Appletell

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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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]

KavaSoft have just released the latest version of their web jukebox for iTunes: KavaTunes 3.2. KavaTunes is essentially a web app that looks and works just like iTunes, meaning that you can browse, search and play your iTunes library from any web browser, anywhere in the world. KavaTunes also features continuous playback, which means songs will play one after another in a playlist automatically—without any gaps. If you want album artwork added to your library, KavaTunes can do that too. Web catalogs that resemble the iPod’s interface can be created; visitors can play music via this interface. Your personalised home page shows your music taste through several different categories: most played artists, recently added albums, recently played songs and top rated albums. If visitors like what they’re hearing, they can click a link to buy it from the iTunes Store.

KavaTunes 3.2 brings a re-designed music preference pane, which gives the option of whether vistiors can download music from the site. The volume of playback can also be customised. KavaTunes costs £35, and can be purchased from their website.

Via [MacMegaSite]

David Pogue, a popular Apple product reviewer for the NY Times, has officially released his review of Apple’s new MobileMe. Compared to .Mac, Pogue comes right out and states that MobileMe “...has a much clearer mission that solves a much clearer problem.” Although Pogue agrees that the initial launch of this product was a disaster, he says, “Once everything’s ready, the magic is impressive.” He goes on to detail just how MobileMe works, what it does for users, and how it has found “...a silver lining in the cloud.”

Pogue, being on top of the latest technology, is aware that products similar to MobileMe are available.  However, he states that “...none have the integration, polish and automation of Apple’s offering.” Despite his glowing review, he does point out some hitches. He is mostly disappointed by the time it takes for changes to appear on your computer—15 minutes. Apple is aware of this, though, and is not pushing their “push” campaign as much until this problem is fixed. They’ve also offered a free 30 day MobileMe extension to existing MobileMe and .Mac subscribers.

Head over to the NY Times to read the full review.

Via [NY Times]

With the recent release of Firefox 3, Safari finally is seeing some serious competition in the browser space.  Its reign as the fastest browser on the Mac seems to be over for the time being, and Firefox’s usage share continues to climb both on the Mac and on Windows.

Now, this isn’t to say I don’t like Safari; in fact, I use it as my everyday browser. It’s just that the competition is finally really heating up, and it’s about time Apple made some improvements to set Safari apart once again.

See what I think Safari should to to pull ahead of the competition again after the break.

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iPresentee is at it again with more Keynote additions. This time, they have rolled out their new theme package, Motion Themes 2.0. For only $25, you can get these five new themes which iPresentee has named Money, Rain, Exercise Book, Story and Curtain.  However, you can also buy them individually for $10 a piece. The product description reads, “Each Keynote Motion Theme comes with 14 or more master slide layouts and 1024x768 pixels in size moving background graphics. Keynote Motion Themes contains everything you will need to create unforgettable presentation.”

Keynote Motion Themes 2.0 is the second group of templates iPresentee is offering for Keynote as they are already selling Keynote Motion Themes 1.0. Both of these packages require iWork ‘08 to be installed, and they can all be purchased at once for a price of $50. iPresentee offers a slew of Keynote and iWeb templates, themes, and objects, so be sure to check them out if you you want to help make your next presentation more appealing.

Product Page [Keynote Motion Themes 2.0]

Hendrickson Software Components’ popular spam tracing and reporting utility, Sp@mX, has been retired and officially turned into Purify.  In HSC’s words, “...after many years of faithful service, the venerable Sp@mX has been officially retired, and its servers taken off-line.” Although the name has changed, HSC still promises the same quality from Purify. Version 2.1.1, which deals with malformed e-mails from “newbie” spammers, just came out on July 3rd and development will continue.

For those of you who used Sp@mX, you can email HSC for an upgrade link. If you want to try out Purify and figure now is the time, it will cost you $29.95 for a new license. If you hate spam, that money will be well worth it. Purify offers plenty of features to help rid of those annoying e-mails. With Leopard and Applescript support included, Purify allows you to report spammers to their ISPs and filter your e-mail by images, country of origin, etc. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, so be sure to check it out.

Product [Purify]

With the impending release of MobileMe, Apple has sent out a notice to all .Mac subscribers that they should sync their bookmarks to all of their machines by Sunday, when access to bookmarks will be discontinued.

The decision to discontinue web access to bookmarks (as well as iCards and .Mac slides) has been met with some criticism even by the Apple faithful. While MobileMe does have a very nice bookmark synching feature, it will only work on computers that a member owns. So, let’s say a .Mac member only owns a desktop iMac at home, and is on the road using a PC in a hotel’s business center or internet cafe. Right now, he would be able to log into .Mac to access his bookmarks. But, once MobileMe is released, that will not be possible. He would have to buy a laptop to bring with him and sync his bookmarks to it.

MobileMe has a lot of nice new features, and I would say that overall it is an improvement, but I don’t realy understand the logic behind Apple’s decision to disable web access to bookmarks. If any current .Mac subscribers would like to have web access to their bookmarks after the MobileMe transition, I would recommend Google bookmarks or del.icio.us. Still, this means that they will have to keep their bookmarks up to date on another website rather than having synching and web access all in one.

Via [The New York Times]

Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, believes Firefox is the “new champ in the browser wars.” Is Walt right? If so, will this worthy effort from Mozilla be enough to drag the Apple purists away from Safari?

From a Mac user’s perspective especially, Firefox 3 is a very significant upgrade that current users of the browser will surely enjoy. But for those like me who have been using Safari as our primary browser, this new version of Firefox may not be enough to wow us, especially for those of us who have never used the browser before.

See Walt’s video commentary after the break.

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The first stage of the .Mac revamp is underway as some users are noticing that their .Mac addresses are now also working with MobileMe.  To get your MobileMe e-mail address, simply take your existing e-mail address with @mac.com and change it to @me.com.  For example, “myemail@mac.com” would now be “myemail@me.com.” However, your .Mac address will still work for a while to make sure you don’t miss any e-mails.

Apple announced MobileMe at this year’s WWDC as an updated .Mac service. It’s beautiful online interface is what you would expect from a desktop application, but it is accessible from any computer, anywhere. Dubbed “exchange for the rest of us,” it will keep all of your calendars, contacts, e-mails, and other personal information up to date in the cloud. It’s going to be great.

Via [Macrumors]