outages, I think it's important to remember, as it has been said, that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Simply because many users have converged at Apple's discussion forums to talk about a common problem -- exactly the purpose of those forums -- one cannot and should not infer that Apple is being untruthful about the percentage of users affected by the issue.

That is your opinion. I am shocked that this "one percent" then was written about by MacWorld. I find MacWorld increasingly is treating Apple with kid gloves. The Mobile Me email outage affected is something huge but Apple wants to save face and avoid egg on their face so they are deleting discussion posts as fast as they can. They did this with .Mac and now they are doing it even more with Mobile Me. If it was just 'one percent" why did MacWorld even bother with the story?

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
The percentage isn't something you should concentrate on. 1%...2%...Whatever. The point was that discussion forums are typically made up of mostly those asking questions and complaining about problems they are having. It is rare to have a thread about how great things are going. They're either enjoying the product(s) / services(s) during that time they could be posting or just don't feel a need to ( use time to ) register and do a write up since they could just keep enjoying things. It happens but not much at all. So...A problem is going to seem much, much larger if you simply look at the amount of complaining...Especially on discussion boards. On top of all that, those complaining get as 'loud' as they can and post as much as they can. Put simply...An extremely poor method of gauging.

As far as Apple removing posts. Well...There is a very logical reason. Is this the only reason? Probably not but still... Apple is very much aware of the problem(s) and "rockiness" involved and so those just looking to loudly 'vent' and contribute nothing but extra headache, don't need to make things worse. It would be like stripping a screw while repairing a vacuum cleaner, explaining to the customer that unfortunate instances have come up and it will take a couple more hours than quoted but all attempts are being to correct the situation as quickly as humanly possible...However...The customer decides to keep calling and complaining about the time frame and asking if it is finished yet. YOU'RE NOT HELPING THE PROCESS! Should it have happened in the first place? No but it did and everyone makes mistakes and the best we can hope is that they learn from them.

[Dan Frakes]

fibercut said:

I find MacWorld increasingly is treating Apple with kid gloves.

Yet we've posted several editorials in the past week alone that have been very critical of Apple.

fibercut said:

If it was just 'one percent" why did MacWorld even bother with the story?

Because one percent of a very large number is still a very large number.

[ukmacuser]

Something else in the Apple forums that is getting a few postings, but has been missed by the Mac press, is the fact that people running Linux are finding that they can no longer access Mobileme, whereas they could with .Mac.
SproutCore, as I understand it, is supposed to be cross-platform and the point of webmail historically has been that you can access it with any modern browser. Apple has chosen to block Linux+Firefox and on other non-Mac/Windows platforms the results with Firefox are erratic to say the least...hopefully something else they will fix soon.

[whitedog]

I haven't gotten Apple's apology or the account extension - because I am among the 20,000 or so users whose MobileMe mail is not working. I'm just grateful I don't use Apple Mail or .Mac/MobileMe as my primary e-mail client/account. In the Mail accounts preferences, the .Mac smtp server is listed as offline.
This is easily the worst product launch in Apple history, not alone for the problems in the service but in Apple's public response to the problems.
Apple is just plain lucky that mainstream reviewers like Walt Mossberg haven't been among those experiencing these difficulties. Mossberg and two other tech reviewers last night on Charlie Rose had almost uniformly positive things to say about the iPhone 3G. David Pogue, on the other hand, is paying closer attention to what's going on and has panned MobileMe in his latest Circuits review. One can only wonder how much longer Apple can keep the stink contained.

[ukmacuser]

whitedog said:

Apple is just plain lucky that mainstream reviewers like Walt Mossberg haven't been among those experiencing these difficulties.

Well, he is having some issues...

http://ptech.allthin...to-be-reliable/

[edmorris]

Unfortunately dotMac / MobileMe is my Primary email account. My (and my Mum's) email was inaccessible until Tuesday. My Dad's is still completely inaccessible [Friday 25-Jul-2008]. I have just paid my Family MobileMe bill of GBP 89 ($180) which includes VAT at 21% when VAT is 17.5% in the UK. The outage means that I have had to set my Dad up with a POP email account and help him change his contact email with the hospital, his Doctor and dozens of others. Thankfully, Screen Sharing is still working and has enabled me to do this but it's hours of my time that I hadn't allowed for. This is an unbelievable situation for an expensive, paid-for 'service'.