Like many folks, I’ve had it up to here with Apple’s new MobileMe service, which is really the long-time .mac on anti-steroids. At this point, I use it to serve my Web site (but not this blog), and my music site, and I do have a .mac e-mail address (sorry, but the thought of a ‘me.com’ e-mail domain is untenable; I’m keeping it as .mac). Anyway, I don’t use push for contacts or calendar entries, and it seems that others feel the same way. The service is just too unreliable. After a ton of work and literally two hours on the phone with Apple last week, my contacts and calendar entries sync again pretty quickly with my iPhone via USB, and that’s fine with me (no need for the cloud, IMHO).
But now I’m having issues with sending e-mail. It just started this evening, both for me and Debbie (we both have .mac accounts). I ended up sending out my personal e-mail using my work domain, since that functioned just fine. In any case, looking at Apple’s Discussion Forums, lots of people are having the same issue. But there’s an easy fix: change the SMTP port from 25 to 587, and if one hasn’t done so already, require authentication for SMTP (which is what I use by default). That works. Of course, it’s ridiculous that this should suddenly happen on a Friday night, and that I had to find this out by combing through the Web. I kinda doubt it’s an ISP issue. I’m somewhat locked into MobileMe(ss) for now, since beside changing e-mail, it would be cumbersome to download all my iDisk files and dump them onto a dedicated domain. But it’s also very tempting (and probably much cheaper). When I’m hearing people write of Apple as “Crapple” or of MobileMe as “MobileMess,” Apple would seem to have a pretty significant PR problem that they need to address faster and better than they have with just blogging about it and offering a one-month extension of service (which amounts to just over $8 in credit—thanks very much!).
I’m starting to feel as if Apple’s banked a lot of unreliability hours, due to its general reliability over the years, and they’re spending these hours all at once since the iPhone 2.0/MobileMe debacle a few weeks ago. The good news is iPhone 2.1 is working great for me, as is OS 10.5.5. On the other hand, I have not re-enabled MobileMe push synchronization except for e-mail (and push e-mail was down for a bit a few days ago), and when I downloaded iTunes 8, it kept freezing from the get go due to some issues with processing my album art. I finally turned off the processing of art and it works well, except that the main new feature, Genius playlists, just doesn’t work with my collection.
Jeff B 11:39 am on Saturday, August 2, 2008, 11:39 am Permalink
I agree wholeheartedly, the issues Apple has had all along, even since .mac was incarnated has been laughable at best. I wouldn’t pay 99 bucks a month for this craptacular service so when my current subscription expires I will NOT be renewing, as I imagine a lot of other folks will not either. Too bad, really, since this could have been a turnaround event for Apple. No wonder they are not an enterprise level computer company, when they can’t offer a reliable email service to their customers it is just sad… Pretty computers, pretty good “it just works” analogy, but, in this instance it definitely doesn’t “just work”. However, that being said, I would rather be a mac user instead of suffer the issues with the competitor Microsoft. I will however NOT be a Apple mail user, I can find much cheaper and more competitive and much more reliable service elsewhere… Heck, even Comcast doesn’t have as many outages and issues with their email service and they are known for their crappy service. What does that say about Apple when their outages and email issues are repetitive and consistently horrible… A new meaning to the term “laughing stock of the neighborhood”???
Scott Rose 6:57 pm on Saturday, August 2, 2008, 6:57 pm Permalink
It’s actually good you’re NOT using “the cloud”, because guess what? You can’t turn on push services on the iPhone without being forced to also use your me.com email address on your iPhone! That’s right — as soon as you turn on push services on your iPhone, the iPhone AUTOMATICALLY adds the me.com email account into your iPhone’s mail program. Therefore, if you still want to exclusively use your mac.com email address on your iPhone instead of changing your email address to me.com (which many people still do), you’ll end up receiving DOUBLE INCOMING EMAIL MESSAGES on the iPhone — one email message into your mac.com email account, and one email message into your me.com email account. There is NO WAY to turn OFF the me.com email account while still receiving push services on your iPhone.
Yes, just ANOTHER major flaw in the MobileMe service… amongst dozens & dozens more that I could name.
David Toub 11:24 pm on Saturday, August 2, 2008, 11:24 pm Permalink
that’s interesting that it’s happening to you, because that’s not my experience with push e-mail via the cloud on my iPhone at all. I don’t get dupes and I use push e-mail all the time. This sounds like an individial quirk to me.
Bob Forsberg 6:28 pm on Sunday, August 3, 2008, 6:28 pm Permalink
A much greater unexplored and obvious problem has been presented with this bumbling of MobileMe.
I don’t believe Steve was in charge of this. I think it was a delegated project, lacking the Jobs double/triple check to perfection before it was released. Therein the problem!
If Steve isn’t doing it, or will not be doing it in the future for health reasons, who at Apple can get things done? Show me some depth of accomplished management before I sell all my Apple stock.
Its like a political party. Republicans were lost after Reagan left office, the same with Democrats when Bill Clinton left. Everyone before and after is defined as a wannabe with nothing to offer.