The new “Mobile Me” from Mac sucks so bad that I am considering giving up my dotmac email address and throwing in the towel. Because you know what? It kind of sucked ANYway, but I cut it some slack because I paid for it and blah blah blah – but this is bullshit. And their response has been bullshit. Or I should say non-response. If you don’t have an iPhone, you’re screwed, basically, and I have no plans on getting an iPhone. So if I want to stop in at an Internet cafe to check my email, they had BETTER have Firefox or Safari as Internet options (and there are reports that Firefox has been frozen by Mobile Me) – otherwise I will not be able to check my email. I have a blackberry – so that’s good – at least I am “mobile” and can receive emails wherever I am … but honest to God. What a crap release. 2 days outage. No explanation. “Everything you love about Mac and more …” they said. Uhm, no. Not EVERYTHING. Talk to the people who miss the iCards that you took away with no warning. If it were “EVERYTHING” then the iCards wouldn’t have disappeared. I have spent HOURS on the forums at Macrumors, etc., and am trying to come to a decision, based on the complaints of others, and my own. And to be honest, dotmac was never great shakes, anyway. It’s such a pain to change email addresses, but seriously, Mac: this new application is pathetic. Not to mention I hate the cutesiness of the “look” of it. I hate the cloud. I hate the “me”, in general. It sounds infantile. It would be much more Apple-ish to call it “iMobile”. But then, of course, nobody asked me and there are all these Apple bulldogs on the forums saying stuff like, “Well, I’m sure if YOU were in charge, everything would be perfect.” hahahaha In a way, I am enjoying the drama – the forums are awesome reading (and actually there is a lot of great information handed out, too – thank God, because Apple’s support for this has SUCKED.) Anyway. I hate “Mobile Me” which sounds like it is made for tweens, and just basically was released way too early. There are way more problems with it than I can even list – because I don’t use a lot of the applications – but the whole “Push” thing has been a disaster for some people, and blah blah blah. An issue too is that there are some out there who think that complaining is somehow “unfair” to Apple. Guys. Grow up. They are a company. They are a business. They must be held accountable like any other business for things that go epically wrong. That’s all. I love my Mac too. I’m not ever going back to a PC. But to call a spade a spade is not being “unfair”. Your loyalty is clouding your judgment. I guess I’m not that much of a fanatic that I will protect a company – even when it goes wrong. The main problem for me is the web application, and not being able to get mail from certain locations with IE. I get that IE is strolling into the tarpit. I hate IE. I prefer Firefox. But to deliberately develop Mobile Me (gag) to not be compatible at ALL with the existing browser on the majority of PCs – that’s just bad business. I know it’s also cutting edge, I get that. I know they are pushing the envelope. They are looking ahead. Fine, look ahead. But making sure your stuff is compatible with things a year, 2 years, 3 years ago – is part of developing new technology. Eventually things will be phased out – but we’re not there yet. So I’m in a public library doing research, say. And I don’t have my blackberry. And I need to check my email, to send something out, or whatever. I do a lot of my personal business through email. We all do. Unless that public library has Safari and Firefox (and, well, my local library does NOT, I’m just saying) – then I am screwed. That is bad, Apple. You should at least have kept the .Mac going alongside of Mobile Me (I can’t even say that without gagging) – so that 1. you could work out the MULTIPLE bugs in Mobile Me and we could all still get emails while you worked it out and 2. just for good will between you and your customers. I read some poor dude who works in Africa in the Peace Corps and relies on his dotmac to keep in contact. He has no iPhone. Of course there is not going to be deluxe Safari or Firefox browsers in the Peace Corps office. The guy is screwed. He’s going to gmail. Which also has the benefit of being FREE. Why should I pay for this bogus Mobile Me crap when it doesn’t work? I ain’t buyin’ an iPhone, Apple. If you’re trying to force my hand here, you will fail. And lemme tell you something, Apple: it really doesn’t help your cause to be snotty in response to complaints.
Basically I am just resisting changing my email again because it’s such a pain. I already have 4 or 5 email addresses, which I realize is excessive – but I am OCD and I have to compartmentalize. Blog emails go one place, acting/writing/business emails go another place, personal emails are dotmac … But I am now rethinking my strategy. To be honest, my Mac email was ALWAYS buggy. Maybe I just drank the Koolaid too. If my Yahoo account – a FREE account – was that buggy, I would get rid of it. Here I am paying for Mac email, and it’s buggy and unreliable … and I put up with it. That’s my psychological issue.
To have email (that I am paying for) be down for 2, 3, almost 4 days is insane. Thank God I have multiple emails and can get done what I need to get done, although it is not ideal. My brother and I would try to pick up our emails at the local library and Nope. No go. Next day. Nope. No go. It was obviously a major debacle had occurred – but it wasn’t until the new Mobile Me (BAH. I HATE SAYING IT) launched for real that I realized how much I hated it and how much I yearned for my .Mac mail to be back. I’m not against new technology. But you had best make sure your new technology freakin’ WORKS before launching it on loyal customers and taking away what DOES work without replacing it with something better. Bush league!
