MobileMe "push" not working yet?

[Roller]

The KB article referred to above is the first evidence that I've seen that indicates that Apple was being misleading in saying that the flow of data between the iPhone, the cloud, and registered Macs would be instantaneous:

"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)."

From what I've seen, changes on the servers don't appear on my Mac immediately, and changes on my Mac take time to get sent to the servers, unless I manually sync. What I don't understand is why it shouldn't be easy to propagate local changes automatically, without any delay - any change on the Mac should initiate a sync.

The only reason I can think of is that Apple is trying to limit hits on the MobileMe servers, which would probably be overloaded by traffic if MobileMe worked as advertised. But Apple shouldn't have promised something they couldn't deliver.

MobileMe will be useful to me even if I do have to remember to sync my Macs manually every time I make a change on one of them, but Apple needs to come clean about how this works.

 

[DJS1234]

Basically for me at the moment, if I work on me.com then everything stays in sync, it pushed to the mac and iphone usually (Not always) in under a minute.

The main problem is the Mac (Can't believe Apple left the Mac as the weak link in the chain - what's the core business again!)

MobileMe services are meant to be coming to Snow Leopard server next year so they better get there act together quickly.

Some senior manager needs to go into the MobileMe office on Monday morning and kick some ass.....

 

[DJS1234]

Oh yeah and why the £$%! can't you add an alarm to a calendar appointment on me.com

So as the Mac push is useless I have to create an appointment on me.com it syncs to my Mac and iPhone and then I have to add an alarm to it on the iPhone and it syncs back to the Mac.

That's efficiency

 

[marcj]

I haven't got an iPhone yet but have a MobileMe account. Reading through the posts I've learnt not to expect instant Mac -> Cloud updates but it seems that moving an event around on me.com should reflect in iCal on my Macbook reasonably quickly...

In sys prefs it's set to sync automatically and the MobileMe checkbox is ticked in iCal, but any change on me.com takes around 15 minutes to come through to iCal and even then I get a 'Sync alert' asking whether I want to accept the changes - surely that isn't how it's meant to work?!

Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I've installed all the updates

 

[DJS1234]

You're not doing anything wrong it's just full of bugs at the moment.

Try removing and re-adding the MobileMe account from your Mac it might help.

I'll be interested to see how the gadget blogs and news sites report on MobileMe next week, I'm sure macworld will say it's wonderful but hopefully when gizmodo/engadget etc pick up on this i might put some pressure on Apple to get their act together.

I'm glad all my mail is still at gmail!

 

[JChek360]

The same is happening for me,
Whenever I update a contact or an event on mobile me, I get alerted that there are changes! Isn't this all supposed to be in the background?!?!?!

 

[marcj]

Try removing and re-adding the MobileMe account from your Mac it might help.

Thanks for the advice, but it made no difference.

My free trial expires in 18 days and I was ready to sign on the dotted line when I saw the demo at WWDC, but the experience of the last few days and the 'manual push' on the mac is putting me right off

 

[Nintenchris]

No matter what i do Moible me refuses to push emails to my iPhone and i know that everything is set up right 100% and ive tryed all the tricks

 

[d.f]

you can change this....

The same is happening for me,
Whenever I update a contact or an event on mobile me, I get alerted that there are changes! Isn't this all supposed to be in the background?!?!?!

open the iSync application, go to preferences and you can change the warning settings.

apple should have explained this. sloppy.

 

[groovmon]

I'm not understanding the gripe

Hello Everyone,

I'm trying to understand what all the false advertising claims are about. For me, everything seems to be working great. Any changes made on the iPhone or the web applications show up everywhere (even mac apps) within 20 seconds or so.

It is true that if I make changes in the mac native apps, I have to hit sync (two button clicks). Them bam, everything is pushed to my other mac, the iPhone and the web apps.

Am I missing something, or are we going crazy because we have to hit sync after making changes in iCal or Address Book? This seems to be a vast improvement over .mac to me.

 

[jdtute]

wifi push not working

why wont it push on wifi, it just wont push when i have a wifi only connection, HELP PLEASE

 

[marcj]

open the iSync application, go to preferences and you can change the warning settings.

apple should have explained this. sloppy.

Thank you, I should have thought of that.

Not going to change the setting though. I use iSync with my non-iPhone phones and as they're not part of the cloud, they don't always have the latest version of everything. I want to know when my possibly out-of-date phone is going to change something on my mac.

