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Apple Mans Up To MobileMe MessApple Mans Up To MobileMe Mess
Will MobileMe mail users be mollified by Apple's just-updated status page, which gives a progress report on how the Mac maker is recovering from the meltdown? Mmmm. Judging by the comments I received in response to my post last week, <a href="http://www.information.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/whats_behind_ap.html">What's Behind Apple's MobileMe Meltdown</a>, I wouldn't bet the iPod Touch on it.
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Will MobileMe mail users be mollified by Apple's just-updated status page, which gives a progress report on how the Mac maker is recovering from the meltdown? Mmmm. Judging by the comments I received in response to my post last week, What's Behind Apple's MobileMe Meltdown, I wouldn't bet the iPod Touch on it.First, the new Apple status page. The latest entry (there are only two), posted Sunday night, essentially says that only 1% of MobileMe users are still having problems. (They way Apple puts it is: "As you know, restoring full email access to the remaining 1% of MobileMe users is our first priority.") Apple says that these folks can be fully restored in the next few days.
This is in keeping with Apple's original status post of July 25, which said that only 1% of MobileMe users were affected in the first place. Pity for Apple that its customers expect Apple to be perfect, because judging from my e-mails, that 1% are a noisy bunch (and there are a lot of them!). Here are a few I've received (as well as some of the comments drawn from my previous post).
Here's one that blasted both Apple and me:
"I was insulted by the tone of your mac outage story which seemed to be that Mac geeks and bandwagonners would have to wait to play with their new toys. … I am an attorney, writer, former news anchor and union actor who, three and a half years ago, converted from my decade-long hotmail account to mac.com. Friday morning July 18, 2008 sometime around 9:37 a.m., without warning, it stopped.
I began getting calls from people who were trying to send me e-mails. I spent all weekend on the phone with Apple. I even posted on message boards for the first time in my life. My lifeline was cut five full days ago, and Apple could not care less. Each business day I talk to people at Apple who insist they will pass on my problem, but that they have no idea how to fix it or when it will end. I don't have an iphone. I was leaning toward getting one, but now will not. ... I will never buy another Apple product again. "
And this:
"I was not able to access my email for days and thereafter for periods of time. It is obvious to me, Jobs was pushing a new product without sufficient time to guarantee a good product. I think he was trying to generate money with the Mobile Me since the Mac.com never took off.."
This:
"Nothing like having a sense of being HEARD, which is not the case with reaching out to Apple/MobileMe support. Just made the big switch from the PC world to the MAC world last year, bought an iPhone to replace my Palm Treo, and purchased an iMac to replace my old Dell ... so this is obviously disappointing. I'll more than likely NOT be renewing my mac-now-me, account after being a paying customer for four years, and just stick with gmail. Sad, but true. "
And this:
"As an old time .mac user I've been without access to email since the 14th, but, at least today when I went to the mobileme website the mail webpage indicated that there was a problem with email. Before today the webmail page always came up blank. Apple has lost at least one customer with their total lack of response and support during this upgrade.
I might also add that I just sync'd my calendar to MobileMe and it turns out my MobileMe account was set to the wrong timezone. So I set the timezone and then did a new over-write sync from my Mac. My MobileMe calendar is now unreachable. I get an error page trying to access it."
One can't necessarily judge the pervasiveness of a problem from negative comments, because people with a gripe are more likely to write than someone who's satisfied. So on the fair-and-balanced front, I received this:
"Everything worked flawless for me. If more folks like me, knowing that the 3G intro would stress the system had waited a few days to login, they would have given the new iPhone owners a chance and avoided headaches. My dotmail was never interrupted."
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