Two Weeks Later: Mobile Me's Uptime Calculated (96%)

[MacRumors]

Two weeks after Apple announced that all MobileMe systems were up and operational after a rocky transition, there continue to be sporadic reports around the web of various service outages inclusive of a 4.5 hour mail outage yesterday. But has MobileMe gotten more reliable?

According to Apple's MobileMe status history, there have been approximately 13.5 hours of various downtime over the past two weeks (336 hours); that is, MobileMe has a 96% overall uptime over the past two weeks.

Determining whether 96% is good or bad can be subjective to the user. This editor and user of MobileMe has hardly been affected by the outages but other users may have been more affected by the timing or the content of the outages. In general we would consider a consumer-oriented service such as MobileMe to have an uptime of at least 98% which would effectively half the downtime that MobileMe currently experiences.

Walt Mossberg has expressed similar sentiments, saying that currently MobileMe is far too flawed to be reliable.

Article Link

[thecritix]

Of course offering the stats based on a period you set, is not nearly as interesting as the stats on Mobile Me's history, in my case I'd say that figure could be as low as 50-60% uptime.

96% is awful for this service!
And I personally believe some individuals will have it worse than that.

[Veri]

In general we would consider a consumer-oriented service such as Mobile Me to have an uptime of at least 98% which would effectively half the downtime that Mobile Me currently experiences.

Why such low expectations? Computers don't need rests. Apple doesn't need to work on a tight budget. What aspect of the Internet / Apple's hosting software requires 2% downtime?

[bigandy]

Well I'm definitely not moving in their direction for anything - even a free account.

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Veri

Why such low expectations? Computers don't need rests. Apple doesn't need to work on a tight budget. What aspect of the Internet / Apple's hosting software requires 2% downtime?

Scheduled maintenance to perform updates, etc. Typically business-grade systems have above 99% uptime. I just think it's a little presumptuous to expect that of something targeted at consumers (kind of like how server-grade hard disks have higher mean time between failures than consumer-grade hard disks).

That being said, 96% is too low.

[Iggy]

Well I missed a whole week on top of that 13.5 hours. I'd like to see what that percentage would look like if it applied to the whole month. I can't complain though, Apple shut me up with a free years mobileme.

[spicoli]

First off, I am holding on to hope....

MobileMe has not worked out for me at all. My set up is Macbook, MM, iPhone, PC (vista/Outlook 2007 in corporate setting). My goal was to sync my work contact and calendars with my personal info and have them all on my iPhone. The mac side seems to work after a couple of weeks of flubs. At first, calendars on mac did not sync at all, then OK. Then contacts duplicated, then only partial sync (about 20% synced). Then only names synced with no e-mail addresses, no phone numbers. That appears to be working ..... for now.

PC syncing has never worked well. I understand that the corporate setting may be impacting me (proxies, firewalls, etc.), but I understood from the presentation Steve Jobs gave earlier in the year, that I would be able to do what I want. Sync my work stuff with my other stuff.... on my iPhone. As of yesterday afternoon, my work PC won't even log into MobileMe.

I am glad MobileMe is working for most and I am still holding on to hope. Let the updates begin.

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Iggy

Well I missed a whole week on top of that 13.5 hours. I'd like to see what that percentage would look like if it applied to the whole month. I can't complain though, Apple shut me up with a free years mobileme.

Yeah, obviously if you take into account the extended outage at the beginning the percentage goes WAY down. But I think that taking that into account doesn't give an accurate description of the current state of MobileMe. The article is supposed to look at the reliability after the rocky transition finally finished, i.e. 2 weeks ago.

[Darkroom]

interesting... gmail was out for about that long yesterday as well...

[archi17]

I think that Mobile Me will have a higher uptime in the future, when they get over their starting hurdle. Currently the downtime calculated over apples initial stat is going to make the numbers look low

[swingerofbirch]

I wonder why Apple gave up on the MobileMe Status blog. They promised an update last week that never came.

[dual64bit]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

I certainly wouldn't want my business to rely on MobileMe. I have noticed the issues, but only he it for my personal e-mail

[Kilamite]

I've still had no problems.

But I use OS X Mail, I don't actually go to me.com - so I might not even know if Mail is down.

[mdntcallr]

honestly, Blackberry has been criticized alot lately for outtages,
so has Gmail.

Which only underscores the importance of a 99.999% reliability, Apple is running into terrible territory when they are setting themselves up for problems.

to not have email for almost 5 hours? will make alot of customers very very unhappy. especially when mobile me is getting billed as exchange or blackberry replacement.

so.... Apple has to get their **** together or... mobile me will be known as the kiddie version of "Blackberry" or Exchange.

lets go back to .Mac .... at least it was more reliable.

[GT500Shlby]

It's only been a few weeks. I don't think the flaws are permanent. It will evolve and get better. I'll wait until next year when all the bugs are worked out and then I'll try it out for 30 days. See if I like it.

[mdntcallr]

Originally Posted by Kilamite

I've still had no problems.

But I use OS X Mail, I don't actually go to me.com - so I might not even know if Mail is down.

i noticed problems via my Mail app. then i tried logging in via a web browser, to no avail. if the .ME / .Mac service mail is down, didn't matter what you got your email via. all of it was down

[Shasterball]

If I can't do something I pay for almost 1 in 20 times, that is BAD.

[Kilamite]

This free 30 days isn't going to seem like much since most of the 30 days are going to be up and down.

[longofest]

Originally Posted by mdntcallr

lets go back to .Mac .... at least it was more reliable.

No, it wasn't. It was about the same. Mobile Me just has more heat on it because it's new.

[queshy]

I'd be willing to accept 24 hours of outage over a one year period. So 365 * 24 h = 8760 h/year.

24/8760 x 100% = 0.28%.

[hikinman]

I'm not a mobile me user, but 96% uptime is bad.

I realize that this is only for 2 weeks, but if 96% uptime continued, that means MobileMe would be down for 14.6 days per year!!! Thats 2 weeks a year for a service you pay for.

Since I started using gmail (which is still in beta), about 4 years ago, I don't believe they have had that much downtime in 4 years (if they did, i certainly didn't notice).

I would get fired if the data network I support only had 96% uptime.

-r

[nickane]

28 weeks later: Eradication. Sterilization. Re-Population. Re-Infection.

[odedia]

In my company, we have a commitment to our clients for a 99.9% uptime.

I think a company as big as Apple can get away with at least 99%.

They truly have a long way to go.

[Abraxx]

I consider 96% for such a service as laughable and embarrassing.
For this kind of service I expect uptimes close to airplane engines and
I wouldn't want to fly with a plane whose engines have an "uptime" of only 96%....


my 2 cents

[whooleytoo]

96% sounds good, but is direly poor. That's approx. 1 hour down every single day. And when you bear in mind it's a global service, it means the downtime will be during business hours for someone.