My MobileMe thoughts....(rant)

[captain kaos]

As i never had a .mac account this push/MM was something i wanted to have when i finally went to an iphone.

For the first month or so it worked fine and hearing about the 1% of people that had problems i thought i was doing ok and it would all be sorted out. Recently this has gone wrong. Today my emails arrive at my phone, it tells me i have new mail but when you go to you inbox it wont appear. So i accessed it via my work PC and its all there, so a slight problem but easy keep up to date with emails only if you have a PC/MAC internet access.

So the issues with MM are still there. I find it hard to understand that a company as big as Apple, with all its resources still cant sort this out, i mean we're now looking at nearly 2 months since its release!

Since day 1 the web interface for MM has been very slow, its crashes Safari when you go back to the MM page and is generally very annoying to use. It still is.

My biggest problem is the way that Apple has locked down MM. You have to have Safari or Firefox to access your email, which obviously isn't a problem if you can download and install it, but what if you're at work and you don't have administrator privileges to download? or if you're in a internet cafe? This has now made what was an open system (check from any web browser) to an enclosed "you have to use our products" situation. This is not the Apple of old and has made "email anywhere" to email "only if you have an iphone or the right browser".

What is Apple playing at? They are alienating people with their new company ethos and it will lose them valued and dedicated customers very quickly. This is what chasing the $'s does. Yes they make nice (if not expensive) bits of kit and yes the other option is not a pretty one, but if you force peoples hands they will leave. They really need to stop punting out new versions of equipment every 160 days and sort out what they already have. Its fine to give everyone 60 free of MM access, but if you cant access it, its slow, it crashes and doesn't push your mail what is the use of it??

Rant over.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

As i never had a .mac account this push/MM was something i wanted to have when i finally went to an iphone.

For the first month or so it worked fine and hearing about the 1% of people that had problems i thought i was doing ok and it would all be sorted out. Recently this has gone wrong. Today my emails arrive at my phone, it tells me i have new mail but when you go to you inbox it wont appear. So i accessed it via my work PC and its all there, so a slight problem but easy keep up to date with emails only if you have a PC/MAC internet access.

So the issues with MM are still there. I find it hard to understand that a company as big as Apple, with all its resources still cant sort this out, i mean we're now looking at nearly 2 months since its release!

Since day 1 the web interface for MM has been very slow, its crashes Safari when you go back to the MM page and is generally very annoying to use. It still is.

My biggest problem is the way that Apple has locked down MM. You have to have Safari or Firefox to access your email, which obviously isn't a problem if you can download and install it, but what if you're at work and you don't have administrator privileges to download? or if you're in a internet cafe? This has now made what was an open system (check from any web browser) to an enclosed "you have to use our products" situation. This is not the Apple of old and has made "email anywhere" to email "only if you have an iphone or the right browser".

What is Apple playing at? They are alienating people with their new company ethos and it will lose them valued and dedicated customers very quickly. This is what chasing the $'s does. Yes they make nice (if not expensive) bits of kit and yes the other option is not a pretty one, but if you force peoples hands they will leave. They really need to stop punting out new versions of equipment every 160 days and sort out what they already have. Its fine to give everyone 60 free of MM access, but if you cant access it, its slow, it crashes and doesn't push your mail what is the use of it??

Rant over.

I agree that the service should be accessible from IE7, in addition to Safari and Firefox (even though I don't ever see it being a problem for me, individually), but I'd much rather them be slow about fixing all the minor issues with MobileMe than stop updating their hardware every few months.

 

[captain kaos]

You would rather the software slow to being updated so you can spend your well earned money on new kit thats "meant" to do a slightly better job then the last one every couple of months??

Strange.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

You would rather the software slow to being updated so you can spend your well earned money on new kit thats "meant" to do a slightly better job then the last one every couple of months??

Strange.

MobileMe works very well (for me and thousands of others, at least) on my Macs and my iPhone. If they are slow about porting it to IE because they have resources allocated elsewhere, that is fine with me.

And I don't buy new kit every couple of months, but I like knowing that when I am ready to buy a new machine, I can buy one that has been updated with the latest and greatest technology (for the most part). That is worth a lot more to me than MobileMe access on Internet Explorer, which, not so ironically, you can't even get on a Mac.

 

[captain kaos]

For the record i have a mac, with safari so i have no need to ever go near IE. Im just saying certain problems with there software should be dealt with and Apple has been a bit slack with this whole MM business.