That is all.
Hahaha. I’m not laughing at your troubles, but do you remember that little angry avatar dude, madly typing until his hands are bloody stubs who beat half of his head off with his keyboard in frustration? I was totally picturing you like that as I was reading this.
That aspect of the production of technology – putting things on the market before all the bugs have been worked out – really bothers me. I haven’t used Windows Vista yet, but from what I’m hearing, it’s a nightmare. Uh, couldn’t Microsoft not unleash this crap on PAYING customers and expect them all to download the patches as the complaints roll in? They’re basically expecting the public – the PAYING public – to do their beta testing for them. I’m like you. I’ve got no beef with technology, but I will never, ever buy some fancy gadget the day it comes out. Not just because I know it will cost considerably less money in a relatively short period of time, but because companies are regularly pulling this crap now. That’s not a swipe at iPhone sidewalk sleepers or people who have to have this stuff immediately. That’s their geek thing. I’m just not that into it to go through the headache.
I love that little bloody guy! I love when his eyeball pops out in utter rage. hahahaha That is exactly what I was like! I got so fired up reading the stupid Forums – I just had to express my dissatisfaction. I wrote a letter to the Mobile Me team and said, in a much nicer more professional tone, that their new application sucked, not to mention how they have handled it. Their apology email was bogus, in my opinion.
I think they launched too early – most definitely – they’re trying to be competitive – and have the latest, greatest, blah blah blah … but this was a disaster. I’ve been through a lot of new launches – and I’ve worked in Web companies for years, and bugs are to be expected – you’re not going to have a 100% clean launch – but the problems here were excessive.
Not to mention the whole won’t-work-at-all-with-IE thing.
As a former Apple employee I can say that we/they expect folks to be seriously unhappy when things don’t work. Cause “just working” is one of the things Apple has going for it – usually.
I’ve been very unhappy with MobileMe also – but I think it has a good value for a non-iPhone user – the same as .mac did. That value is online backup.
Having an online backup is an excellent idea and that’s the main reason I have it. Of course, getting your email from a public computer is valuable if that’s something you do often. But having a backup of your data that’s off site, that won’t be stolen if someone breaks in and steals your computer and backup hard drive (you do have a backup hard drive, right?). Apple’s Backup program works well (well, with .mac it did) – and the new MobileMe gives you 20GB of storage for the same $99 that got you only 10GB on .mac.
If you do decide to drop MobileMe, let me recommend Mozy as an alternative Mac online backup. They allow unlimited online storage for $4.95 a month. And they also do online backup for Windows-based computers.
Mozy (at http://www.mozy.com) and Apple’s Backup work in the same way – you tell them what you want to back up. They then upload that data (it may take a few days if you have more than 5GB of stuff to back up) and then once the first back up is done, they will periodically (at your setting) backup only the things that have changed since the previous backup. Depending upon what you have created or downloaded that day, those subsequent backups can be very quick. And you can schedule this stuff for when you aren’t normally on the computer – though you have to leave it on, of course.
I’ve used both, Apple’s Backup worked a little better on .mac (fewer resets on the first backup, fewer problems on subsequent backups) than Mozy. But right now Backup on MobileMe isn’t working.
Pretend that I was saying this in a friendly voice, not a lecturing one or a sale pitch. And if this is old news to you, sorry.
Your comment brought out the computer service person in me.
Mutecypher – Are you kidding me?? Your comment was FAR more helpful and supportive than anything I have gotten out of Mac support in the last couple of days. Thank you!!
I have never heard of Mozy but I will look into it. Is that something I could back up my blog onto as well? Or is that too big? I realize that’s a dumb question but I am really not a techie.
My main way that I use my .mac account is the email – I realize there’s a ton more there to be used, but for now it’s all about the email – and with this Mobile Me thing and the non-IE compatability, it’s really become inconvenient in a short amount of time. I mean, I’m fine at home – and walking around with my blackberry – but as we all know, most computers have Internet Explorer – so it means you can’t just pop into an Internet cafe and check your email.
But thanks for the Mozy tip – I will check it out!!
red –
I don’t know where the data for your blog resides. If you write your stuff in Word (or some other word processing application) and then post it after editing – then those documents are on your hard drive and can be backed up by Mozy or Apple’s Backup. If they are written into a box like this one and then posted, they reside with your blog host. Same deal with the images you post – if they are first captured and then placed in iPhoto they can easily be backed up. If they are captured, then posted and not saved on your HD, then they only reside at your blog host.
