Added Perspective - Apple's .Mac services have worked very well for me. My site development is done in iWeb, hosted by Apple, and I don't have to worry about site optimization, FTP uploads, etc. Their service has generally been very good for my needs. Thus - I have supported and trusted them them as "ready for prime time".
This outage is inexcusable - poor implementation design and execution - it really makes them look incompetent.
It will get fixed - but should never have happened.
I have never seen a major Web deployment w/o AT LEAST a 12-hour outage. .mac is down because they have to migrate it to .me. They could not do that. They could make you take a credit for unused .mac service, then wait for that credit on your credit card, then sign up under the same name on MobileMe, get that all configured and ironed out... Whew. But hey, you're right, they migrate we're probably stuck with nothing but push/pull mail and maybe iDisk connectivity until tomorrow. If they just nixed .mac and rolled you a credit to a brand new MobileMe account, you'd have everything all set and good to go, configured and tested, by, say, next Wednesday. You got me there.
I'll do a little work, today, man. Then I'm gonna go for a long 100 deg. F sweat-killer bike ride. Then maybe jump in the pool. Then flop out and read a book. Then watch a movie tonight. I'll just let Apple scramble around to migrate my .mac to MobileMe and get all that working. If you don't mind.
p.s. I'm not trying to be cavalier, but if something can't wait -- and unless we're talking an organ transplant here, it should be able to wait -- until they get everything but mail back up, since mail is working, well, then you have to design, and pay a lot for, a much closer to fails-safe system. .mac/MM is $99 a year. There is no SLA, and it is not priced to sustain one. I use my .mac email as my primary personal/business-related email, and a gmail for public email -- and I always have one or the other as back-up. Fact is, my cable Internet wonks sometimes and I'm shafted 48 hours, then, too, no matter the whole Internet is up and running -- and no Gears of War online in the off hours, either, and that truly 'tis a shame.
