Apple Launches MobileMe and Apple TV 2.1

[Saladinos]

i'm taking this into heavy consideration during my 60 day trial.

gmail is free, and has never gone down since i've began using it back in 2004.

all google needs to do is sync calendar and contacts, and i really have no use for mobileme.

And support push, and give you a proper webdisk. Oh, and it has to stop sucking with Mail.App (OSX or iPhone).

I'm with Gmail now, but the issues I've had with using it on IMAP are making me switch to MobileMe. I can't stand that duplicate email bug any more, or the deleted emails' limbo bug.

I use Macs all day, and the better integration is well worth paying for. It's not every day that Apple's going to relaunch the service. Besides, people are overdoing this - the services still work, it's just the web apps that don't.

 

[bmk]

down again!

In way it is good this has happened. People been complaining for years that dotmac was too slow and that Apple needed to massively overhaul their server system if they were going to provide the kind of service they were advertising. Now the pigeons have come home to roost and it is at least clear to Apple that they have got to take this problem seriously.

I am not complaining that the system is down - it is a major overhaul and I can put up with the downtime for a better service - but it is clear now that the transition has been botched - and badly botched - and that everyone in the tech world is looking at them making a mess of it. If SJ isn't going round kicking some butts and saying 'this must never, NEVER happen again,' I'd be very surprised.

 

[tripwire]

they shouldn't have already charged you for it. It may be depending on your banks athorization settings.

has anoyone else noticed that there isn't 1 post about Apple TV 2.1 in this thread! LOL

That's cos people with Apple TV are harder to find than pandas in the gobi desert.

 

[stealthboy]

This is a big deal for me, who has been a .Mac subscriber for a while now. I have two macs and an iphone that are not synched up now because of this outage. Work calendar events and contact changes are all in different places now. This sucks!

 

[zelet]

I never did get access to the me.com update. Anybody have a link to the direct download or did Apple pull it?

 

[TheKrillr]

i'm taking this into heavy consideration during my 60 day trial.

gmail is free, and has never gone down since i've began using it back in 2004.

all google needs to do is sync calendar and contacts, and i really have no use for mobileme.

Ok, so you're going to take into account the fact that a service is unavailable PRECISELY when it is not supposed to be available. I mean, I understand that it is irritating -- not being able to access your email via the web. However that function is NOT a primary feature of .Mac. MobileMe has NOT BEEN RELEASED yet, we are still in a transitional period.

Also, let's look at the raw scale of this transition. MobileMe is a complete rewrite from the ground up of all the technologies that made .Mac happen, and then some. Database backups and server images must be made, then the new database deployed and data migration scripts must pour over terabytes upon terabytes of data, transitioning it to the new database schema. Then the service must be tested, the new servers be migrated into the load-balancing system. If there are ANY major bugs in code, they must be fixed and the entire system rebuilt, images recreated and redeployed. This is a very tedious process.

So .Mac, which is destined to die tomorrow at 8AM, isn't available while we get something bigger and better. So the transition is taking longer than expected. This kind of thing is EXPECTED, to be honest. I would know, I've done many large deployments in my time.

Don't take into negative account something which was never guaranteed.

 

[dissdnt]

why cant i log in through system preferences?!?!?!? just updated it to me.com,logged in fine with my username and password on the server but when i go to system preferences to change my settings it wont let me log in. tells me my username or password is wrong!

anyone else gotten this?

Yep, stuff is just down right now.

 

[eddiejames2]

Gothc'ya. I just looked and my available credit decreased by $109 after putting in my CC information on MobileMe. Either way this is all very disappointing for a launch. We're all WAY too impatient for this waiting

Wow, I did the same thing as you described, and only got charged the $1 authorization fee, which gets taken off within hours.

 

[Daveoc64]

I completely agree, these people doing their jobs while having idiots trying to find a back way in and tinker in something which they clearly didn't want us to log into - aren't we fed up of Apple constantly letting us down - poor service, poor products, poor operating system, poor product design. If you don't like the service then go and use windows vista and their similarly priced personal push service.

If I could I'd send all the team over at Apple a large crate of beer right now.

How the f*** is going to www.mac.com (YES, if you went to mac.com earlier it redirected to me.com) OR going to www.me.com intermittently finding a back way in or tinkering to get in?

It's clear that Apple launched the site and then there was a problem.

Any other company would have a maintenance page up permanently on ALL sites.

Any other company would not provide a software update to people that claims the new service is launched when it's not.

YOU need to look at things before you judge people.

The update that you refer to as "tinkering" merely renames any reference to ".mac" to "MobileMe". It doesn't cause every internet connected computer in the world to be unable to connect to www.me.com - nor does it have anything to do with iTunes 7.7 on Windows that includes MobileMe and is 100% public.

 

[Mr. Jaybear]

GET A GRIP - They are doing a huge system transition and you say the product doesnt work? So they are having issues getting it up and running in the first 12 hours, big ***** deal, wait until it is officially running and then over criticize.

I say the product does not work because, well, it does not work.

Some of us rely upon .Mac web access during the day. I do indeed call this a "big ***** deal." I think it is entirely fair to criticize the failure of paid services upon which I rely.

 

[MarkW]

MobileMe is now available! If you are a .Mac member that was upgraded to MobileMe, please read the .Mac to MobileMe Transition FAQ.

http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/

Hmmm... no it isn't.