I suspect that all of the comments only reside at your blog host.
If all your stuff is only at the blog host, you should ask them about how you can download your blog (archives, posts, images, and comments) periodically and store it elsewhere – on a DVD if it’s less than 4GB (with all the images you post I suspect it is much larger than that), or on your own HD and then uploaded to Mozy or MobileMe (yes, it’s a gay name). Most hosts are very reasonable about such things and will try to help you through the download.
If you do go with Mozy, the service is All-You-Can-Store, so you don’t need to worry about how big the blog is and how big your iTunes and your iPhoto libraries are, they can all be uploaded. Now, it may take several days to upload them, but that’s not such a problem.
I know that Apple wants more people in the Windows world to move the the Windows version of Safari, but I agree with you that not letting MobileMe work with IE is not a customer-centric decision.
Let me make a few more comments and suggestions.
You can set up your MobileMe email to forward to another email account. I realize this defeats some of the purpose of separate accounts, but if you wanted to keep MM for a period of time for evaluation and you ALSO wanted to be sure that you can read your MM email from a public computer – then forwarding is the thing to do. Just go to your MM email with Safari or FireFox, click on the little gear in the upper right (not the one in the lower left) and select Preferences. Then in Preferences select Other and click on the box to forward and give it the address you want to use. I’d also select the Keep a copy of the forwarded messages button.
Do you use public access computers in the same few places? If so, perhaps you could ask the owner to allow you to download Firefox. I suspect you’ve thought of that already.
And finally – still wearing my techie hat – you didn’t answer my question about having a backup hard drive. If you don’t, I would suggest that you make that more of a priority than the offsite backup. You can get a 500GB Seagate (my recommended brand for HDs) for around $100. If you are running Leopard (OS 10.5.x) then TimeMachine will give you a wonderful backup system. If you are on Tiger 10.4.11, let me recommend iBackup from Grapefruit as a great free automated backup application.
aloha
I bet you’d be a fun usability test subject.
Mitch –
If by ‘fun’ you mean ‘annoyingly capable of finding ways to break things,’ then yes.
I hate IE. I prefer Firefox.
I have never adored you more.
Firefox can be run from a USB flash drive. You can just carry one of those around with you for when you encounter a computer that doesn’t already have Firefox. However, I think a lot of public computers tend to have there USB ports locked down for security reasons, so I’m not sure how helpful this would be. Also, I’ve never done this myself, so I have no idea what kind of hoops you have to jump through to get it to work.
If you do decide to switch emails, Gmail allows you to get mail from other accounts so you’d be able to get them all in one place. I have about a half dozen different email addresses and that’s what I do. They’ve also taken your OCD into account with the Labels feature. And they’ve worked hard to make it OS / browser agnostic, so you should be able to check it from anywhere.
Mitch – yeah, I can see the feedback sheets given to me by Apple and my answers.
“1. Lose the little cloud.
2. Change the name. Please make it iMobile. Thank you.
3. Lots of people on message boards are really mad about the whole iCards thing. I’m just sayin’.”
Mark – I love it that me loving Firefox has tipped you over the edge in adoration. hahahahahaha That is awesome.
Hmmmm. I did not know that about the USB … I really have to think about the whole Gmail thing – maybe I’ll have my old email forwarded to it – Another issue is sheilaomalley@gmail.com is not available – and I don’t want some cutesy other email name, I want it to be my name – so that’s an issue – and I was planning on getting stationery and business cards in the next month or so so I really need to make a decision before I go get that done.
Bah!
DAMN YOU, MOBILE ME!!!!.
As a web developer, IE is my mortal enemy. Every time someone switches to something else, an angel gets its wings.
If you have to settle for some less than desirable Gmail address, you could set up sheila@sheilaomalley.com (or whatever) to forward to the Gmail address and put the sheilaomalley.com address on your business cards. However, if you reply to an email that some send to that address, it’ll be seen coming from the cutesy Gmail address and not the preferred sheilaomalley.com one. So, yeah….
One idea would be to allow Gmail Business Apps handle all the sheilaomalley.com emails. It’s kind of an overkill, but it would allow you to have whatever sheilaomalley.com address you want while using the Gmail goodness.
Confused? My work here is done. I can give you a hand if you want to set up any of this.
If you’re still using MovableType, it has an “Export Blog” option that will save all the text and comments, and can be imported into a new blog.
Only problem is it doesn’t export images, so you’re blog’s design and any pictures would need to be backed up as well. The simplest way would be to ftp the public_html folder on your site. (Simple, huh? Well, it’s doable. I recommend FileZilla for an FTP program, and you’d probably have to ask your hosting company for ftp login info. Kind of a pain, but that what we’re stuck with right now.)
i just had to download safari to be able to check my mail.
plus i feel like i’m watching the freakin’ teletubbies every time i log in.