A month later, it's still Mobile 'Meh'

OK, now that I have had a chance to consider this whole matter, I am even more disgruntled. Today, Time Capsule had to be reformatted because, if the MacBook Pro is put to sleep while doing a backup, the disk gets corrupted, either gradually or all at once. This problem, too, could easily be prevented though the use of some protection built into the software, but the best the support staff could offer was, "the user must make a minor behavior change and never close the lid on the laptop if the (tiny) backup icon is spinning." So, this, on top of the MobileMe fiasco, and I am in the disgruntled user category. Anyoone know the most read blogs about Apple. I am ready to send this thread as an illustration of how Apple is falling from the tree. Here is the thread with Support regarding the duplicate email issues:

###BEGIN THREAD WITH APPLE TECH SUPPORT###

I do not think you understand my point, fully. It was not appreciated that you suggested restoring deleted messages to my Inbox when you have NO idea when I will get a response from Engineering, and that would create an entirely unusable unworkable situation.

When will you next contact the engineering team regarding this matter? I will be reminding you at least 1-2 times per week until this matter is resolved.

I would like this issue escalated to Apple management, in fact. This is completely unacceptable, that you have no idea when engineering will respond, and it is foolish of Apple not to have expectations that engineering will respond within a set time period. At this point, if I could, I would return my MacBook Pro, my Time Capsule, all of the software, my iPhone, and my subscription to MobileMe as a protest against this utterly inadequate response-- if I could get a complete refund. I invested over $7000.00 into a transition which has had just as many problems or more than I ever had with Microsoft's products.

Alternatively, I may start a website along the lines of "MobileMe is Worse than You Can Imagine," if someone has not done so, already. At this point, I will do my best to convince others to stay away from Apple products, for the time being, and it is largely because of MobileMe's failed rollout.

So, no, I do not think you quite appreciate the depth of my dismay regarding this and other matters related to my use of Apple products over the past six months.

If someone else at Apple cares to deal with this matter, I can be reached by phone at 510-734-0885

Gregory Alter, Ph.D, NeuroAdvantage

On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:05 AM, MobileMeSupport@apple.com wrote:

Gregory,

I completely understanding that you want to have this matter resolved as soon as possible so you do not have the junk of duplicate emails in your Mail. Unforunately, at this time, there is not an estimated time of when this will be resolved. Once I do hear something from the Engineering team, I will be sure to reply back to you! I do apologize for this.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Juliana
MobleMe Support


Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

How soon do you expect a reply? What is the goal for turnaround on a request like this. If you will please note, I have many hundreds of emails in my Trash, many of which are duplicates. Please direct the engineering team to inspect the Trash folder if they need to observe detailed header information. Without some additional reason, I really do not want to clutter my workspace with all these duplicates. I will leave the duplicates that are there, now, and I will let them accumulate for 3 days at a time, if that meets the needs of Apple. Thanks for your help with this vexing matter.

Gregory Alter, Ph.D., NeuroAdvantage

On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, at 01:06PM, wrote:
Greg,

Thank you for changing the password that I have requested in the previous email. I was able to reenact the issue to where you are seeing duplicate emails in both the Mail application and in WebMail. I do want to request that you put the emails that are duplicated back in your inbox. So, you can just undelete them.

I am requesting this because I have provided the details of your report to the MobileMe Engineering team. As always, the Engineering team appreciates feedback as part of its efforts to resolve issues and improve the MobileMe experience. They may need to test out your account, so this is why you need to leave the emails in your inbox.

I will reply back to you once I do hear something from the Engineering team. I do apologize for this. If you have any other questions, please let me know and I will be able to assist you.

Sincerely,

Juliana September 26 2008 at 2:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Problems with Netidentity too:

http://www.thomascrampton.com/internet/netidentity-email-outage-19-hours-and-counting/

Mobile Me is still an embarrassment to the Apple name. I wasn't even one of the unfortunate souls who lost their email but the service has been nothing but a series of letdowns since day one and it hasn't really improved.

The service is painfully slow (G-Calendar and G-Mail runs circles around this pokey, sluggish mess of a "Web 2.0" site), its unreliable (what kind of half-baked web app refreshes in the middle of composing a message and causes you lose all your work? where do those random calender events go to when I enter them on the webapp and then they never show up on my phone or my Mac?) and it missing even the most obvious functions (you would think adding an alert to a calendar item might be a pretty basic feature by 2008). About the only saving graces are it looks pretty and I always have a backup via time machine should something go seriously wrong.

If Google built similar apps for the desktop and the iPhone to work offline with their excellent web apps I would jump ship and never look back. As it stands I have to grit my teeth and bear this dog of a service because I want my contacts and calendars synched with my iPhone and this is pretty much the only game in town.

I love Apple products and routinely encourage my fiends and family to make the switch but this is the worst product I have seen Apple release in the 8 years I have been using their products.

Get over it, it works fine. No issues ever here.

I have actually had a really positive experience with Mobile Me. It has worked absolutely fine - ok there is occasionally a slight delay in the syncing - but my life doesn't move so fast that 5 mins will cause a disruption.

All in all the 3G iPhone / MobileMe has been a really welcome inclusion in my day to day activities and has changed the way I interact with the Apple applications I use every day - from iCal to Mail.

Sorry to hear others have had so many continuing problems, but from me this service gets a thumbs up. As a dot.mac subscriber for a few years, I am very pleased with MobileMe and have no doubt I will be renewing my subscription when it comes around again next year.

Someone should make a Mobile Meh logo!!!!

Here's a story, and I'll keep it brief.
Received an "exam" email from a potential employer. Instructions: 45min to read, answer, and resend. I was able to complete the first two, but due to MAC's incompetence I was unable to send back the email. Thanks a lot apple, had a shot at a potential job and you were able to somehow screw it up.

Cant wait till Oct. so my year subs. is over. Time to move on.

In the last 3 weeks I've been having problems with my iWeb pages on dotmac/mobile me.
First people couldn't post comments on my blog pages, now most of my photos have gone missing (on iweb photo pages).
Last night tried a "publish all to mobileme" 3 hours later got a "publishing error..." message.
Anyone elso having iWeb problems?

The funny thing about this thread is that it really separates the average enthusiastic Apple Geek (such as myself) from the slavishly devoted, blindly-willing-to-accept-anything-that-comes-out-of-Cupertino fanboys. This is not a free service, nor is it a public beta. This is a subscription-based, supposedly v 1.0 service that failed on almost all accounts upon stumbling out of the gates and, though it has definitely improved, continues to under-deliver, even with its' scope scaled back. Despite this, there's still the fanboys out there who willingly ignore the evidence to the contrary, and call paying customers whiners for demanding better service! Hilarious...

I'm really looking forward to MobileMe becoming the service Apple promised it would be (even though it's no longer officially a "push" service). They've got till October, when my .Mac subscription ends, and then that's it.

For all of you out there, who are as tired as I am of all the whining and bitching (and no, I am not an Apple apologist), maybe we should just jump ship and read http://www.macuser.com instead of TUAW. They whine and bitch, too, but at least the writing is better quality and Scott McNulty blogs for them now.