 

[danny_w]

I have a Mac too, both at home and at work, but I don't carry them with me everywhere I go. If I end up on a trip and must use a hotel's or internet cafe's computer that cannot access my mail, I would be more than upset. I have already given up on MobileMe and gone with other solutions that actually work and are accessible from everywhere. I had only been with .mac for a year, so thankfully I wasn't as bad off as many people who had been with it for many years and find it very difficult to leave.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

I have a Mac too, both at home and at work, but I don't carry them with me everywhere I go. If I end up on a trip and must use a hotel's or internet cafe's computer that cannot access my mail, I would be more than upset. I have already given up on MobileMe and gone with other solutions that actually work and are accessible from everywhere. I had only been with .mac for a year, so thankfully I wasn't as bad off as many people who had been with it for many years and find it very difficult to leave.

I'm sure that as soon as Microsoft makes a version of Internet Explorer for the Mac, Apple will make MobileMe work with it.

 

[Macsterguy]

We are all aware of the problems...

We are all aware of the problems... It has even been on the nightly news.

Welcome to mobileme... Apple has promised the service will be something they can be proud of by the end of the year...

They have given 90-days of free service and promise everything will be fixed in 120 days... hmmm

Mine has been working, although glitchy...

Until Decenmber, use it with a grain of salt

 

[netdog]

Am I the only one who has had a great experience with MobileMe? (as I did with .Mac)

 

[koopa35]

i understand with the op is talkin about. i feel the same way. i found this site wich i will use once its fully up.. http://www.nuevasync.com/ u can use with gmail. i want to use mobileme but its to much money when u can almost get the same for free. i think they need to offer a free mobileme package but with only 5gb of space.

 

[Scooterman1]

I've been fairly quiet on the MobileMe since I'm on a Trial membership. Not over impressed with it with all the troubles and me losing 3 days Mail.... but I'll hold my verdict.
However, from what I'm reading on here, they are not holding the quality with the excellent hardware either. Look at the Video Card Problems, and the iPhone chip problems, just to name a couple. MS has their problems, but so does Apple. It's not a perfect world.

 

[danny_w]

i understand with the op is talkin about. i feel the same way. i found this site wich i will use once its fully up.. http://www.nuevasync.com/ u can use with gmail. i want to use mobileme but its to much money when u can almost get the same for free. i think they need to offer a free mobileme package but with only 5gb of space.

Unfortunately this seems to only sync to your iPhone or iPod, not your computers, so it seems like only a partial solution. Or am I missing something (quite possible, since they seem to hide all of the details behind a login)?

 

[captain kaos]

I know things are meant to be getting better, but my major worry is the quote the Apple guy gave (i cant remember his name, it was on MR around the 2nd gen release when he was spotted buying an iphone for his son.....!)

Anyway he said Apple had a long list of things to slowly work through and they could only get to a certain point on that list before the the whole ver 2, 3G release, things such as copy and paste just didnt make it in time. So they have this list to work through and now a whole new list of problems comes along (MM, 3g connectivity issues, security issues, etc, etc). How will they get through it all? It is a big company, but not like MS that would just go out and hire 200 new people to sort it (im not a fan of the dark side, but they do have a lot of cash to chuck at things).

Way before july i thought it would be to much to release it all in one go, but they pushed ahead anyway. Yes somethings like the App store were needed as the v2 without it would have been a mess, but somethings could and should have been delayed. MM for one. I would like to think it will be sorted soon, but im not holding my breath....even today i still had issues with the phone receiving an email, i went to the inbox but it wouldn't appear, and you could see the phone checking back to the server, no errors, it just didnt appear. In the end i did what now seems to be a bi-daily thing of deleting the account and starting again.

 

[aaronblack]

I agree with you...

check out my rant here on this forum:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/553819/

 

[spicoli]

Unfortunately this seems to only sync to your iPhone or iPod, not your computers, so it seems like only a partial solution. Or am I missing something (quite possible, since they seem to hide all of the details behind a login)?

I am using nuevasync to grab my google calendar for my iPhone. I use googlecalendarsync to ...sync my work outlook with google. I subscribe to google calendar in iCal. It is all working perfectly (for me). Calendar entries entered on any platform (mac, iPhone, Outlook) gets synced (sometimes about 15min later). This is exactly what I wanted, to be able to see and update my calendar anywere and everywhere. MobileMe has left me stranded with nothing....except for waiting for Apple to fix it. Nuevasync doesn't do contacts (yet), but a contact update can wait, I need calendars now.

 

[Let's Sekuhara!]

I'm sure that as soon as Microsoft makes a version of Internet Explorer for the Mac, Apple will make MobileMe work with it.

Microsoft did, many years ago. Nobody liked it. It was discontinued.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Microsoft did, many years ago. Nobody liked it. It was discontinued.

