Apple has publicly apologized for the disaster that was the MobileMe launch, as well as the misleading use of the word “push,” and given subscribers a free 30-day extension to their service. A nice gesture for what was, indeed, an ugly string of screw-ups. I especially like the letter’s copywriting: no-bullshit, sincere, to the point, and personal. We all know a lot of companies would have taken a “our Terms of Service clearly indicate that we can not guarantee our services,” sort of approach. Well-done, Apple.
Now that things are running smoothly, I’m really liking MobileMe a lot. Not having to put my iPhone in its dock all the damn time to ensure I’ve got my latest contacts and calendar events on all my device is really a sweet thing. There’s no doubt this is a better service than .Mac for iPhone owners. I’m not sure it’s an improvement for those who just want to keep multiple Macs in sync — but, whatever. Visit site »
Apple has changed the text on it’s MobileMe “features” page, indicating that sync from computer to cloud aren’t really “push” at all, but rather standard interval-based syncs. The textual change comes after a lot of folks complained about “false advertising” and “deception” on the part of Apple. The page previously stated:
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone and syncing manually — to stay up to date.
As of today, it says:
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and keeps them in sync across your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change in one place, MobileMe pushes the new information up to the cloud, then pushes the change down to your other devices. Choose a sync interval for your Mac or PC. On your iPhone and the web, sync happens continuously.
It’s good that Apple has made this more clear, but it doesn’t change the fact that they absolutely did misrepresent how the service works — not only on their site, but also during the WWDC keynote demo.
Form talking to someone inside Apple, it sounds as though “true” push is likely to come to the Mac with updates to iCal, Address Book, Mail, and Safai, but who knows when that will be. It’s good to hear it may be coming though, and is not entirely a lost cause.
Thanks to Bret for letting me know about the text change. Visit site »
Turns out, MobileMe doesn’t “push” changes to calendars and contacts made on your Mac to the Me.com web apps and your handheld devices. From an Apple Knowledgebase article:
Changes made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe “cloud” once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11).
Changes to calendars and contacts made on Me.com or on your iPhone will be pushed to your Mac immediately, but the reverse is not true. Strange. From Apple’s MobileMe features page:
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone and syncing manually — to stay up to date
Emphasis mine. For many people, including me, a 15 minute sync time is probably just fine in real-world usage. But, it definitely seems contrary to how the service was promoted and demoed at the WWDC keynote, and I can definitely understand why so many people are complaining about it on the MacRumors forums and across the Internet. This sort of reeks of deception.
A couple things worth pointing out about this, for those wondering why it’s a big deal:
It’s now been 24 hours since the start of the six-hour downtown window Apple gave for the .Mac to MobileMe migration. I’m frustrated. A lot of people are frustrated. But a lot of other people, in forums around the Internet, are saying, “Oh, get over it. You’ve waited this long for MobileMe, you can wait another day or two.” Those people are missing the point. I pay for .Mac, and I rely upon its services (notably Sync, Back to My Mac, and iDisk). I’m not upset that MobileMe isn’t ready yet; I’m upset that Apple has taken away my .Mac services. MobileMe can take six months for all I care, but I need my syncing and iDisk.
Apple has another problem at play, too: a lot of the hype surrounding the new iPhone 3G is directly related to its integration with MobileMe. The iPhone went on sale hours ago on the other side of the world, and will go on sale in less than 10 hours here in America. If the push e-mail, contact, and calendar functionality Apple has been hyping for the past couple months isn’t available when these people get their iPhones home, the media is going to have a fucking field day — and RIM’s stock is going to look pretty darn good.
Update: Media frenzy has begun. AP article on .Mac/MobileMe transition woes. And a new article on ComputerWord. Visit site »