 

[bbeers]

Was just in

I was just in a few minutes ago. long enough to see how things work briefly and verify that the push is working to all iPhones with software 2.0 installed on them. When the web interface maybe down it looks as things are still running in the background.

I can't wait for this to be final and done with.

 

[arian19]

me.com is down but https://auth.apple.com/authenticate works

 

[TheKrillr]

And support push, and give you a proper webdisk. Oh, and it has to stop sucking with Mail.App (OSX or iPhone).

I'm with Gmail now, but the issues I've had with using it on IMAP are making me switch to MobileMe. I can't stand that duplicate email bug any more, or the deleted emails' limbo bug.

I use Macs all day, and the better integration is well worth paying for. It's not every day that Apple's going to relaunch the service. Besides, people are overdoing this - the services still work, it's just the web apps that don't.

To be fair, some services are not working. I still cannot get my Mac to sync with .Mac/MobileMe, authentication error.

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

We're paying money for something that's broken, given no alternatives ).Mac is dead), and given no explanation as to what's going on, or when to expect a fix. Some might call it theft, some might call it incompetence. Some others might call it a class action lawsuit, if they don't get their act together soon.

Why are people so upset?

 

[eddiejames2]

me.com is down but https://auth.apple.com/authenticate works

This link never works, stop posting it.

 

[HLdan]

I agree with both of your observations - they are at the heart of my comments:

POOR implementation design and POOR execution.

Specious "bashing" comments about me using .Mac for my low bandwidth business needs totally miss the point - this is a failure that should not have been. .Mac has served me well - even with some of its increasing reliability issues.

But this - 15 hours and still not up and working.......

You using the word "failure" is totally displaced. Did Apple make a statement that they could not get the transition to work and they are shutting it down? No. I understand your frustration, (Somewhat....) but think about, how productive is it to complain here about it? We can't do anything about it other than complain to Apple which is what you should be doing, not here.

 

[Zangoose]

Why can't apple accept PayPal or Solo as a payment? Well yeah ok, I wanted to get the 60 day trial and you need to put in a credit card information before completing the trial account. Yeah fine, but no Solo options <_<. So there is no chance of me getting mobileME now unless they start accepting PayPal/Solo. Or I could just wait until its out in the stores as boxed versions?

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

We're paying money for something that's broken, given no alternatives (.Mac is dead), and given no explanation as to what's going on, or when to expect a fix. Some might call it theft, some might call it incompetence. Some others might call it a class action lawsuit, if they don't get their act together soon.

Why are people so upset?

 

[mike12806]

Okay, maybe to push the discussion a little past the obvious....

If I currently have a gmail account, what is my easiest way to transition to MobileMe? Forward my gmail account to my mobileme? Help!

 

[mrmidway111]

mobile me software download package

this is the mobile me soft ware download, this will install the mobilme into your system preferences and will have you try and sign on but not possible right now


http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...MJmcKHHGWGr7kKtsdpnvw4VfD8VxbSfy/MobileMe.pkg

 

[mr.iso]

I agree, they can run servers with exchange on them and do. It might be that Apple makes competing servers that run OSX Leopard server. After this example of Apple enterprise infrastructure and migration they probably will stick to their existing technology. IMHO it is not good to shine a spot light on a product that is not ready. They have been shining that light on enterprise pretty hard ramping for this release, and the iPhone 3G/ 2.0 software.

The MobileMe services that are currently broken are not services that Leopard Server provides.

 

[trekkie604]

why are they still letting people log in when the service is still clearly not running properly? Disable the login servers, fix the problem and then re-enable them... That solution would make more sense imo, rather than letting people poke around a broken system.

 

[me_94501]

would expect some form of remuneration for that sort of downtime - perhaps a free month added on to each subscription.

Oh come on. One free month for one day of inconvenience?

As other have said, this is a pretty major transition. And sometimes, even if you thought you planned for everything, stuff happens. I can attest for that when part of my site decided to fail right before we were set to relaunch. It happens. Be patient.

 

[sanford]

How about a summation of the snowball fight:

No one is happy that some .mac and MobileMe service are not functioning at even the nominal level for us. Some people are most upset because they relied on .mac for mission-critical Web applications. This was clearly a mistake, no matter what they feel Apple promised in the bargain, as evidenced by a rollout that requires an outage as opposed to the sort of two-stage rollout you get with mission-critical hosting services: the entire architecture exists twice, and when the new one is as good to go as humanly possible, they roll it forward, it takes mere minutes, perhaps an hour to stabilize the whole process.

So, on the one side of the argument, try to understand these folks were not expecting this sort of service outage and were not aware these things could happen with this service. On the other side of the argument, you folks have learned that .mac/MobileMe is not acceptable for mission-critical business applications if you're business can't easily withstand a couple days of TOTAL outage. (Yes, I know email works fine, but in future, everyone should assume you could get two days of TOTAL outage.) You need either a full fallback solution, or a mission-critical in-house or out-sourced hosting solution.

The argument "Yes, we can" and that this .mac/MobileMe outage represents mediocrity doesn't really apply here. This is more like the muni water company is replacing mains in your area, and they leave a notice on your door that water will be out on Thursday at least six hours, but could run indefinitely longer, circumstances depending. Apple is applying the reasonable amount of effort to bring the service fully operational, a day before it even applies to it's primary purpose, integration with iPhone firmware 2.0, for THIS LEVEL OF SERVICE. It's not mediocrity, it's merely application of resources commensurate with level of service sold.