MobileMe Meltdown
Monday, July 28th, 2008
John Markoff reports on the MobileMe meltdown at Apple.
Dang, I’m glad I’ve avoided this part of Apple. I remember when they came out with their AOL competitor, eWorld. It was also a dog in that it was overly graphical to the point of breaking under its own weight. Apple gets a lot right but in my opinion they have not gotten their online products right yet. MobileMe has a long way to go to be reliable and stable.
My .Mac acct is up for renewal in August. Through MobileMe I am completely unable to update my credit card info. I’ve tried for several weeks without success. The Apple support forums show that a lot of others are having the same problem.
Andrew, I’m sorry this is happening to folks. I had mixed feelings about blogging it at all as I feel very bad for Apple but it seems they really bit of more than they could chew here. Good luck with it, do let us know what happens. Feel free to comment here as you find out more.
It’s sort of working for me - but I will be seriously considering dropping it when renewal comes round again. There are too many other services which are better.
Yes, mobileme is convenient, but they are all ok, not brilliant - when you look at different providers of services, some are brilliant. Big difference.
Jon: The concept behind MobileMe is great and Apple should have had it working years ago. I’ve always thought that they should have offered a service like this for free with the purchase of any Mac but I had that thought in the days before it was considered smart to get numbers first, monetize later. Apple just did not get that early on and I’m not quite sure they get it yet. This is why I’ve stayed away from their various online services over the years. Oh well, I guess they can’t get everything right.
I’ve been very lucky, to have not really had any problems. Although I’m not a heavy power user, just get a lot of email. One thing that annoys me is being unable to invite contacts to an event through the web or the iPhone, only via iCal. This seems just stupid to me.
Our renewal is up in September and I’m debated about renewing it. We do a family plan shared with my in-laws. But doing any kind of account management with .Mac/MobileMe is a nightmare.
While I was typing this came across Twitter. Free Alternatives to MobileMe.
http://productivetech.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/free-alternatives-to-mobileme/
I followed John’s link to NuevaSync and lo and behold, they’re melting down too from overload. Oh well.
I have to say that they tried VERY hard to sell me this when I bought my iPhone - for me it was unnecessary as I am already entrenched in other web apps. But I am glad I didn’t do it - it almost seems like too much of a headache. And honestly web apps work great on the iPhone and most of them have a mobile version. Love Apple as I do - maybe they should shy away from online services and stick to what they’re really good at….
Caitlin, I agree, they’ve never gotten an online service right yet. But, the least they could have done is put a “beta” stamp on this service so expectations would have been lowered.