Apology email and 30 day extension for "push" terminology

[sneakyob]

Nice Job!

Even if they didn't give us the free 30 days, it was a nice move for Apple to acknowledge the issue and address it. That could have just been a formal email that blew smoke, but instead, they took the time to "fall on the sword" and be humble.

 

[corinhorn]

The Service Formerly Known As .Mac is working for me finally. I had to reset my sync data to get functional syncing. As most people who had used .Mac for years know, sometimes it takes several sync sessions for things to start working properly. That's the nature of the service for whatever reason. For those who are still experiencing sync issues, give it a few days to a week and things should be better. Sync conflicts take a while to resolve.

Kudos to Apple for giving a free month of service.

 

[andiwm2003]

ok, so apple realized their problems. that is good. they did not show how steve jobs decapitated the managers at fault and eviscerated the ones around them. that is good as well because kids are watching. they compensated my 5 hrs to get my calendar working with 30 extra days.

now if mail would sync/push reliably from cloud to iphone and not have 4 hrs delay for some mails it would be fine.

and if cloud to ical would be push or sync it would be great. but i have to manually sync twice on average to get it synced at all.

and if the server wasn't down that often (i get often the message connection lost although websurfing works just fine) it would be all good.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

you have two junk folders in your mobile me account?
i dont have that problem.

i did have 2 trash folders (a "deleted messages" and a "trash") i got rid of both (in mail.app), and things seemed to have rebuilt ok.

I have multiple appearing/dissapearing mail folders in mobileme mail even though I carefully set all my clients *not* to store drafts or junk mail on the server.

Also mail appears/disappears when moving from the mail tab to any other tab in mobile me. when you go to your setting for instance, I will see a badge on the mail saying I got new mail. If you switch to the mail, the badge disappears, then if you switch back, it appears again.

 

[AdamStudner]

Please Help...

Still haven't been able to get an answer to this. If I look at an email on my iPhone that is a third party email account (my own small-business account set up as a pop) should this be reflected in my inbox on my computer?

 

[danuff]

I Am Impressed!

Even though I do not get the benefit of the 30 day extension, I am STILL impressed with the way Apple is handling this.

They are doing more than some other companies would, and ADMITTING of there screw ups.

Way to go Apple - You have my respect!

-Dan Uff

 

[andiwm2003]

Still haven't been able to get an answer to this. If I look at an email on my iPhone that is a third party email account (my own small-business account set up as a pop) should this be reflected in my inbox on my computer?

can't help you there but if i look at a .mac or me.com email on my iphone it still shows as unread in the webapp. if i delete a mail it gets deleted on the cloud half a day later. regardless of third party or not. give it a couple of weeks..........

 

[Los Royers]

You actually can by editing a plist (I believe). I wouldn't recommend it though.

Why wouldn't you recommend it?

 

[schubes]

I’m quickly becoming less and less optimistic about a timely (ie pre September, in time for college) laptop refresh.

With all the iphone frenzy and the challenges they’re having with iphone and mobile me software, things don’t look promising for them piling on another hardware release soon…

 

[137489]

Since I am in my trail period - I probably would not expect a free month. Would be nice though.

I see that Apple is up to their good customer service, admitting there is a problem, and making restitution while fixing the problem.

Glad to see this, other companies would only be bumbliing and would not offer a puplic declaration like that. Dell only offers apologies if you yell at them directly and then they make a small pitty restitution that still does not address or fix the original problem.

Life going to be good in Apple Land

 

[danuff]

E-mail Question

Still haven't been able to get an answer to this. If I look at an email on my iPhone that is a third party email account (my own small-business account set up as a pop) should this be reflected in my inbox on my computer?

Yes and no . . . .

Depending on when you have the e-mail program going out for new e-mail (i.e. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc.) it may not show up right away on your home computer.

...or...

You may have a setting on the email program that says 'leave e-mail on server' on the iPhone disabled or even on the other computer.

Hope this helps,
Dan Uff

 

[Peace]

Looks like Apple's "push" isn't working on the free 30 days either :
What .Me says and what system preferences say.

 

[DaBrain]

What can we complain about now?

LOL!!!!---)))))) Now that got a laugh outta me--))))

 

[Philly]

You know, I really couldn't give a dam about the bloody iPhone. I have been a .mac subscriber for almost 4 years. After seeing a Genius in the Mac store this morning they still couldn't get my Mac to sync and concluded that I should buy Leopard. I agree that we have to keep up with technology but to run people of the road like this is just plain bad practice. No sync, no registration, emails that barely send....

And I don't believe that letter was from Mac anyway....

Come on Apple, remember who you are please...!

 

[gcmexico]

Just got mine a couple minutes ago. Apple probably had "Push" working fairly well, but the high demand and unforeseen problems have hampered the feature. As stated above, Apple's wording makes me believe that "Push" should be up and running on all platforms relatively soon.

*
I haven't received the email yet I want my apology

 

[franzmueller]

I could live up with 15 min but in my case mobile me doesn't work at all with ical / ipod touch other than plugging my device into my macbook.

Mail works but I haven´t tried the rest .

Saludos

Franz

 

[queshy]

A good move on Apple's part - at least they are admitting they screwed up and not just ignoring the extremely bumpy start.

Are changes made on me.com --> Mac (push)? Or does anything involving Mac take 15 minutes?

 

[MM07]

I just got my email a few minutes ago.

 

[HLdan]

Even if they're still fibbing a little bit (since obviously it's not up and running for everyone, so that means they're still working through issues), this goes a VERY long way in calming me.

