Apple: “We still have no idea why MobileMe isn’t working”
Remember when “David G.” started that MobileMe status blog at the personal request of Steve Jobs to keep everyone up-to-date on MobileMe’s flaky outages? “Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters,” wrote David, “and we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.”
Well, that first post was July 25th, followed by a quick update on July 27th, followed by another on July 29th. So far, so good. Unfortunately, that July 29th entry was followed by… nothing. Yes, the July 29th post, which ended with the line “Next post later this week” has been the last update for nearly 3 weeks now, and some folks who are still experiencing daily outages, such as faithful Macenstein reader drfunk, have gotten fed up.
“I sent an email to Steve Jobs and Eddie Cue complaining about MobileMe telling them that after 4+ years using my .mac as my work email, I have to change it because its flat out just not reliable. Well someone from Steve’s office called me, actually, and they’re getting me some sort of in house support guy, sounds like he does inside tech support for them. Plus she sent me her contact info, and said feel free to reach out directly any time i have a problem. But when I talked to her, she acknowledged that they’re not putting any info out on it [the MobileMe status blog] on purpose, because they can’t iron out what is causing it. It sounds like they get one thing fixed, something else goes bad, etc…”
So, the good news here is that Apple’s MobileMe customer service seems very nice, apologetic, and about as helpful as they can be, however the bad news is that Apple still doesn’t seem to know how to get MobileMe working the way they intended for all of its customers.
I suspect a different type of “fire” will be hitting Apple’s MobileMe division soon if things don’t work themselves out soon, as in “here’s your walking papers now beat it” fire.
what about all the other customers that don’t get Steve’s own personal tech support?
I haven’t used the me.com much (mostly because when I have it’s been flaky) but haven’t had too much trouble with the other stuff (sync etc).
Obviously it would be nice if they could deliver the promised services but if they can’t it would be nice to actually come through with promised status updates! it can’t be that hard… how long does it take, like 5 mins to bang out ‘sorry folks but we’re still working on it’.
Hey, Apple, listen up. It’s MUCH WORSE to not post anything, than to give us the honest truth, that the problem is bigger than you anticipated and to stand by. You lose credibility every time you say you’ll do something by “end of the week” and don’t do it. You lose money; loyal customers; and your reputation is damaged. You owe us updates, since we’re paying you $100/year.
If you don’t want to post updates, then tell us that. Most people don’t scour blogs for updates. Regular updates, even if they’re “hang in there, we’re working it!” will go a long way to us who are willing to forgive.
I wouldn’t assume that hasn’t already happened given that the person at the top has changed already. Speaking of which, it’s Eddy not Eddie.
Apple has never been as forthcoming with information as some would like them to be; in fact, no company ever is, except perhaps on extremely rare occasions. The problem is: historically, when companies “confess” the way people want them to, it actually has a negative effect on business. The individual person may appreciate the candor but Wall Street hates it and the Press, as ever, blow everything out of proportion in order to sell more papers/advertisements. Publicly traded corporations are beholden to their investors, not to the people that purchase their products (who aren’t also investors). One of modern life’s little hypocrisies.
I now have an engineer assigned to me for my iPhone 3G crashing problems due to emails I sent to Apple that included some top executives and Steve Jobs. I am on my 4th iPhone 3G and have experienced an amazing amount of problems.
Apple is trying to get to the bottom of my issues that will most certainly help others having similar problems. I already spent hours working with an Apple Senior support engineer.
Apple seems to be working hard to solve issues for all users.
ohmy…
Apple’s customer service (not just for MobileMe) IS very nice!
Honestly, I always wanted .Mac because of the @mac.com email, it was so cool! But now, that @me.com isn’t convincing me anymore, especially with all the problems described above..
Apple’s dropping too much stuff too fast
I don’t like them dropping the “mac” (in Mac OS X), dropping the little apple (in the command buttton), dropping the little apple again (in the iPod USB cable), and dropping the @mac (from MobileMe).
I mean, are they gonna stop sending the stickers too?
What are the problems that some are referring to with regards to MobileMe? My account was migrated from .Mac to MobileMe and I haven’t had any issues with my email. My iPhone 3G model is MB048LL with software version 2.0.1 and my MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) is running Leopard 10.5.4. Both are able to send and receive email as well sync with MobileMe.
Let there be no doubt, I am having a crisis of faith.
I agree that some of the features in MobileMe are way better than .Mac (eg iCal, Mail) however Apple have been far too hasty in the the process. It should be evolution not revolution.
Two things they could do/have done to perfect the transition:
1) Keep homepage – its old and quaint, but it works. (I can get to it via my main MobileMe interface (old @Mac.com, but not one of my family pack @me.com sub accounts).
2) Keep both the @mac.com and @me.com email addresses like Google does for Gmail and Googlemail. Maybe in the interface people could chose which would be the main and and which is just an alias. Mac users V Window users?