Headline Feeds
I haven't experienced many of the problems that are reportedly plaguing Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
new .Mac replacement, MobileMe. The new version of Apple's US$99 online storage, e-mail , photo-sharing, calender and contacts service launched July 11 -- the same day the company released the iPhone 3G and the App Store. Shortly after launch, MobileMe promptly broke for many users, over and over again, leaving some without e-mail for days on end.
Last week, Apple sent a message to MobileMe subscribers noting that the transition from .Mac to MobileMe was "a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac , and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe Web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the Web apps are now up and running."
Up and running, though, wasn't 100 percent accurate, particularly for some users of MobileMe e-mail.
Apple acknowledged the issue on its MobileMe support site, noting, "1 percent of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. Service will be restored ASAP. We apologize for this service interruption and are working hard to resolve the problem." Apparently, one of Apple's MobileMe servers failed, taking down some customers' e-mail access at the same time.
Traffic on Apple's blogs and support forums has been raging. Imagine the varied and painful ways a sudden lack of e-mail could hamper your life -- and this is for a paid service, not a freebie e-mail service like Gmail, which Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has managed to keep in beta for four years. It's fair to say that many of Apple's .Mac users expected much better uptime from their favorite tech company.
Apple did, at least, offer a small token: a free month of MobileMe service tacked onto the end of users' service periods.
So why am I rehashing all these issues?
Because I've been largely unaffected by them. Let me explain.
Easing In
First of all, I didn't jump right into MobileMe. I let the service work out the initial kinks before I made the transition on my end and connected my Mac and iPhone to Apple's MobileMe services.
This wait wasn't entirely intentional -- I was too busy activating and using a new iPhone 3G and the new App Store to bother with MobileMe. My .Mac e-mail seemed to work fine throughout the migration going on at Apple, which I accessed via the built-in OS X Mail client application on my Mac or through my iPhone via the older, non-push method.
Speaking of Push
The other problem that has affected MobileMe has been the concept of "push" and what that really means. In enterprises, many employees are able to get e-mail, calendar and contact items pushed out to their client PCs or BlackBerry devices as soon as they arrive on the company's servers or are entered on mobile devices. Obviously, some companies are more adept at getting their push communication services worked out; for others, it's taken years to get right. In any event, there hasn't been a large, consumer-friendly push service readily available to Mac users -- and MobileMe was positioned to be the solution.
Basically, push just makes any calendar, contacts (Address Book) and e-mail changes readily available on all of the connected devices -- Macs, PCs, iPhones. If a new contact is entered on an iPhone, it's pushed out to the user's Mac at home, without any cords or direct, physical syncing at the desktop.
Push, by definition, is supposed to be relatively immediate. Macs and PCs, however, aren't constantly looking to receive new data from the MobileMe "cloud," so there's often a several-minute lag. For most users, this is such a minor quibble that I'm surprised Apple has gotten so much flack over it -- after all, if I enter a contact into my iPhone, I'm away from my desk, so why do I need the contact to be immediately pushed to my Mac within seconds?
The same goes for the iPhone -- do I really want the iPhone working so hard and draining my battery all the time? Not really. Some e-mail addicts might want instant push and calendar information, but seriously, they could set the iPhone to pull that data as often as every 15 minutes. That's more than fast enough for most everyone, CEOs included. And the more important a business leader is, the more likely their calendar is booked out far in advance anyway.
But back to you and me and consumers, because that's what MobileMe is really geared for.
If Possible, Keep It Simple
The other reason I haven't been having any problems comes back to the whole premise of using Macs and Apple products in the first place -- keep it simple and reliable.
If I wanted to add PCs and Outlook into the mix, I could. But really, as a consumer, is there that much value in it? True, some users are treading between work and home, and they don't have a choice. True, if you simplify your environment with Macs only, you might miss a few Windows-only applications or hardware -- but generally you'll gain on simplicity, elegance and reliability.
Of course, Apple is treading into PC land pretty heavily these days, first with iTunes and iPods, followed by the iPhone and Safari for Windows, so the company is complicating its offerings to find a broader audience. And with a broader audience comes broader issues. The bottom line is, the more operating systems and different types of hardware you try to connect, the more problems you're going to have. You can blame Apple, yourself, or changing/competing protocol standards, but the outcome is the same: complexity increases downtime.
What's Cool About MobileMe
First of all, the new MobileMe interface and structure totally rocks. It's cleaner and more intuitive than .Mac's versions, and the Web implementation of the applications is snappy and responsive -- nearly on par with using a dedicated client. What's even better is that the applications are placed together in the same browser window, making it easy to switch between Mail, Contacts and Calendar. It's not exactly integrated into a single application, but it's closer than tracking down three different applications on your Mac OS X desktop (Mail, Address Book, iCal).
In Mail on MobileMe, you can even do a super-quick reply without opening the e-mail message -- just type it into a little text box and hit the Cancel or Send button.
Heading back to the land of "push," the synchronization is improved over .Mac's implementations -- again, more intuitive than before. Plus, MobileMe makes it easier to sync calendar and contacts, giving you better access to your data from any Web browser. Best yet, it gives you the ability to keep your iPhone synced without having to connect it to a Mac or PC (though for songs, videos and podcasts, you still have to directly connect).
Photo Albums and iDisk
MobileMe also makes it much easier to create albums online for sharing with friends, family or the world. Now it's built-in, and once you populate an album with photos, you get an easily disseminated direct URL (uniform resource locater). And visitors, at your discretion, can add their own photos to your albums. Personally, I'd like to see the albums support slide shows on par with what iWeb '08 produces -- perhaps in a future iteration.
In line with the entire MobileMe refacing, iDisk has a better-looking folder structure in the Web browser -- you can open folders and upload files with ease from the better-designed Web browser interface. It's quite handy, and it's definitely a much improved method of access for newbies or family members, though you can still access MobileMe via the Finder in OS X.
Despite the negative press lately surrounding MobileMe, as a light user of the service who wasn't burned by the migration, I'm already using it more and more, and I'm sure family members will be getting active with the new implementation of online albums. While the push perhaps isn't as pushy as Apple first claimed, it's pushy enough for me. What's even more important, I believe, is how Apple has structured MobileMe -- like the tantalizing empty spots left open on the original iPhone, Apple has left plenty of room to add cool new features to MobileMe.
Talkback: 