All I wanted was for Apple to acknowledge the issue and treat its customers with some respect. Going almost a week without saying a word is HORRIBLE PR, and it is so condescending to their customers.

Although I'm still mad at them for taking so long, they did extend an olive branch and give us a free month of service which is pretty cool. I suggested in another thread that they should give us as many days free as the service wasn't working. A whole month is much better than my suggestion. Combined with the admittance of problems, I am totally OK with that.

I just hope next time they don't pretend nothing's going on so they can keep pretending they don't make any failures.

I was certainly waiting for somebody to complain regardless of the apology letter and the extension. Look, I'm quite annoyed too and your concerns are very much valid as this has happened to all .Mac customers (sorry but the free trial customers don't count) but your post saying that Apple took a long time is a complete exaggeration and totally unreasonable. It hasn't even been a week since this fiasco started. You have to get it out of your mind that Apple is a huge corporation, they do hire "human beings" to perform these creations.

I'm sure you've been put on deadlines on your job and hoped that your superior would be understanding if you didn't get the work completed on time, right?

 

[PlaceofDis]

i don't fault apple with the 'mess up'. i mean really it was a pretty huge upgrade in their services. (adding push to servers, new interface, probably new back-end, and new addresssing all the while having to preserve data and migrate it over seamlessly)

the problem is that they under-estimated the time it'd take to iron things out. if they had posted a notice of a 24 hour downtime well in advance things would've gone smoother. things also would've gone smoother if they would've completed the transaction on a day/week before the iphone launch. things would've gone smoother if they would've had the 2.0 software released a day before for existing iphone customers.

this was a management problem: things just weren't planned out or thought out clear enough in advance. i mean they knew they were going to be hit hard with traffic, what the forgot to realize is all three = 3x the traffic.

not saying its right; just putting it in perspective.

 

[SpinThis!]

It's pretty obvious to me most of the people in this thread still complaining have never worked in IT or as programmers. From what I glean from the e-mail, it appears capacity problems were the main problems.

Rollouts are notoriously difficult to deal with, especially when new customers are signing up every hour. If Apple would have rolled this out in stages (for example, let .mac customers have first crack at it), all those with trials would be complaining why it's not up yet or that "Apple missed the ship date again".... it's a slippery slope either way.

It's one thing to do in-house development. It's another thing to provision what you think are enough servers to handle demand. I don't think anyone predicted how popular this service was actually going to be and Apple were fighting tooth-and-nail to get .mac moved over and up to the level of service required by the new service.

If you over-do capacity, you run the risk of never fully using those servers and that costs money, not only in maintenance but in electricity, rack space, etc. It's a lot easier to undershoot and make customer service deal with it the few crazies while things level off. Most customers will be understanding when this sortof things happens. Still pissed? Go rent your own private server for, what, $400/month and you can get all the push-everything you need.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Seems reasonable enough I suppose.

Such a huge transition of systems will never go smoothly, their wording regarding the push features was evidently a grave mistake.

I think an additional month of service for free is adequate.

Agreed. Its a nice gesture on Apple's part to acknowledge the difficulties of the transition.

 

[Daveoc64]

I was certainly waiting for somebody to complain regardless of the apology letter and the extension. Look, I'm quite annoyed too and your concerns are very much valid as this has happened to all .Mac customers (sorry but the free trial customers don't count) but your post saying that Apple took a long time is a complete exaggeration and totally unreasonable. It hasn't even been a week since this fiasco started. You have to get it out of your mind that Apple is a huge corporation, they do hire "human beings" to perform these creations.

I'm sure you've been put on deadlines on your job and hoped that your superior would be understanding if you didn't get the work completed on time, right?

Umm, did you even read the post you quoted?

They said:
"A whole month is much better than my suggestion. Combined with the admittance of problems, I am totally OK with that.

I just hope next time they don't pretend nothing's going on so they can keep pretending they don't make any failures."

Basically they said that they wanted an apology and a small amount of compensation, but that they got more compensation than expected.

They also said that they hoped Apple would learn from this.

 

[dicklacara]

Off topic but related

There is at least one other problem brewing that Apple needs to address.

Late Friday, 7/11, (conveniently, after support hours) Apple sent out emails to a lot of people who signed up to become iPhone developers. By following a link the developer was able to purchase a $99 iPhone Developer Program enrollment.

After purchase, an email was to follow, enabling the developer to activate his account.

-- many paid the $99 but received no activation instructions
-- many others received activation instructions that don't work
-- some others were able activate their enrollments
-- many contacted Apple about the activation problem but have heard nothing back

I realize that "many" and "some" are pretty general... but according to the threads I've read, there are a lot of unhappy potential iPhone developers.

Apple, ya' need to coddle your developers... not piss them off and ignore them.

Apple is dipping its toes into the enterprise market place-- especially with the new iPhone.

Doing business with business requires a different approach to marketing and support than with consumers.

A lot of influential people are watching Apple to see if it is willing establish the infrastructure and mindset necessary to support the enterprise... ah, but that's a whole 'nother story!

 

[babyj]

Apple were real stupid performing all the updates and product releases within a couple of days. Still not sure why they had to do it, holding off on Mobile Me for a week or two and missing the iPhone 3G release wouldn't of been the end of the world.

Hopefully they've learnt their lessons from all the screw ups over the last week and won't make the same mistakes in the future. Whilst its not going to be for a while, it will be interesting to see how they handle the next major update of the iPhone - they could easily have 10 million plus people screaming for it on the day its released.

Still, they stood up and apologised and have compensated everyone so whilst they won't come out of it smelling of roses they won't have done any real damage.