MobileMe's Push Services Detailed, No Mac to Mobile Me 'Push'

[HLdan]

Oh sure, just make stuff up about me, why not. Fanboy can't stand the slightest bit of dissent against the Holy Company so let's just make things up! You have NO CLUE what I'm going to do, heck neither do I!

Unlike anyone with emotional attachments to an operating system (*cough cough*), I will stay rational and make a judgement based on the merits of the service. I'd love for it to be worth keeping, that's WHY I complain (out of disappointment and knowledge that they can do better) but the fact of the matter is that right now, practically the same thing can be done for free with Google and some sync addons.

Apple's offering is a little more convenient, but also requires sacrifices (isn't this always the case). Push service is one of the conveniences that might make it - and the expense - worthwhile... but if it's impossible to depend on the accuracy of the data from one place to the next then I'm afraid the free service from Google wins! What use is instant data if it's all garbage?

Microsoft don't lose customers? Please. They've only ever had my custom once. With the likes of Linux and OS X under the belt of experience, I make choices based on logic, not childish lap-dog loyalty or emotional attachments.

Oh, I'm a fanboy??? Take a look at your sig. Apple TOOK all your money, not mine. As for what I said earlier, yep, I'm not wrong, you've been holding on to Apple a long time regardless of their flaws. I gave no implication that I was annoyed by your criticism towards Apple. As a matter of fact I mentioned that MobileMe totally needs help. Your fanboy comment is displaced and just a negative reaction to my comment. Obviously YOU can't take criticism without childish name calling. Think of something better. I was proving you wrong about you pretending to give up on MobileMe if things don't get better. Your sig says it all.

 

[onemac]

Hey, that is 3 out of 4 bad launches

Wow. I'm a huge Apple supporter and that's not gonna change but this does seem VERY poor.

Let's review:

iPhone 3G launch - big problems with activation, ATT has appears to have had no white phones on display, and inventory seems low compared to the last launch and no iPhone dock inclusion feels crappy.

iPhone 2.0 Software launch - Many phones unintentionally bricked, software is very buggy with stuttering when scrolling, apps crashing and it's already been unlocked.

App Store launch - so far this seems to be the only launch not ridden with problems...yet.

MobileMe - Confusion / misrepresentation of what is actually "Push", up and down many times since "live" date.

Like I said, I'm a huge fan but I'm a bit disappointed as I've grown accustomed to a much higher standard with Apple then this and it all had such incredible potential to be the biggest and best launch. I'm sure all will be redeemed but not forgotten anytime soon. I'm so sick of reading headlines that read to likes of "Apple's apple get worms..." etc.

I bet/hope we'll see several bug fix updates in the next 30 days.

Everyone in the office today was referring to Apple as "Macrosoft."

 

[bilboa]

Well, if your "instant push" happens to take 15 seconds because the network is slow where you are, then you'll still be in trouble if you close your laptop after 10 seconds. If it's vital that your changes get pushed right away you'd want to do a manual sync anyway.

Not really.

I'd watch the spinning sync icon in the top right.

As soon as it was done spinning, I'd close the computer.

10 seconds was a slight exaggeration too.

I do understand that the specific time intervals we're using are just for illustration. I'd say though that sitting there watching for the spinning to start and finish is the same as manually syncing for all practical purposes. You could just as well have done a couple of extra mouse clicks in the same amount of time. Either way the point is that you can't just make a change in iCal and forget about it if it's important that it get pushed immediately. You have to take the manual step of clicking sync, or sitting there watching for the sync to happen. So the only real problem here is that changes on your computer take up to 15 minutes to get pushed instead of some number of seconds.

 

[8CoreWhore]

Silly Me

To me, "Exchange for the rest of us", means it does what exchange does. MobileMe doesn't.

 

[Mindflux]

To me, "Exchange for the rest of us", means it does what exchange does. MobileMe doesn't.

That's because it does do what exchange does, with exchange.

 

[levitynyc]

Seriously, everyone on here are such babies. So what, you have to click one button...who cares?

Most people complaining are people who

A. Are on a free trial,
or

B. Already were paying for .Mac before this was announced and this is basically a free update that you are bitching about.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Seriously, everyone on here are such babies. So what, you have to click one button...who cares?

Most people complaining are people who

A. Are on a free trial,
or

B. Already were paying for .Mac before this was announced and this is basically a free update that you are bitching about.

