Gmail DOES have push email, and has had for a long time now. The problem is not gmail but the iPhone's lack of support for IMAP IDLE. This support was FINALLY added to mail.app 3.4 (under Accounts/Advanced tab "Use IDLE command if the server supports it") but AFAIK the iPhone still does not have it. I get my gmail emails immediately on my Mac via mail.app and it works great. I wish I could say the same for MobileMe.
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Apple Starting to Restore MobileMe Email Access, Some Email Lost
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So what should people rely on for their mission-critical email if not a service they actually pay for in contrast to the free ones out there? Any suggestion?
The iphone uses P-IMAP (which is new AFAIK). Google could implement that and give iphone users push imap features. Not sure how apple does the calendar/address book sync though and whether that can easily be emulated.
I'm currently running google apps (aka. gmail with your own domain) and mobileme side by side and seeing how they cope (and which is more important to me eg. the lack of server side rules on mobileme is a pain in the ass, but is it more of a pain in the ass than the lack of push to the phone?).
I read about all these issues with MobileMe and I'm sure like many, I'll wait til they get worked out. My father has been a .Mac user for 4 years and he's definitely been affected by this.
On a separate note, Can you see SJ pulling all these MobileMe people into a room, pounding his fist on the table and saying "Call your families, NO ONE goes home until this is fixed! Make this right and fast!" Then after glaring at them, turns on his heel and storms out of the room.
I can totally see this.
Coachingguy
On a separate note, Can you see SJ pulling all these MobileMe people into a room, pounding his fist on the table and saying "Call your families, NO ONE goes home until this is fixed! Make this right and fast!" Then after glaring at them, turns on his heel and storms out of the room.
I can totally see this.
Coachingguy
I think that'd be an obivous, if not moot point, by now. I think anyone associated with MobileMe at Apple is already feeling this pressure, and has been since day one. I'd imagine most Apple employees are extremely passionate about what they do, and want this to work correctly as much or more than all of us....
I have all my email dating back to 2004, other than down time and some delays receiving emails, it has been fairly uneventful for me.
Glad I dropped it!
When you're paying close to $100 per year, it should be reliable! I'm glad I dumped .Mac last year. I don't depend on e-mail to be saved on some server - I download the stuff I want to keep and back it up myself. I was hoping MobileMe would be an improvement, but it sounds like a step backwards.
When you're paying close to $100 per year, it should be reliable! I'm glad I dumped .Mac last year. I don't depend on e-mail to be saved on some server - I download the stuff I want to keep and back it up myself. I was hoping MobileMe would be an improvement, but it sounds like a step backwards.
I think Steve Jobs has taken his eye off the ball over the past few months or so. Why do people think that is.? (hint: think health)
Leopard - Whoops (up until 10.5.4) and acknowledged by the big man himself with the advanced info for 'Snow Leopard'. Sounds like Vista --> Windows 7
iPhone 3G Launch - activation fiasco, not enough stock, etc.
MobileMe Launch - Enough said and still ongoing.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Leopard - Whoops (up until 10.5.4) and acknowledged by the big man himself with the advanced info for 'Snow Leopard'. Sounds like Vista --> Windows 7
iPhone 3G Launch - activation fiasco, not enough stock, etc.
MobileMe Launch - Enough said and still ongoing.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Exactly! The wording of that message ("Steve Jobs has asked me...") is just strange. I've always felt the Mail.app and .Mac teams to be slightly different or disconnected from the rest of Apple. Like they want to do things their way, carve their own path, rather than following Apple's lead to a successful product rollout.
There is absolutely NO excuse for any email to have been lost. This is Apple -- creator of server software and hardware -- where were the redundant backups from the start?
I call overconfidence, or incompetence. One of those led to someone now paying attention to the details and not noticing a problem until it was too late.
Either way, this needs to be fixed and fast. "Every other day or so" is not good enough.
Thankfully, I'm not affected, but my heart goes out to those who are.
If email is that important to you why are you using Mobile Me? Its a cheap service aimed at home users and it offers no guarantees of availability or service. You should be using a decent host that will charge you more but give you a far higher level of service and support.