MobileMe is a very different concept and I really don't think implementing it through the current version of iSync (Sync Services) is the way to do it. The impression I get (and I could be very wrong) is that Sync Services needs an overhaul to deal effectively with the cloud model but Apple went for the lazy option of treating the MobileMe cloud like it's just another device

 

[Roller]

Hello Everyone,

I'm trying to understand what all the false advertising claims are about. For me, everything seems to be working great. Any changes made on the iPhone or the web applications show up everywhere (even mac apps) within 20 seconds or so.

It is true that if I make changes in the mac native apps, I have to hit sync (two button clicks). Them bam, everything is pushed to my other mac, the iPhone and the web apps.

Am I missing something, or are we going crazy because we have to hit sync after making changes in iCal or Address Book? This seems to be a vast improvement over .mac to me.

You're right that having to hit sync manually to make sure that my desktop apps send or receive changes shouldn't be a big deal. But that's not the way that Apple said it would work. The point is that Apple advertised that changes at any point in the chain - the Web, a portable device, or a computer - would be propagated everywhere else automatically.

This can be a problem even if I'm the only one using my MM account. If I add an appointment to my iCal calendar on my office Mac, for example, I don't want to have to remember to manually sync to ensure that the appointment also appears on my iPhone. And, if I have my secretary add an appointment my calendar via Outlook, I want to make sure that I see it on my Mac(s) and iPhone without waiting 15 minutes.

 

[Roller]

why wont it push on wifi, it just wont push when i have a wifi only connection, HELP PLEASE

Can you be more specific about what isn't working? Push on my iPhone via Wi-Fi works properly.

 

[*GG*]

It's intermittent for me. Sometimes it pushes to my phone before it arrives on my iMac - but other times it doesn't show up on my phone at all.

At the moment it isn't working - it was half an hour a go. I reckon they are still trying to get it up and running properly.

Any word as to when the service will be up and running fully or are we days away from that still?

 

[groovmon]

You're right that having to hit sync manually to make sure that my desktop apps send or receive changes shouldn't be a big deal. But that's not the way that Apple said it would work. The point is that Apple advertised that changes at any point in the chain - the Web, a portable device, or a computer - would be propagated everywhere else automatically.

This can be a problem even if I'm the only one using my MM account. If I add an appointment to my iCal calendar on my office Mac, for example, I don't want to have to remember to manually sync to ensure that the appointment also appears on my iPhone. And, if I have my secretary add an appointment my calendar via Outlook, I want to make sure that I see it on my Mac(s) and iPhone without waiting an hour.

Well, you make an interesting point. However, you don't have to hit sync to "receive" changes. That happens automatically... just when you make changes in iCal or Address Book. If you don't want to have to remember to hit sync, well, ok, it'll take 15 minutes. But I'm still not sure I've seen anything where Apple said iCal or Address Book wouldn't have to be synced before propagating information through the rest of the chain. I admit they didn't make that point clear, and they should have. However, it does still push to everything else after you hit sync, right? Now as far as Outlook goes, I don't know about that - don't have a PC. It does seem cool to me though that your sec could put a change in Outlook, hit sync, and bam, it's on your iPhone, your MM web apps and your iCal, instantly.

BTW - who's waiting an hour for anything? Isn't the most you'd ever have to wait, even if you don't want to remember to hit sync, 15 minutes?

 

[terryblyth]

I think my main issue isn't so much the teething troubles they've had rolling this out. I'd expect something this large to have a few problems.

But at least officially say "it's not working"! According to the status updates on the MobileMe page, the parts of the service that deal with push are working as expected. In which case, people are quite entitled to assume that the problem is at their end.

Ironically, I just tried logging on to get the exact wording, but it won't let me currently.

 

[eff pc]

i've basically had the same problems this whole time...(when i say calender contacts works exactly the same) when i add a calender event to me.com it pushed to my iphone 2G instantly (like 3 seconds if that) however i am currently timing how long it takes to get my mac and its still not there and it's been over 5 minutes (unexceptable since this is a PAID service that advertises instant syncs). Some of you are saying any changes via other devices update to the mac instantly well mine is NOT. Nothing pushes to my mac instantly no matter what device im on. if i make a calender event on my iphone it pushes to me.com right away (takes a little longer if im deleting an event but still under a minute). So i think the real problem with my set up is the mac side of things. everything else works great including email (which mail works alright because its not said to push i have it on the one minute setting which is pretty quick).

another thing that has never worked is the mail section of me.com it just infinitely load and after a while it freezes and i cant go back to calender or contacts with out closing the window and going back in

 

[mowogg]

Auto Sync

Just in case it has nor already been made clear, you need to have Sync set to automatic in the system preferences to get the instant changes to/from your Mac. I had mine set to update weekly and was frustrated that my online calendar didn't show a change I made in iCal. It's all working fine now. Renewal saved Apple!