C. Purchased this product prior to the release date as the functions advertised finally completed the old .Mac package and made it attractive.

 

[shiny-blanket]

It is possible to turn off the sync alert? It's getting old, fast.

 

[Cloudane]

Oh, I'm a fanboy??? Take a look at your sig. Apple TOOK all your money, not mine. As for what I said earlier, yep, I'm not wrong, you've been holding on to Apple a long time regardless of their flaws. I gave no implication that I was annoyed by your criticism towards Apple. As a matter of fact I mentioned that MobileMe totally needs help. Your fanboy comment is displaced and just a negative reaction to my comment. Obviously YOU can't take criticism without childish name calling. Think of something better. I was proving you wrong about you pretending to give up on MobileMe if things don't get better. Your sig says it all.

I don't get it, which side are you batting for? Your sig seems to imply Pro-Apple/Anti-Windows and yet your posts seem to be the other way. Or are you just here to troll? Also, funny, I seem to remember this thing called a 'sale' and 'transfer of goods' based on personal decision making. Neither Apple nor Microsoft or anyone else have 'taken all of my money' and if they had I'd be onto the police by now!

'holding on to Apple a long time regardless of their flaws' - so? I also hold on to Windows regardless of its flaws, and Linux regardless of its flaws. They all have flaws. Show me a perfect operating system, and I'll show you a fool.

I'm not pretending about anything, if remains crap (which it currently is) then I won't subscribe after the 60 day trial. Just like I tried .Mac a year ago and decided it was crap and didn't subscribe (would you have also called me a liar back then?). I thought this might've been different, a rewrite, so I'm giving it a chance, sure... but you can't predict the future any better than I can!

The reason for the negative reaction is that essentially you are calling me a liar, which is unacceptable. I don't know why you have this chip on your shoulder about other people's choices.

 

[Digitalclips]

Seriously, everyone on here are such babies. So what, you have to click one button...who cares?

Most people complaining are people who

A. Are on a free trial,
or

B. Already were paying for .Mac before this was announced and this is basically a free update that you are bitching about.

Talking of free trial ... my account is full family membership but on the PCs I have added MobileMe to via iTunes I notice the MobileMe PC control panel says it is a trial version. Is this referring to my account or the fact MobileMe on a PC is trial in general?

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Mine shows up on my PC as 'Full Member'. I guess it's not getting the right info about your account off the servers.

 

[ianhhh]

no creditcard, no honey

so cos i choose not to have a credit card i cant trial mobileme.. thanks apple, only spent several grand with u over the last few years.. aint really a FREE trial is it?

 

[nvbrit]

so cos i choose not to have a credit card i cant trial mobileme.. thanks apple, only spent several grand with u over the last few years.. aint really a FREE trial is it?

Yes it's free, they do not automatically bill your credit card at the end of the trial, in fact they don't even hold the information - it's a verification piece only and you can use any credit or debit card with the leading card providors

 

[jglyon]

duped

In my experience, Apple has always delivered what they advertised. Until now. What was billed as "exchange for the rest of us" is just a half-baked, marginal improvement over manual syncing. 15 minute update interval?? c'mon.

I guess we're going to have to start reading the fine print with Apple from now on.

 

[bretm]

It is possible to turn off the sync alert? It's getting old, fast.

What's a sync alert? I've been on .mac from day one and I've never heard of nor seen a sync alert.

 

[bretm]

Found the problem with me>mac push/sync

I got a airport extreme update today and was hoping it would fix something with my lack of mobileme>mac push (automated sync).

Many people are having an automated sync when they add an event or contact on mobile me. Somehow it triggers your mac to sync. So, since it seems to not be happening to people with incompatible routers and some have adjusted their router to get it working I figured maybe the extreme update would fix my airport router. Nope.

But what did get it working was disconnecting the router and going straight from cable modem to the mac and avoiding the router altogether. Of course I have no wifi or vonage in the house now.

So that confirms it for me. The problem is in fact Apple's very own cutting edge Airport Extreme wireless router. It prevents MobileMe to Mac push/sync. Without it in the mix, any change made on mobileme triggers a sync event within 5 or 10 seconds. Very cool.

Now that I know the problem is the router, I'll wait for an apple fix or someone on the net to figure it out. At least I know it's not my own stupidity over an obvious setting or something.

 

[Mindflux]

Now that I know the problem is the router, I'll wait for an apple fix or someone on the net to figure it out. At least I know it's not my own stupidity over an obvious setting or something.

