Appletell

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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Apple’s successor to .Mac, MobileMe, announced during WWDC and touting a release date of one week ago, has faced some difficulties with stability. Thus, Apple is offering a 30-day service extension to eligible users, gratis. An e-mail was sent out to all MobileMe/.Mac users, apologizing and informing them of the 30 day increase in their subscriptions. If you were a .Mac member whose account was active as of July 9, 2008, or a new MobileMe user who created your account on or before July 15, 2008 at 7:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time, the 30-day extension will be added to all qualifying accounts (surprisingly, including free trial accounts) in a matter of weeks. In the same e-mail, Apple has also apologized to the time lag of the “push” features of MobileMe, citing that they will not use the term until it is completely true.

Can you name another company besides Apple that would go to such lengths?

Jump ahead to read the full e-mail.

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Amazon.com is now offering MobileMe for pre-order on their website at $89.99—about 9% off Apple’s price. This comes after Amazon has apparently sold out of .Mac retail boxes which they were selling for $69.99, but raised to $77.99 after MobileMe was announced at WWDC.

This has to be welcome news for Apple, as their web services have never really taken off in the past. MobileMe is still a little pricey for me, and I’m sure for many others as well, but Apple certainly has added a lot more value into their services with MobileMe. That Amazon feels it can get away with upping the price by $20 over the past month or so shows that demand for MobileMe is certainly there.

While Amazon’s price is still a discount over Apple’s, it’s still probably worth shopping around for one of the remaining .Mac retail boxes while you still can, as they are generally less expensive.

Product [MobileMe]

As you can tell from the picture above, Apple’s MobileMe has been accidentally shipped to a lucky customer. MobileMe announced at WWDC and (truly) available worldwide on July 11, is the successor to Apple’s .Mac service. The customer in question, who reaped the benefits of a trigger happy Apple shipping worker, had his joy taken back. When he called Apple Support (why?), he was told a courier would be at his doorstep the next day to pick up the advance copy of the service. While I, personally, would not have told Apple, the service probably would not have worked 100% this early.

Read [Meckimac]

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]

If you are thinking about signing up for .Mac in anticipation of the release of MobileMe, don’t be too trigger happy and shell out your $99 to Apple just yet. Instead, check out some of these third party vendors for much better deals on Apple’s revamped online application suite. Amazon is probably the best deal because they offer free shipping, saving you up to $22 on the package.

These .Mac retail boxes will still work to activate MobileMe accounts even after .Mac has been discontinued, but if you hurry, you’ll be able to get your coveted @mac.com e-mail address while you still can.

UPDATE: Macworld seems to have removed Amazon’s listing from its site. To see Amazon’s listing for .Mac as well as customer reviews, click here.

Regardless, it seems as though you can get a slightly better deal from CompuDirect.

Via [Macworld]

It seems Apple has decided to restrict access to its online storage component, iDisk, from certain browsers. iDisk, once supported by any browser, is now blocking access to the site unless the browser used to visit it is officially supported.

Supported browsers include:

• Safari 1.3 or Firefox 1.0.4 (And later versions of these browsers)
• Camino (Which uses Firefox’s Gecko technology)
• Opera 9.5

PC users can access their iDisk using:

• Firefox 1.0.4 (Or later)
• Internet Explorer 6 (Or Later)

Browsers which are now officially unsupported (and consequently blocked) include OmniWeb and Firefox 3 release candidates, although the upcoming Firefox 3 will most likely be supported soon. If your browser is not supported, a warning message appears (see picture).

Browser restrictions are limited to iDisk pages, as all other .Mac services are still available for use with any browser. Is Apple ramping up security, or does this have something to do with Apple’s upcoming service, MobileMe which will replace .Mac and include the iDisk feature. Restrictions shouldn’t affect most people, though the move is interesting since Apple touts the new MobileMe service as being accessible by virtually any computer in the world.

Via [MacNN]

MobileMe, Apple’s replacement for .mac which was announced on Monday at WWDC, is now available for preorder through Apple’s online store. Launching in July, the subscription based Internet service will cost $99 for a single user license, with a family plan that runs $149 a year. There’s also a $30 discount with the purchase of any new Macintosh.

From the Apple Store:

MobileMe stores your email, calendar, and contacts on a secure online server, or “cloud.” The cloud pushes the most current data to your iPhone, iPod touch, and computer so you’re always up to date. And your email, calendar, contacts, photos, and documents are accessible over the Internet through a set of easy-to-use web applications.

You also get easy photo sharing, 20GB of online storage, and more. For details, visit Apple’s website.