Whilst I sympathise there is no way in hell I'd use a service such as Mobile Me or any of the similar email services for business / work - you're just asking for trouble.
I disagree.
Technology (both hardware and software) is getting way more complex than it used to, and Apple strives to hides that complexity behind a simple user "interface". Just because the iPods and iPhones are so easy to use doesn't mean they aren't highly complex inside.
Combined with this increased complexity is increased connectivity. Devices are talking to other devices more and more, and that communication creates dependencies that must be monitored and maintained constantly, either by computer or human. This adds to the complexity, as well.
I believe this is a case of arrogance and mismanagement. Someone (or the whole MobileMe team) was overconfident, assuming their internal testing was enough. Apple was overconfident that rolling out 3 major products at once would go smoothly.
Overall, it was a mess. They wanted a bang, to prove to the world (and businesses) that they are a big player. But it backfired.
It's not how many times you fall down, but how many times you get up, and Apple's shift in open communication is a positive step in that direction.
It's good to know Apple is working hard and it's unfortunate they lost some emails, but that's really partially the users' fault--shouldn't be giving out the email address to people when you know it doesn't work yet!
And finally the status update--happy to know Steve is unhappy and is stepping in. I wonder if they'll post what users have requested--say adding TLDs for adding user domains.
And finally the status update--happy to know Steve is unhappy and is stepping in. I wonder if they'll post what users have requested--say adding TLDs for adding user domains.
Think. Reading his interview with the times today then Think putting this meme without facts to rest.
Seriously.
I disagree. I use my @mac.com for business purposes, but I don't hold my business hostage to just *one* service provider. .Mac has been excellent for me for 7 years. It has always been my one *reliable* email provider, traveling with me as I've moved between ISPs and web hosts.
This Mobile Me disaster is a high-profile example of why redundancy and backups are crucial to any digital workflow. As we become more and more dependent on technology, so should we become less and less trusting of it, and put those fallback plans into place.
I don't think Mobile Me should be "free. I'm glad this is a pay-for service.
I don't think a class-action lawsuit is appropriate.
I don't think a free year of service is appropriate. A month was generous enough.
Suing Apple or asking for free service is not going to bring back the missing email or make the service any better. Only Apple working hard to resolve the problems will do that. Apple is learning a hard lesson here, and it isn't over yet. I expect Mobile Me will get the attention it needs to be a great service once this is all said and done.
I don't think a class-action lawsuit is appropriate.
I don't think a free year of service is appropriate. A month was generous enough.
Suing Apple or asking for free service is not going to bring back the missing email or make the service any better. Only Apple working hard to resolve the problems will do that. Apple is learning a hard lesson here, and it isn't over yet. I expect Mobile Me will get the attention it needs to be a great service once this is all said and done.
That summarises the problem nicely.
Apple should have backup procedures in place for all of the data on MobileMe. They either don't have any, or they didn't work.
The only tiny hope that I have is that Apple didn't have time to implement their backup strategy due to all of the other problems MobileMe had.
Maybe someone could buy them a Time Capsule.
I assume that you're referring to the following article in the NY Times.
Steve Jobs article - NY Times
Ok, I've read the article and it still appears that he has a problem with his health. All I'm saying is that if you have an illness that has been bugging you for the past year or so, it takes a lot out of you, physically and mentally.
The article mentions a quote, Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple.. Because Apple is perceived to be so dependant on Steve Jobs, if he isn't running on all cylinders, he's not 100% on the job and Apple as a result suffers, which is what I think is happening.
During a big rollout for a new service stuff always happens. Apple unfortunately had the public stuff happen rather than the background stuff. That's why beta testing should be done on a large scale. Some factors:
1. The bean counters don't allow purchase of the equipment needed. This is the big one.
2. The vendors overstate the capability of their equipment. This can be accounted for but all-to-often the folks in charge of the project forget what they've learned in the past and rely on vendor recommendations without question. This always leads to problems because the vendors' professional service folks typically don't understand the unique qualities of their applications when they get really big. No doubt there are technical gurus working for the vendor that do, but they aren't going to be the ones working with the customer setting up the system--even if the customer is big like Apple.