 

[soLoredd]

Just in case it has nor already been made clear, you need to have Sync set to automatic in the system preferences to get the instant changes to/from your Mac. I had mine set to update weekly and was frustrated that my online calendar didn't show a change I made in iCal. It's all working fine now. Renewal saved Apple!

Um, I'm willing to be a majority of us have that set to automatic. And we still don't get "instant" changes.

As I said before, nothing has been changed in the local apps (on your Mac) to tell it to push, or instantly sync. The only app that has a setting is Mail, and the best we can do is 1 minute polling. To think otherwise is crazy! I need to see with my own eyes an event set in iCal go to the cloud instantly. And vice versa. Until then, I don't believe it due to the amount of people having the same issue.

And yes, WiFi does not push to iPhone. Try putting your iPhone in Airplane Mode and only connecting using WiFi. Nothing will be pushed from the cloud.

 

[Nintenchris]

Ok so, push email wasnt working
not a single email was pushed to my iPhone last night or today after setting up an account late yesterday
i go out and all of a sudden im starting to get emails pushed!
first i thought its because it wasnt pushing over wifi but its been pushing since i got home too!

 

[eff pc]

And yes, WiFi does not push to iPhone. Try putting your iPhone in Airplane Mode and only connecting using WiFi. Nothing will be pushed from the cloud.

i just tested this and yeah wifi doesnt push however as soon as i took it out of airplane mode after it searched the signal (which i have full service at my house so it went quick) the email pushed to my phone so im hopeing this means that if you dont have service (like at my job) when you go into an area that has service all the emails that have been sent get pushed to your phone. wont kno this until tomorrow ill let you all know how it goes

 

[bengle3rt]

How can push not work over wifi? It's all the iPod touch has, I hope the persistent TCP connection being used for these pushes is pipe-agnostic (isn't that the point of TCP?)

 

[Flightmaster]

Semi-scientific guesses...

So, I've been trying to make this work since yesterday with 3 mac and 1 iPhone clients. I do suspect that, in fact, the push works as advertised. I'm uncertain about he 15min mac-->me facts, as I've had client behavior that acted like push (i.e it worked as advertised, but only in the few hours after launch, and only with the first (of three) client, me, iphone combos).

I suspect that true push does lie under the hood, but that a "failsafe sync" is launched every 15 (possibly to clear some caches). That failsafe is now acting (poorly, I must add) as a lifeboat to any mac-Me communication at all.

I've been on this for almost 20 hours now, and I can attest to this:

The sync service from mac <--> me, is grossly inconsistent, dysfunctional, and frankly, at this time does not really work at all (push or sync.) Even at this moment there are server-side crashes every other minute or so.

Work is happening, however. For example, the "payment account" information tab appeared in Me a few hours ago.

So, my (semi-educated-trial-by-error) guesses are the following:

a) Mobileme is still not ready. There are probably several dozen people working frantically on restoring the intended functionality right now (in fact, I'd guess that code teams gave been working 24/7 since the original release date.)

b) The mobile-me teams are triaging, and they have been told "iPhone first", "Mac" second (and who can blame them for that, I certainly don't - given the other issues that iPhone owners have experienced over the last few days). This is just a reality of triage: move quickly to assert the greatest pain-point. Stabilize this until moving on to other wounds.

c) Things will improve, with Push across the board coming. Patches for the apps, and/or even a 10.5.5 update may be required, in case Apple has discovered that these are not just server-side problems.

I'm frustrated that Apple is letting me guess at this, and wasting my time by letting me chase in the dark. It would be nice to have some more info (hello Cupertino???.)

If there is not a fix for this by next weekend, or at least detailed information from Apple, then I'll be pretty disgusted. For now, I can at least understand and accept that a meltdown occured and that "top-men" are on it.

cP

 

[DJS1234]

How can push not work over wifi? It's all the iPod touch has, I hope the persistent TCP connection being used for these pushes is pipe-agnostic (isn't that the point of TCP?)

that's a good point, I always assumed the iPhone turned off 3G/Edge when it had a wifi signal but obviously not. As I've said in the thread, perhaps some firewall allowances have to be made for the sync protocol to go through them.