Filed under: MobileMe
Pogue and Macworld chime in on MobileMe
David Pogue, the New York Times tech columnist, posted his review of MobileMe last week and despite its problems he thought the service itself showed promise. It looks like a little of that promise is wearing off. The latest post to David's New York Times blog, titled 'MobileMess,' isn't exactly the kind of press coverage Apple is used to as of late. In his post Pogue dings Apple for marketing MobileMe in the wrong way, and for failing to be up front with MobileMe users during all the 'rough patches.' Apple declined to comment for the story.
Macworld has also taken MobileMe for a spin, and they give it 3.5 mice out of 5. The good include push to the iPhone, the web interface, and lots of storage. The bad points should look familiar by now: push doesn't work for everything and the service isn't reliable.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zoidbert said 5:10PM on 7-24-2008
Sorry, but Pogue absolutely nails it, especially with the "airplane stuck on the runway" analogy.
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puckology said 5:13PM on 7-24-2008
So I go to make a call and every item on my "Favorites" list and the names have been replaced with phone numbers. Tapping on the arrow icon to the right of each number brings up a contact screen that is devoid of any personal info (no name attached to each number). Then I go to check my address book and all phone numbers are missing for every contact. Yikes! What the heck is going on??? Could MobileMe actually eat up my info??? Could my 1500+ contacts be wiped out???
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BRockNYLA said 10:45AM on 7-25-2008
This happened to me last week. It turns out when I was setting up my iphone after the 2.0 firmware update I mistakenly chose the option to set up a new iphone instead of restoring from the back up. after restoring with the latest backup all my contact information was there and I was updated.
So, I'm not sure that MobileMe is the culprit here, but I could be wrong.
sujovian said 5:31PM on 7-24-2008
It should be mentioned that the biggest complaint about MobileMe is that it doesn't push sync from the desktop. Apple hasn't explicitly said it yet, but you can bet this will change when Snow Leopard arrives next year bringing Exchange services to the Mac desktop.
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Tony said 5:48PM on 7-24-2008
My biggest complaint is the lack of server side filtering.
This was fine when the only things that you used with it were mail.app clients each with their own filters.. a little wasteful, but it worked.
Now there's a website and the iphone, both of which have no client side filters. This leads to an unholy mess when you view your inbox through them.. the iphone is worst - it goes 'bing' about 20 times an hour and you open it to find it's more stuff that should have been filed into its correct folder rather than the important email I'm waiting for.
There's also the problem with it not syncing the read/unread status, the problem that moving messages from one folder to another is not pushed (and if you view the message that has been moved from its 'old' place mail on the iphone crashes), similarly for deleting messages.
Fix that and I'd be happy.. but it needs to be rolled out to all OSs not just Snow Leopard.. I paid for MobileMe as advertised and as far as I'm concerned I'm not paying *extra* simply to get functionality that was claimed to be there from day 1.
Jono said 5:37PM on 7-24-2008
Yea, that's happened to me puckology (& from what I've read quite a lot of other people).
It only wiped the contacts from my phone though, not the web app or Address Book on OS X. I turned off push in the iPhone settings, then turned it back on again & they synced back to the phone. Very worrying when it happens though.
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Kevin G said 5:57PM on 7-24-2008
YES. Thank you. MobileMess indeed. I used to be a fan of Apple, but no longer. To reiterate, my issues:
- Calendar application crashes/freezes (constantly).
- Calendar application deletes meetings.
- Log in simply doesn't work (this morning I had to log in about 15 times before it finally recognized my username and password).
- Mail works; only sporadically.
- "Push"? Are you kidding? I honestly feel Mail was quicker before.
Believe it or not, I actually miss the old .Mac. At least it was a dinosaur that was breathing; albeit with chronic asthma.
Speculative new buyers of the MobileMe service, PLEASE do not pursue this until Apple has figured itself out! Seeing how .Mac truly never reached it's assumed intended capability of being a functioning sync service, I have no hopes that this effort will succeed.
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Jim said 6:01PM on 7-24-2008
As if .mac was reliable. People should have seen the writing on the wall.
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Jim said 6:03PM on 7-24-2008
As if .mac was reliable. People should have seen the writing on the wall.
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Jim said 6:04PM on 7-24-2008
Oh yay...dupe comments.
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Virtuous said 6:20PM on 7-24-2008
What Apple should have done was use Exchange Server for email calendar and contacts in MobileMe.
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IMHO said 7:20PM on 7-24-2008
Doesn't matter if it's reliable, it doesn't have even a minimal feature set. Can't print calendar's from the webpage. Can't import calendars without having Outlook or iCal to translate (I have neither 'cause I use google calendar). Can't use my default e-mail address (don't need another in-box, thanks). Runs like a cow on explorer (I realize that's likely explorer's fault, but my employer doesn't care). It's kind of like the appleTV. I really want to love this product, but I just can't, reliability issues aside.
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Just_a_guy said 7:29PM on 7-24-2008
I feel like the only person who has all of the services of mobile me except for UPLOADING things.
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David Chartier said 8:06PM on 7-24-2008
Still not having a single problem with either my account or my wife's. Push email works perfectly, everything else syncs as frequently as I need it. Exchange support built into Snow Leopard will certainly be appreciated, but things are behaving quite well after the few days of instability. Just bought a renewal box too.
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puckology said 9:10PM on 7-24-2008
That's exactly what I said yesterday ... everything has been working perfectly ... then all of my contacts' phone numbers on my iPhone get completely erased by MobileMe.
Kevin said 9:17PM on 7-24-2008
Hard to say if it is working for me or not. I can log in, browse any area. I like the service for the gallery, so that is what is most important to me.
I'm still using the .mac address, and I have gotten messages on it. But, I still haven't gotten the note on the free extra month. Just curious if others who have been "upgraded" have noticed that .mac mail is coming through while me isn't? (Granted I have not tried sending stuff on my me address yet.)
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8CoreWhore said 9:24PM on 7-24-2008
.mac showed promise for many years. At some point you gotta dump her for her friendly sister.
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niclet said 9:41PM on 7-24-2008
Pogue / Mossberg are tough. Personally, I have an healthy MobileMe experience. Sure, the transition was sloppy in the beginning but now it's running like butter (touch wood!).
I understand the frustration of those who gets hell outta box with MobileMe but let's face it, this service is less than two weeks old, can we just give it a chance? I'm sure it will be a strong fellow!
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Drupa said 11:30PM on 7-24-2008
The damn iPhone has taken every releveant resource away from Apple's core business! It doesn't "just work" any more. 10.5 / Time Capsule / Mobile Me - each have offered some individuals catastrophic results. I'm tired of this! Hire more talented folks or delay your releases! As a power user, I have learned that you ABSOLUTELY should not adopt any new software or hardware from Apple until the SECOND patch drops!
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Ed said 3:09AM on 7-25-2008
I'm sick to death of all the issues. I was spending more time problem solving than I was being productive. As a result I've moved all my mail and calendars over Google, and that's where they're staying.
Sorry Apple, this ain't good enough.
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