I've found if I restart the router I can get the pushes from Me.com for 10-15 minutes. So the Extreme must close up a port during it's bootup that Me.com needs to tell iSync to run.

Earlier someone mentioned UDP port 5353, but I can't get my Extreme to open it. Says it's a duplicate entry.

 

[Stewie]

Which is why this will almost certainly be fixed, and rather soon. I can see why people are upset, but this *will* get taken care of.

And you know this how? For all we know, apple considers this working as designed and is not making any effort to fix it or change the design.

 

[Eric S.]

What's a sync alert? I've been on .mac from day one and I've never heard of nor seen a sync alert.

I don't know if this is what was meant originally but I have very little data in my calendars/contacts as yet, and sync throws up a warning on the screen whenever it updates because I'm updating more than 5% of the data on my computer. Interestingly, under Windows XP on my Macbook if I go to the MobileMe control panel and select sync options, there's a checkbox to disable this warning. But under MacOS X there is no such option in the MobileMe preferences.

It looks like the only way to get rid of the warning is to populate the calendar/contacts with more info.

 

[kdog1176]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

I got a airport extreme update today and was hoping it would fix something with my lack of mobileme>mac push (automated sync).

Many people are having an automated sync when they add an event or contact on mobile me. Somehow it triggers your mac to sync. So, since it seems to not be happening to people with incompatible routers and some have adjusted their router to get it working I figured maybe the extreme update would fix my airport router. Nope.

But what did get it working was disconnecting the router and going straight from cable modem to the mac and avoiding the router altogether. Of course I have no wifi or vonage in the house now.

So that confirms it for me. The problem is in fact Apple's very own cutting edge Airport Extreme wireless router. It prevents MobileMe to Mac push/sync. Without it in the mix, any change made on mobileme triggers a sync event within 5 or 10 seconds. Very cool.

Now that I know the problem is the router, I'll wait for an apple fix or someone on the net to figure it out. At least I know it's not my own stupidity over an obvious setting or something.

I have the Apple Extreme router and automated sync does work for updates from MM to my Macbook.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

I have the Apple Extreme router and automated sync does work for updates from MM to my Macbook.

Same here, any changes made on MM are seen on my MacBook in 15 to 20 seconds. My AEBS is causing me no problems at all!

 

[peterbaby]

If they want to use cutting edge AJAX technologies they should provide a simpler fallback site for incompatible browser.

Agreed, that should even be a basic marketing requirement due to the IE 6 market, more than just sentimental or competition decisions!

 

[Cloudane]

FWIW, I've used a direct connection to the 'net (no router, no firewall, no nuthin') and it still works as newly advertised - no push in either direction where the Mac is concerned.

Embarrassingly, Exchange works beautifully between PC Outlook, the iPhone and Entourage on the Mac. It all pushes perfectly, including the iPhone whether it's on GSM or Wifi or whatever. At least Microsoft can get it right

 

[Daveoc64]

Why doesn't .me support IE7? I can no longer check my home email from work.

IE7 is not a legacy browser. If they want to use cutting edge AJAX technologies they should provide a simpler fallback site for incompatible browser.

Apple is just being difficult.

Browser support has less to do with what browsers can cope with MobileMe and what Apple wants you to use.

Firefox 3.0 is unsupported on Linux, despite it being just as standards compliant as the Windows/Mac version.

Of course, the irony is that their "Browser Unsupported" page seems to loop around several times with some browsers, no matter how many times you click on "Continue".

By all means try and get people to use Safari, but that's never going to happen in a work/public computer environment.

 

[Daveoc64]

Seriously, everyone on here are such babies. So what, you have to click one button...who cares?

Most people complaining are people who

A. Are on a free trial,
or

B. Already were paying for .Mac before this was announced and this is basically a free update that you are bitching about.

Or D. a brand new subscriber who joined because www.apple.com/mobileme/ told me that it would work how I wanted it to.

It's not just clicking one button, it's having to remember to click that button. The whole point of having a push service is that it...pushes.

You wouldn't buy a DVR that required you to press and hold record for 30 seconds before a program started.

As far as we (posters here and in other places) can tell this would be very simple to implement.

Apple itself thought this and as such the site made claims that were false.

It's possible that they'll rectify the situation, but the article saying that this is how it should work and the hush hush changes to apple.com suggest that we will continue to get a 75% push product.