Apple says sorry
Apple sent an email out to all MobileMe today to explain and apologise for the furore over a few issues that happened over the past few days since the launch.
Firstly it was the state of the new MobileMe service.
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.
But the bigger issue was how pushy was the MobileMe’s push feature? Apparently not much.
While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.
So much for Phil Schiller’s explanation of MobileMe during the Keynote at this year’s WWDC. But the silver lining is that giving us full “push” functionality shouldn’t be that far off. Another case of Marketing pushing the envelope without consulting the TechHeads? We probably wouldn’t know.
So to appease the pitchfork holding Mac fans, Apple throws in a full month’s worth of MobileMe to all existing customers.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
On one hand, its disappointing for Apple not to map out their infrastructure to counter the sudden increased in demand for the services on the launch day, it is heartening to know that the company does listen to the fans and react fast to acknowledge its deficiency and work on solving them. Bonus point for the 30-day extension.
On hindsight, I’m also glad that Singapore wasn’t in the first batch of countries getting it. Besides Apple who should iron out their backend issues, 3rd party apps developers would also have sufficient time to roll out their .xx updates to their iPhone apps by the time SingTel sells the iPhone.
Maybe it’s a blessing afterall. BUT, I still want my iPhone, quickly!
Tagged as apple, iphone, mobileme, singapore, singtel + Categorized as apple