It was also the default browser included on every Mac. That doesn't mean it was a good product, but it does mean that MS made a choice at a certain point to stop supporting the Mac OS because they didn't feel like it was worth the effort.

Obviously Apple feels the same way about Windows, at least when it comes to IE. It's not a good program and it's not worth their effort to make their web suite work on it. They've got more important projects ahead of them (like improving the software for their most important customers: Mac owners; the ones who buy more than one product). If it also helps them get more people to download Safari for Windows, I'm sure they are all the happier.

 

[Techguy172]

Am I the only one who has had a great experience with MobileMe? (as I did with .Mac)

No Mine works great, I had .Mac before and it works really well for me. It seems it's mostly the people who didn't upgrade that are having issues.

 

[danny_w]

It was also the default browser included on every Mac. That doesn't mean it was a good product, but it does mean that MS made a choice at a certain point to stop supporting the Mac OS because they didn't feel like it was worth the effort.

Obviously Apple feels the same way about Windows, at least when it comes to IE. It's not a good program and it's not worth their effort to make their web suite work on it. They've got more important projects ahead of them (like improving the software for their most important customers: Mac owners; the ones who buy more than one product). If it also helps them get more people to download Safari for Windows, I'm sure they are all the happier.

The problem is that Apple is locking themselves out of a very large portion of the marketplace by so doing. And (contrary to what you state) they are also doing many of their own customers a disservice, because many of their own customers must work with Windows every day at work, and many of those have no alternative but to use IE (most often IE6). And what about all of those people that need to travel and don't have their Mac with them? How do they access MM from their hotel or internet cafe? I don't like IE either, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is the vast majority of the market.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

The problem is that Apple is locking themselves out of a very large portion of the marketplace by so doing. And (contrary to what you state) they are also doing many of their own customers a disservice, because many of their own customers must work with Windows every day at work, and many of those have no alternative but to use IE (most often IE6). And what about all of those people that need to travel and don't have their Mac with them? How do they access MM from their hotel or internet cafe? I don't like IE either, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is the vast majority of the market.

As long as they are gaining market share at such a rapid pace, I fail to see why they would devote resources to making the service work with IE7 (let alone IE6) when there are other, more pressing issues with the service on their own platform.

If they start losing money because of this, you can be assured IE compatibility will appear in no time.

 

[danny_w]

As long as they are gaining market share at such a rapid pace, I fail to see why they would devote resources to making the service work with IE7 (let alone IE6) when there are other, more pressing issues with the service on their own platform.

If they start losing money because of this, you can be assured IE compatibility will appear in no time.

Unfortunately that may not be possible because of their choice of SproutCore as the basis of the web apps (which IMHO is a really stupid move by Apple). Why would they choose an alpha/beta level product as the basis for such a high visibility product? You just don't do that sort of thing in the business world. MobileMe has already proven to be one of the worst disasters in Apple history, and the news sites are not letting up anytime soon. They made a mistake (several in fact) and now they are paying for it. The lack of IE support is just one small part of that, but it is a very visible part that the news sites find very easy to pick on.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Unfortunately that may not be possible because of their choice of SproutCore as the basis of the web apps (which IMHO is a really stupid move by Apple). Why would they choose an alpha/beta level product as the basis for such a high visibility product? You just don't do that sort of thing in the business world. MobileMe has already proven to be one of the worst disasters in Apple history, and the news sites are not letting up anytime soon. They made a mistake (several in fact) and now they are paying for it. The lack of IE support is just one small part of that, but it is a very visible part that the news sites find very easy to pick on.

So it's Sproutcore's javascript that makes it incompatible with IE7?

 

[danny_w]

So it's Sproutcore's javascript that makes it incompatible with IE7?

According to the SproutCore website and blogs they "broke" IE6/IE7 support a while back. They have partial IE7 support restored, and plan full IE7 support to be restore sometime in the future, but don't ever plan on restoring IE6 support (at least that is their stance at the moment, but they have received many requests for it, so we will see).

 

[XboxEvolved]

First off, IE being part of Mac was part of a deal Apple made back in 1997 with Microsoft, and the deal basically said that IE would be the browser for Mac OS for a 5 year period. It is possible for most anything to work with IE, because IE uses technology that "assumes" when HTML, Java, etc isn't properly implemented or it will do its best to do it.

What I don't understand is why it's so expensive. Microsoft, RIM, and many other companies offer similar services that cost less and in many instances work better. I think if they offered it for about $50 a year it would be great, but until then I'm not sure about it, as I've heard it has to many problems, and not only that Apple intentionally deceived people by false advertising when it was first released.

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Apple intentionally deceived people by false advertising when it was first released.

In what way?