Walt Mossberg, who often borders on fanboy in his reviews on Apple's products, gave a dreaded thumbs down to Apple's MobileMe service. MobileMe, which has had un-Apple-like hiccups and false starts has put a dent in Apple's brand veneer. Honestly, we'd like to see Apple get some help from Google in this area....it obviously isn't Apple's stong point.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Comments
He's right
The Moss is right. I have experienced EVERY one of the things he touched on in that video. When it works, it works GREAT. The problem is, it DOESN'T always work.
MobileMe stinks!
I was hoping it would sync my Mac email and bookmarks the way an iPhone or iPod Touch would. Sadly, it is very disappointing and the advertising is EXTREMELY misleading as to it's capabilities. Also, the tech support is lousy, you cannot talk to a live person, you have to wait at least 30 min. Arghhhhh! Very frustrating and disappointing! Oh, and you cannot delete your account if you are unhappy and do cancel your account.
Oh NO they don't!
Whoa, they BETTER let me cancel! I'm on the 60-day trial (which they recently added another 30 days to), and I will NOT pay for this service if it doesn't work as advertised.
If they even THINK about going the old "AOL route" and attempt to make it as difficult as possible for people to cancel their MobileMe accounts near the end of their trial periods, you're gonna hear a horrendously loud backlash against Apple like you've never heard before. That'll just be another black eye on Apple's already beaten-to-a-pulp face.
Come on, this is Apple. They're ABOVE this kind of thing, aren't they?
Way to misunderstand something!
Wow. I think you misread the post above you.
'You cannot delete your account if you are unhappy and do cancel your account' simply means that if you chose the account name 'elvis.presley@me.com', and you cancel... 'elvis.presley@me.com' is forever on the apple servers and cannot be deleted. You can't log into this account anymore, everything on the account is deleted, and you are not charged for it. It's just that the name 'elvis.presley@me.com' is taken up forever on apple's servers.
I have not experienced any of
I have not experienced any of these problems ! The service had some hiccups first couple of days .. but afterward everything working well.
Having a 1% of people without service is bad for sure, but these things happen. I know I would be pissed, but does not mean that the service to everyone else sucks !
Yes it DOES suck!
I've been a Dot Mac subscriber for 5 years and just renewed with a MobileMe Family Pack for $150 expecting the best Apple experience and they did not deliver. So yes, even for the 1% (which is still alot) who have experienced these "hiccups", it's a service that sucks! But I'm still happy that you were unaffected.
Sorry Walt I disagree
I have to profusely disagree with Mr Mossberg, which is not something I normally do. Apple didn't ever truly advertise that things would PC from your Mac to Mobile, but only the other way round.
If you need something to sync quicker than 15 mins, then click the sync now button on the toolbar, its not hard. If you need a calendar event to updated to somebody quicker than 15 minutes then I suggest a phone call would suffice, as the iPhone can make and receive calls as well, I also suggest that if a meeting time was changed, not everybody would check their phone every 15 minutes to check for an updated time for a meeting or event.
I understand that people get annoyed with a service when they have paid for it and feel like they are getting nowhere, just look at Windoze.
I have subscribed to .Mac and now MobileMe for just over 5 months, and I absolutely love it, I have never had any issues with the service or web apps.
1% of the user base may be quite a large amount for this service, but that still means there are 99% of users who are experiencing NO problems. Sorry Walt but just because you had problems doesn't mean that it is a bad product or service.
I don't think you understand
I don't think you understand the real world problems. Push and sync are different. I have three computers and an iphone. They were all set up at different times in my life and I added contacts, bookmarks, etc. to each one individually over the past two years. I basically had three different contact lists, calendars, bookmarks...
What a life saver and great product in MobileMe to get all my information to be identical. I knew I would have to merge all the data and then carefully go through and delete what I didn't need. I did that.
However, now when I make a change to a contact on my laptop, whatever computer syncs first within 15 minutes pops up with a dialogue box and asks if I want want to make those changes to my contacts! Should I drive all over town to accept every change on every computer every time I make a change. That is sync --- NOT PUSH.
Not to mention that mobile cannot figure out what calendars I want to keep. It keeps adding ones I delete and if it gets really confused it tells me to go to MobileMe online and refresh the calendars for which no function exists.
This product is far from prime time. Walt was right.
DAMN Walt, talk about
DAMN Walt, talk about droppin' the hammer! Apple's gonna have to respond to this fast, because we all know, Walt's got it like that.
I have had no problems
I guess I am lucky then! I have been a .mac payer for over 5 years and mobileme has been perfect. push email, updated sintantly on the calendar and contacts and the 'pink' idisk icon on my mac desktop. I have actually stopped using my mail.app desktop app now and just using the web interface when I am not on my iPhone. Hey guys, it's only week 2 of mobileme, give it another couple of bug fixes and everything will be alright, else spend the $$$ and go and buy exchange. For me, it's all that it said it would do, it has done!
MobileMe is a True Indicator
MobileMe's horrifying cut over and subsequent flat delivery are a direct indicator why Apple will never make it as a foundational technology in an enterprise-level customer. The company's products are not engineered to allow for the scale and availability required to do the heavy lifting on what the product claims to provide.
I don't care if the OS is based on BSD and the interface is the best in the world. If the overall architecture can't work at the CORE of a datacenter, everybody should deflate their misguided beliefs the company (Apple) can walk on water and expect to only see iPhones and iPods for a long time.
I love their stuff, but only see it really succeeding in homes and college dorms.
Mossberg is wrong. I have
Mossberg is wrong. I have been a .Mac member for years (3, 4...don't remember). All the syncing stuff works great. I have my bookmarks between 3 computers (2 macs and a PC) and my iPhone perfectly synced. I have my calendars synced. I have my contacts synced. Works fine.
It works
I dont know,
it seems to me there are a lot of peple getting a rush , when something apple develops doenst work right away.
i am using .me and i does everything they advertised.
i have an imac and a macbook perfectly synced
Dropped the ball on QA testing...
I may be kicking myself for buying the family pack. I "assumed" that I would be able to have a "family" calendar - allowing me and my wife to have a common calender on our iPhones and web interface associated with each of our @me.com email addresses. That is the functionality I feel most people who have hectic schedules, would want on their iPhone. Instead, my wife has to log into MY mobileme account and add her calendar items. Additionally, if we try to have 2 mobileme accounts on her phone (her account with her mail and contacts and my account just with the calendar, that doesn't work!) That's a pain.
I'm a newbie to Apple and have been a PC user for years, so this has not been the best experience for me. Based on past history, though, it does appear that Apple listens to their customers, and I know that I'm not the only one who wants this functionality.
In regard to Walt's comments - I don't think he's too far off the mark. Although I didn't experience all these symtops, I have experience many of them. The last thing I need in my life is for my mail, calendar, and contacts to be screwed up - they are the lifeblood of my business.
Where I think Apple dropped the ball on all of this was with QA testing. I feel that there was such a mad rush and (self-imposed) pressure to launch the iPhone, 2.0 software, and MobileMe all on the same day that this product was rushed to market.
I do have faith in Apple, though, and I'm making the complete switch away from PC later this year (though I will still need to run XP through Parallels due to some PC-specific software, and I'm also not going to drop another $1800 on the Mac version of Adobe Creative Suite either). In time these issues will be ironed out - the problem is Apple should have ironed them out before they released it.