Uncle Walt on MobileMe: Pass on it for now

When it works it is great. Sometimes email does not get pushed. Sometimes there can be a big delay when you make changes on the MobileMe website or the Mac. I have found making a change on the iPhone will make MobileMe sync and then make all the changes, this is a bit of a pain though. When the iPhone has No Service and you add a contact or calendar notifications then it will not push (obviously)...when you do get service again it doesn't automatically push it, you have to edit something to start the whole sync process.

The whole idea of Exchange for the rest of us is great, but at the moment it is inconsistent. When it does work it is great, however that is not good enough for a paid service, and to be fixed by December is just unacceptable. Apple is not completely clueless on the web...look at iTunes, look at their main website, it is very quick. They have to invest money in lots of servers and improve their web interface. Apple create amazing interfaces. If Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc can create Web 2.0 mail clients then Apple should be able to and then some.

I love Apple products, but this is just sub-par. At least Apple acknowledges this.

MobileMess is an escalation of the problems that existed with .Mac since the Leopard launch. They just tacked on more problems and stuck a really poor choice of names on it. I'll point out one of it's many shortcomings - Keychain corruption. MobileMess will take a sync'd Keychain and bork it so that Apps are no longer able to auto fill remembered fields and will not allow for "remember me". When attempting to edit the keychain items, you'll get a lot of "access denied" prompts. Essentially borking the entire Keychain. You're only bet is to keep a backup prior to starting sync so that you can turn it off and restore the backup. Otherwise, you're hosed.

Well I renewed my .Mac membership in May and quite honestly it was a tough decision due to the value at the time. I really thought MobileMe would make it all worth it but I really see little added value and with it failing to work properly and all of the shut downs I really wish I could get my money back. I paid for .Mac not MobileMaybe!

MobileMe, in its current incarnation, has two major flaws:
(1) a lack of server-side filters/rules
(2) a lack of support for calendar subscriptions - I'm told they're working on this.

See my longer review here:
http://www.theeliotinside.com/2008/07/mobileeliot-mobileme-review.html

Thanks Apple for f*ing up my .Mac and Email! Everything was fine until you decided 'upgrade' the service.

I am tired of MobileMe. The free alternatives are much more better and stable. They charged mt 100$ insteal of 1$ authorization fee. What is this Apple !!! ?

To cover-up all the problems till date, they will have to dive free subscription extension till a decade !

MobileMe for me has been spotty to put it lightly. It's more of a gimmick for me, not my primary e-mail ( I have exchange) but here's what I've found:

1. Outage.
2. Web interface is so slow I thought I lost my internet connection.
3. Tried to login to Mobile Me from IE.... Not compatible. That's ridiculous. (Yes, I know IE7 sort of works, but that's not a solution. OWA prefers IE, but if you are using another browser you get a limited interface not a "Go get another browser" dialog. Booo Hissss....
4. Syncing is sluggish from the desktop.
5. I did have an interesting sync success story, see if you can follow it. I'm impressed...
I edited an appt. in the Web Interface and a Contact there as well, added a Phone Number. It syncs with the iPhone, and the Sync Service on my MacBook Air got the update of the items. The MBA syncs iCal with Entourage, that change made it there. On my desktop, a MacPro, it's set to sync Address Book with Entourage, the contact edit made it back to my Exchange server. How many minutes... Don't hold me, but I'd say around 5. Very cool!

I've been a .mac user for a long time. Signed up the day iTools was announced. It's been rocky before, but even when Apple decided to go from free to subscription I thought it was worth it.

What a mistake. My email went dead on day 1 of the transition. It came back Tuesday, but with one major problem... Every email I had stored on the server is gone. Zip. Zilch. Nadda. The Mail program connected to the mothership, downloaded email from July 17th to July 21st, then everything from before July 17th disappeared.

Fortunately I keep back ups. But wow.

ive been using .me for a week now, and it sucks.
slow loading,
buggy web interface.
cant upload any pictures, unless its from my iphone.
if i send an email from my gmail account to my .me account, its can take up to 20 mins to get there,
even when im pressing refresh.
if i send an email from .me to gmail, come up with in seconds.
gmail doesnt charge me a penny for this service, and it works a lot better than apple.

come on apple! us die hard mac users pay alot of money to use your products, do us a favor and pull you finger out, and sort this out,
or better still give us .mac back with 20gb.

MobileMe is working fine for me. I've been a member since it was called iTools, so I never expected push-functionality. Sure, it's kind of embarassing when my iPhone 3G says 'bling' (announcing I've got new mail) 10 minutes before Leopard Mail figures it out, but hey, I'll live.

I do agree with Walt that the web interface is sluggish, and I was hoping it'd be on par with Google Mail, but then again, no change for the worse there either, .mac webmail wasn't performing at rocket speeds either.

All in all, not revolutionary yet, but still a solid product.