Sorry but I just have to reply to this. Its 9.30am, I haven't slept and have spent all night looking to find FTP solutions to prop up the shambles that iDisk syncing is and how it is probably the worst performing service available from a major (or even several lower tier providers), paid or unpaid.
I'm in Ireland, where Apples base is and the letter you received from the 'Senior adviser of Apple Europe' (oh please, names or its pixie dust) is nothing but a pile of ********* wrapped in a consumer friendly bow. I work as a Business CSR (with legal background) and have to deal with many of Apple Ireland's customers each day, although usually not on directly Mobileme related matters. The wording of the letter to the OP translated from PR to reality is this.
1) 'I perfectly understand what you are referring to' = You are the customer and I am obliged to agree in situations where there is no platform to reasonably deny an issue exists.
2) 'MobileMe servers are currently located in California, USA and that is the main reason why the overall upload performance on MobileMe iDisk might not be as good in Europe as it currently is in the USA' = I will state a reason which you without technical knowledge are unlikely to be able to counter as the primary reason for your issue, knowing full well it is not. I will then use the words 'as good as'...(insert foreign location) knowing that the likelihood of you having experienced the service in that area over a long enough period of time to argue substantively to the contrary is minimal while also stating it is a 'good' service, thereby promoting it and minimizing the negative assertion of the service as a whole. FYI Dropbox, that drop in the ocean compared to Apple financially and globally, route their shares through Amazon S3 in the US and yet in Ireland their service is exponentially faster and more robust than iDisk syncing. Friends in the UK, Germany, France, Belguim, Poland, Slovakia, Norway report to me significantly better performance than iDisk, even when dealing with large shares over their paid service.
3) 'Our services are aware of this situation'= I would look like a fool to deny we are not fully aware of the poor service and stating that we are aware implies someone somewhere is doing something about it, even when I know they are not.
4) "it is definitely planned to install some of our servers in Europe in the future. I can't unfortunately provide you with a time frame but we all very much hope this will happen soon" = Use of words such as 'scheduled (insert time-frame)', 'essential upgrades', 'underway as we speak', 'required to continue operations' etc speak volumes for a matter to be taken care of. Phrases such as 'planned' 'hope' 'soon' is PR for 'when hell freezes over'.
5) "I have reported your feedback on my end" = Replace the word 'on' with 'to' and 'end' with 'bin'. It's a typical response used daily when one needs to end a dialogue and falsely placate a customer, its what CSR's do as per instructions, from 'my end'.
Having dealt with Apple Ireland's HQ's Moblieme support (if they were my team members I would have them retrained or sacked) and listened to them BS their customers trying to get themselves out of explaining why a $50bn company has no backbone (networking or otherwise) in the EU I'm afraid I'm not ok with seeing their PR responses in print when it may convince people to spend money on a service which on a continent of over 730 million people, is critically flawed and under financed.
Furthermore, and likely more importantly for many, hosting of these services outside the jurisdiction of the EU in US territory raises serious questions re privacy, legal obligations and federal snooping many in Europe would be wise to question before signing up. My country is in deep recession but we have datacentres and industrial networking infrastructure (not the home user drivel) easily capable of handling Apple's European traffic needs if it were desired. It's not for the simple reason Apple seem to want to keep user data under US federal oversight. Ireland is good enough for Google, MS and Amazon to name a tiny few to hold Euro data in Dublin, obeying European laws and respecting European customers needs, privacy and rights. Not Apple.
As a Mobileme user for the 2nd term (I have an email address many would kill for so overcharging for the 'service' is currently weighted against losing it) and a devoted Mac user/fanatic (currently 2 MBP's, 3 iPods, 1 iPhone with 2 iPad's, iPhone 3gs + 13.3" MBP to come this year alone) this MM BS is getting on my nerves. The underlying tech behind Apple's Mobileme service is flawed, its implementation worse, its motives questionable and its security potentially dangerously porous. My Me account will do 2nd level work until the service is fixed, if ever. It is not business grade as a whole. IDisk isn't even consumer grade.
Sorry to the OP is this all sounds very harsh, but that letter does not bring hope, just more PR. And Mobileme users don't need more PR they need a better service.
P.S: iDisk sync failure 12 just went down.
