August 5th, 2008
Apple: Shut down MobileMe immediately
Not long after blogging about Apple’s MobileMe mea culpa ten days ago comes a leaked email memo purportedly authored by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and sent to all hands regarding the MobileMess.
A few hours after the Ars Technica piece on the MobileMemo from Jobs, setteB.IT published the full text of the email message sent to all Apple employees about the MobileMe launch.
It reads, in part:
Team,
The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better:
– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.
– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.
– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.
Read the rest at settB.it.
Apple’s attempt at a MobileMe “status page” is nothing more than window dressing and appears to be DOA after just three half-hearted updates. Apple’s culture of secrecy has finally bit them in the ass and MobileMe is a glaring example of why full-scale alpha and beta testing is required with a large group of outside users for such a massive undertaking.
What the hell were they thinking? To quote Merlin Mann “Sync is hard” and Apple seriously underestimated the requirements and resources required of a service like MobileMe.
After dealing with phone calls this weekend from friends that had both their iPhone and their Mac’s contacts, calendars and bookmarks completely overwritten with blank data from “the cloud” I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple needs to shut down MobileMe immediately and refund everyone’s money.
They can re-launch it in about six months – or whenever it’s fully vetted – maybe for half the price, or for free. Apple might even consider running MobileMe through the App Store approval process instead of the bogus super-secret, Cold War era round of “internal” testing that the may/may not have done with 1.0.
MobileMe is a black eye on the company and on all of its users and it’s time to pull the plug before things get much worse. Do the right thing Apple, shut down MobileMe now.
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Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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| 08/05/08
