ANTenna Blog -- Apple

The real black spot in Apple's recent iPhone launch isn't the phone itself, but the MobileMe online service. The service is an upgrade and a revamp of the .Mac service that Apple has offered for some years. MobileMe offers a variety of services, but sadly, a lot of them don't work right, and that's causing customers no end of frustration.

The main benefit of both .Mac and MobileMe is syncing between multiple computers (Windows and Mac), iPhones and iPod touch devices. The service syncs e-mail accounts, contacts and calendars. It also provides Web-based storage (with a local cache, if you choose, for disconnected operations), an e-mail account, instant messaging, Web site hosting, and remote desktop access. MobileMe costs $99 per user per year, or you can get a family pack with five accounts for $149/year.

The migration from .Mac to MobileMe has gone very badly since its official launch on July 12.

First, there was widespread disenchantment that MobileMe's widely promoted "push" services actually don't push sync changes to desktop/notebook PCs. Customers weren't happy to learn that Macs have to poll the online service for data changes instead — which makes changes occur about every 15 minutes, not instantly.

Apple has documented this, saying "Selecting Automatic in Mac OS X allows your computer to immediately sync and update when there are any changes on the MobileMe servers. Those changes can come from your iPhone, iPod touch, the MobileMe website, or another computer. Changes made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe "cloud" once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11)."

Next, even those services still don't work reliably. Apple acknowledged this in an email to MobileMe subscribers that said,

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

You can read all the details about the 30-day extension to MobileMe here.

And now, it seem that many people who have their e-mail through Apple's online service can't get to the e-mail — and haven't been able to for several days. According to CNN Money, 1% of users can't get to mail. My recent check of Apple's MobileMe support site shows that "2% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. Service will be restored ASAP. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Not good! If you're considering subscribing to MobileMe, I urge you to hold off until Apple gets its act together.

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