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Apple's MobileMe Mess

by: Joel West July 24, 2008 | about stocks: AAPL    

Joel West

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As part of the iPhone 3G launch, Apple also switched its Mac.com to me.com, which it now calls “Mobile Me”. Now it’s clear that the switch has been a fiasco. Walt Mossberg trashed it today, as did David Pogue. Apparently Apple is stonewalling as to the extent of the problems.

In particular, losing (or making inaccessible) e-mail is a big deal: people don’t like to be without e-mail, even briefly. I remember one university CIO telling me that any time e-mail went down, he’d get a call to his desk in less than 5 minutes.

Pogue has it exactly right:

O.K., look: Even big companies screw up. Intel's done it. Microsoft's done it. Google's done it.

Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea for Apple to launch four enormously complex initiatives -- the iPhone 3G, the App Store, the iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe -- all on the same day.

I understand why MobileMe is important: Mac.com had a very low penetration among Mac users and none among Windows users, and they hope to create something that every iPhone buyer will subscribe to.

Still, it seems like it would have made sense to launch the MobileMe later, after the other initiatives are out there; the others have a bigger impact on the bottom line, and MobileMe could have waited a few months until it was ready to go.

Steve Jobs has a reputation of suffering fools not at all. I wonder who will lose their job over this — and, more importantly, what lessons the company will learn about hubris.

Disclosure: No positions

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This article has 16 comments:

  •  
    Jul 24 06:08 PM
    I became a major Applephite in the last few years and I have to say the .Me is .Mess. Unreliable, unpredictable, slow as Vista and double the trouble with what shows up on our group of 4 iphones! I am long on Apple and perhaps they may need to start thinking of a NEW iJobbs.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 06:35 PM
    Its funny, just as Apple get close enough to be compared with Microsoft, we realize Microsoft are actually not that evil anymore and Apple are terrible once again. High prices, every product with major flaws, incompatibility, lust for monopoly. OK, Apple own the place with simplicity and sleek design, but its got way too many flaws, I got the feeling its past its peak and won't be back for awhile.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 06:47 PM
    HUBRIS???

    Yeah - there may be big time problems with .me, but it is a big and complex system, and it may have the problem that way more people are banging on it than expected. Personally I have no doubt that they will work it out.

    As for hubris... Her e is the company that has earned more innovation awards than any other 3 companies combined, have grown their earnings some 300+% over the last few years, and YOU have the *%#@ hubris to try to tell them how to run their business?????

    You gotta be kidding.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 06:47 PM
    Even Job's reality distortion field can't fix everything.

    Jimmy said it very well...
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 07:00 PM
    Jimmy's an idiot - MSFT is still just as evil as ever, and it is total BS that every Apple product has "major flaws" - that is absolute nonsense. Where do people get this crap? And why do people post who have no clue what they are writing about? Apple has the highest customer satisfaction ratings of anyone in the industry across all of its product lines, and also the highest ratings for service and support. Further, their products are shown time and again to be priced around the same price points of COMPARABLY equipped products, and APPLE provides MORE VALUE hands down based on uptime, ease of use, amount of time people spend actually using their products, and based on the superior operating system and additional software you get when you buy an Apple computer. BTW, Jimmy, people are still lining up EVERY DAY at the Apple stores to buy a new 3G iPhone, even this long after the initial launch! Go figure, must be another MSFT huh.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 07:29 PM
    What is this "Reality Distortion Field" crap??

    Jobs gets on stage and he is excited about his products. They are innovative, incredibly well designed, and easy to use.

    Do people think that some 50 million (or however many) people have bought iPods ONLY because of some "reality distortion field" induced by Jobs? Come off it! You gotta be kidding!

    And the 40-50% YoY growth in Mac sales each quarter - ALL these people are just dupes of Jobs? Give me a break!

    You do not like The Mac? Fine - keep with your Windows machine. Don't like iPod? Buy a Zune if you like. Don't like iPhone? No problem - you are free to choose. Just get out of the #@%# way, quit wining, and let the rest of us choose what WE like the best!
    ---

    As for Jimmy...

    Past peak?? They have probably already sold 2 - 3 million iPhone 3Gs, by now there are more than 30 MILLION iPhone Apps downloaded, and they have not even started selling in more than half the countries.

    Past peak. You ARE joking - yes?
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 07:36 PM
    maybe if APPL's market cap is raised to $1T, they might develop an even better walkman and cell phone.


    what a waste of resources both APPL and MSFT are. we are in a tech slowdown.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 07:41 PM
    I think Jobs health is the key issue here
    NOT the hic ups that is happening with the
    equipment. Apple will straighten those issues
    out, they work around the clock to take care
    of them. Is Steve healthy, that my question.
    MG Dakis
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 09:28 PM
    yawn
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 10:26 PM
    I'm a big fan of Apple and must admit that MobileMe was not ready to launch. I hope they bring in up to speed fast, because it will be very cool when it finally works.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 24 11:49 PM
    My mobileme account works great. Make a change at home work or on my iPhone everything sycs. So a few people are having problems and the final review is that mobileme is not ready. The problem is expectation. When you get an apple product the expectation is for a perfect experience. How was the vista launch when your printer did not work due to no drivers. People yawned because they expected crap.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 25 12:32 AM
    MobileMe is working great for me too. Mail gets pushed to my iPod touch in a couple of seconds.
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 25 04:32 AM
    If you think this is bad you need to go to the new Yahoo page.
    They fixed something that was not even broken and will not listen to any feed back as most of it says, please give us back the old not broken My Yahoo
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 25 08:24 AM
    apple will get to the bottom of the problem and square it away quickly and trust that it will not be a band aid work around but a true fix. Mine is working fine. if any of you have had networking problems you would know fixes are a lot of educated guesses and trial and error propositions individual users can inadvertently mess things up (we had a stock boy search for an item that did not exist that put our company into an infinite loop that lasted 3 days) sometimes what you fix breaks something else there are a lot of reboots and reloads involved have a little patience here and remember if your a windows user searching the internet for some obscure .dll to get your scanner to work or calling tech support and having to rewrite code over the phone. sit back and the apple engineers will come out the other side with even better software (6 years in the making VISTA! yeah lets let Microsoft fix our phones!)
    Reply
  •  
    Jul 25 09:53 AM
    saying that Apple is as bad as microsoft is like saying a pimple is like having small pox! Apple will fix the problems in short order. i have a .mac account and never any problems with it. and when did Microsoft put out anything innovative? they stole windows from apple and it's still cumbersome and inelegant. and then there's the Zune. you saw everyone line up for that bit of excitement. Apple is the most innovative company on the planet and fiscally secure and responsible. it's the center ring of tech companies and will be here long after Vista rides off into the sunset.
    Reply
  •  
    Aug 13 09:05 PM
    Mobileme is terrible, but the response from Apple is much worse. My .Mac websites used to be available to everyone, now no-one but an Apple owner can see them. No phone support at all, you must use "chat" support. I logged on the other day and it said I'd have to wait 22 minutes. 2 hours and five minutes later no one had still answered and I couldn't stay away from work any longer. Websites still don't work, and the chat support has indicated no help available for over a week. This is just like owning a PC and to think I switched to a Mac to avoid this kind of clusterfuc*. Simply pathetic. I wish I'd never switched to Apple. Same problems, different name.
    Reply
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