Appletell

A lot of people are looking at Apple’s new MobileMe service and seeing push delays, server outages, e-mail oddities, etc. Me? I’m looking at it and seeing, as of this morning, a total of 90 days of free service.

In their ongoing effort to smooth things over with angry customers, Apple has announced that those with active MobileMe accounts as of August 19, 2008 will receive a free 60 day extension to their subscription. This is in addition to the free 30 day MobileMe extension offered a little over a month ago.

Details after the break.

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In a sensible ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Dell has been denied the trademark of “cloud computing,” based on the grounds that it is a general use term. The ruling is “not final” and Dell has six months to appeal before the application expires.

“Cloud computing” refers to any service delivered over the web from remote servers. Examples include Google Docs, Amazon’s S3, and Apple’s own MobileMe.

Why Dell wasted time on this one, I’m not sure. Pretty much every company involved with cloud computing has been using the term since… ever. I’m sure this was an ill-thought-out way for Dell to raise its value by forcing every company to pay royalties or find a new catchphrase for cloud computing. In reality, all this is going to do is hurt its brand perception.

Via [Macworld]

An e-mail has been making the rounds recently, aimed specifically at MobileMe users. Disguised as a billing e-mail, it asks users to enter billing information by clicking a link to a website that is clearly not Apple-related.

“We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?” the e-mail asks. It then has a link to a page to enter said information. Users may be fooled because of the authenticity of the e-mail and the fact that all other links on the page point to official apple.com pages.

Details and tips on how to avoid phishing e-mails after the break.

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It’s been a bad day for mail servers all around. GMail went down for a few minutes earlier today, and just as Apple thought it was out of the ditch with MobileMe, their mail servers seem to have other opinions.

From 1:00-3:30 PM PDT, according to Apple’s website, MobileMe mail was down for the count. Why this continues to happen is anybody’s guess at this point, as servers should not be getting hammered as they were on launch day.

We search for David G. and Eddie Chu after the break.

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According to Ars Technica, Steve Jobs sent an e-mail to Apple employees last night admitting that MobileMe was launched too early.

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” said Jobs.

More after the break.

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It seems Apple has finally fixed MobileMe’s Mail. David G. is back to give us the news via Apple’s MobileMe Status Page update #3.

We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members. Thank you all for your extreme patience during this trying time.

Apple also resolved other MobileMe issues. There was a bug with syncing of contacts and calendars over the air to the iPhone and iPod Touch that was addressed.

Apple will be working on other issues as soon as possible and plans another update to the MobileMe Status page later this week.

Via [Apple]

If you’d like to know the current health of Steve Jobs, you might be out of luck. But, if you want to know the health of MobileMe, then you might want to check out the new page called Status in the MobileMe section of Apple’s site. I think the blogger who is responsible for the updates describes it quite well:

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date.

So far there are only two posts, and they are both positive, as is be expected. The page does admit to MobileMe’s launch being a “rocky road,” but they are working to get all services up and functioning. E-mail access to the 1% that were blocked is first on their list, and they are making progress. Though it’s sad to hear that any e-mail for those affected between July 18 and 22 may be lost forever.

Via [MobileMe Status]

David Pogue of The New York Times calls it ”Apple’s MobileMess”. Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal says it is ”far too flawed to be reliable.” When Apple is hearing these sorts of things about MobileMe from a usually unmistakable Apple fanboy (Pogue) and a man who has called the iMac “the best desktop PC on the market at many price” (Mossberg), in addition to thousands of unsatisfied customers, former .Mac members and new members of the bandwagon alike, I think it’s pretty clear that they have not “finally got it right” as far as their online services are concerned, as Steve Jobs said at WWDC.

MobileMe’s launch was, as the former .Mac members among us are well aware, a complete disaster that took days to finally get somewhat right. In fact, not all of the launch issues have been worked out even now, two weeks after MobileMe’s initial release.

Chaos and gripes after the break.

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MobileMe, Apple’s upgrade to their previous .Mac web service, has been available pretty much since the iPhone 3G launch. We’ve seen MobileMe 30 day extensions and MobileMe reviews since then, so why are some Apple users just now seeing the official release announcement? Perhaps Apple was waiting until the kinks were worked out before beginning the big promotional blitz, as their e-mail campaign seems geared towards attracting new users:

The simple way to keep everything in sync. Stay up to date with email, contacts, and calendars that sync across your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. Access it all using the feature-rich web applications at me.com. You’ll also get an email address at me.com, easy online photo sharing, 20GB of online storage, and more.

Obviously, the rest of us already knew about this and have been taking advantage of these features for a couple weeks now. Those new to the service, however, can sign up for a free, 60-day trial. I recommend Mac users take advantage of the trial; the apps really are pretty sweet.

Product [MobileMe]

Apple has updated its iLife ‘08 applications and accompanying software. The updates are available for download from Apple’s Web site, and can also be downloaded through the Mac Software Update tool.

The new versions are as follows:

• iWeb 2.0.4
• iLife Support 8.3
• iMovie 7.1.4
• iPhoto 7.1.4

Additional info after the break.

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