3. There is no way, other than a large scale public beta, to replicate the actual conditions. All that a test lab can do is provide a "wiggle test". A public beta didn't happen here and the results were predictable.
4. If you've outsourced the project to a third party, then you have no control over the quality.
5. Each really big environment is unique (Apple, Yahoo, Google, etc.). There is always a period where you are learning how the new application suite actually works in a particular enviornment. If you're smart, it's only the first rollout that has major difficulties. If you're lucky, the customers don't notice or at least aren't too inconvenienced by it.
Sorry to hear you lost work. I recommend:
1. Purchasing a domain your-domain.com with a registrar that offers free MX forwarding (e.g. GoDaddy), and advertising whatever@your-domain.com as your e-mail address.
2. Setting this address to forward to your @me.com / @mac.com account using the registrar's configuration pages.
In the event that MobileMe goes down, you can simply change the forwarding temporarily to another address (e.g. @gmail.com). If you're worried that the registrar's mail handling (MX) may go down, preventing the initial forwarding, you can sign up for a backup MX/forwarding service - e.g. rollernet.us.
If you're looking for something more robust and way more configurable than MobileMe, there are various dedicated for-pay mail providers e.g. tuffmail.com, fastmail.fm. Choosing one of these may give you better uptime and productivity, but it's still worth following all the precautions above about stand-by provision.
No im confident it's just 1%
Reason your hearin so many people complainin is
1) some people may not e having troubles at all, they just want to bitch about something
2) you hear from the complainers more often then the praisers. Noone is comin online to say "WOW mobileMe is working fantastically" meanwhile some people come online just for the purpose of saying "APPLE SUCKS mobileME wont work !!!!!"
3) 1% of approxmitly 750,000 = 7500 ... which admittedly is a large chunk of people, but I doubt there is more people then that having issues.
ITs true this whole situation is a giant **** up on apples part... not saying we should forgive apple, but maybe we shouldnt be so harsh? There must be tons of people on these forums with large servers and are aware how difficult a big server switch can be. Well in apples case take your big server, and multiply is by 100... and thats about the size of apples server that they were transfering over, and im sure TONS of data had to be converted. REALLY its a sham something went wrong, but at the same time its almost inevitable.
So instead of blindly yelling "BOO APPLE!" think about it... Its obvious apple is trying hard to fix the situation. (whether they really ARE working 24/7 is questionable i'd say more like 20/7 (even apple employees need to sleep sometime)) For some reason I think if Microsoft had this same problem, they would put as muhc effort in to fix. Now microsoft would fix it ASAP needless to say... I just dont see microsoft apologizing, and making a blog and, giving away free extensions to the subscription.
I don't know where David Pogue is getting his data, but he says that it's 1% out of a far greater number:
"Now, even if 1 percent is accurate, Apple has 2 million .Mac/MobileMe customers. So that's at least 20,000 people."
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2008/07/24/technology/circuitsemail/index.html?8cir&emc=cir#continue
They have people working on it 24/7 eh?
Somehow I doubt that..
But anyway, at least they ARE working on fixing it.
Agreed something this buggy should have never been released in the first place until at least a majority of said bugs have been resolved, but thats life.
Not everything is going to be all hunky-dory in life...might as well get used to it.
As a person who maintains online courses for a major university, I enjoyed your post. Mostly because you echo the thoughts of our students when our course management site is unavailable. Any outage is bad, but end users often fail to understand that fixing problems like this isn't as easy as rebooting the machine. I have no doubt that Apple is working 24/7 to fix the problem. But when the problems are elusive and compounded, they are often difficult and time consuming to fix. Not an excuse for the outage, but I am sure the programmers/techs are doing everything they can to restore the service. Once it's fixed, enjoy the improvements that have been made!
Hey Apple, how about you just get me my frickin' iPhone already? It's been two weeks...I'm going to be too annoyed to even want it anymore by the time it gets here.