Gizmodo: dotmac

Apple Admits MobileMe Snags, Gives Free 30-Day Extension

Kit Eaton — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:34:20 EDT

Apple's MobileMe service hit so many snags during its launch period that Apple have just issued an email apology to members. Saying "The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was a lot rockier than we had hoped," Apple's apologizing with a 30-day membership extension for free to anyone who was a .Mac member with an active account as of July 9, 2008 and new MobileMe members who created accounts on or before July 15, 7:00 PM PDT. Details can be found on the Apple support page here. The email also apologizes for the controversy over the speediness of "push" services, and says that Apple's not using the term until it really is "near-instant on PCs and Macs, too."

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

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
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.

Thank you,
The MobileMe Team

[Apple]

MobileMe Website is Up, One Day of Awkwardness Late

Kit Eaton — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:31:00 EDT

So we showed it to you briefly yesterday, but then MobileMe turned around and seemed to bite the Apple that made it, and has been unavailable until just now. Can we assume more technical hitches than its developers had anticipated? Yes, I think we can, particularly given Apple's "it's taking longer than expected" error message. But now it's up, and since the iPhone has already been on sale in some places for nearly a whole day, that can only be good news. Update: There's a getting started tour, which didn't appear to be there yesterday. Everything else works as anticipated. [Me.com]

MobileMe Is Up!

Wilson Rothman — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:03:46 EDT

Apple's MobileMe, the bigger/better/more version of .Mac, just went live, sort of. We logged in and poked around, but then the site went dead and the server started redirecting us back to the old "coming soon" page. Here's what we saw before things went away:

As promised, all of the .Mac galleries are there, now capable of editing online as well as from iPhoto, with everything synced happily:

Calendar was automatically synced too:

The look and feel were exactly like the video in the "coming soon" page, you could click on Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, iDisk and a Users account-manager tab. Mail didn't work for me at all, and the server denied me by the time I hit iDisk, but all the stuff in the middle was working fine. Stay tuned for more. [MobileMe]

.Mac Down For MobileMe Transition

Jason Chen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:25:04 EDT

It's official. .Mac is down for the MobileMe transition as of about 9ish Pacific time. It's a little more than an hour past the start of the 8PM-2AM window, so things should be on target for coming back up before 2AM. Our only question at this point is why those four languages are the only ones on the .Mac maintenance site? Are they the four largest .Mac countries? Is someone at Apple a huge WW2 buff? [Mac]