Posts Tagged ‘mobileme’

MobileMe users gets 60 days freebie from Apple

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

It looks like Apple is trying to restore itself in users’ good graces after a series of access problems and outages with its MobileMe online back-up service. After offering subscribers an extra 30 days on their subscription last month, the company has announced it’s now giving away another 60 days free.

From Apple’s support website:

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped. While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service.

It’s not often Apple makes such large scale mistakes and even less often that it actually admits to them – it’s good to see the MobileMe execs trying to curry favour with the users for a change. It’s a nice move, but given Apple’s oft-quoted ‘it just works’ tagline, surely it would have been better to make a service that ‘just works’ at launch?

Apple’s MobileMe hit in email scam

Friday, August 15th, 2008

Online scammers – the type that usually send you badly worded emails with shoddy graphics asking you to give up all your bank details or eBay password – have found themselves a new target in the form of Apple’s MobileMe service.

According to Computerworld, the scammers sent out emails to MobileMe subscribers trying the usual ‘there has been a problem with your account’ tack and a surprising number of them fell for it, yielding details including credit card numbers, passwords and social security numbers, apparently thinking the emails had something to do with the changeover from .Mac to MobileMe.

Normally the criminals just go for the big banks when trying out these sort of scams – it’s a bit of flattery for Apple that an online back-up service has hit the criminals’ radar. Or is it just a sign that the scammers reckon anyone who’s bought an iPhone is easy to part from a large amount of money?

Apple admits something’s wrong… Well it couldn’t exactly deny it

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Has anyone else been following this MobileMe fiasco?  If you haven’t then click here.  You back with me?  Good.

I’m not sure what’s impressed me more, that an Apple application doesn’t simply work or that the company has kept users updated.  Apple has demanded that one of its staff blog on the subject.  The opening post, from David G, states:

“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.”

The blog also states:

“In the 14 days since we launched, it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering. Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters, and we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.”

So, what’s coming?  To date, more than 70 bugs have been fixed and restoring service, albeit without full email, is the “first priority.”  We’ll see.

Have you got your me.com username?

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Apple’s MobileMe is looking rather smart. I’m particularly impressed with it.

Whether your an iPhone fanboy or a NokiaNob, you might like the idea of a fancy me.com email address.

Not many folk have noticed the potential as yet — since everyone and their dog hasn’t yet signed-up, there’s a heck of a lot of username availability. If you head over to www.me.com, you’ll find an option to sign-up for MobileMe (irrespective of whether you use an iPhone, or an Apple, in fact — although Firefox and Safari are recommended). Sign-up for a 60-day free trial — you do need to put in your credit card details — and you can most probably get the username of your choice.

Our Podcast Master, Ben Smith, was delighted to get bensmith at me.com (I think that’s what he chose). I managed to get ‘ewan’. Right on!

Apple’s MobileMe – .Mac by any other name?

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Apple’s also introduced a companion service to go with the new 3G iPhone, called MobileMe – a cloud storage service that looks like a revamped version of its old .Mac product.

In short, MobileMe will give you remote access to your Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as photos and documents using a series of web based applications, whether you’re using accessing them through an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac or PC. All your personal content is kept centrally off in the ‘cloud’ (on the internet to you and me) so you can get hold of it just by going online. If you lose your phohe or laptop, or don’t happen to have it handy, you can just log in on another PC and all your goodies are right there in front of you.

US pricing is $99 a year, and you get 20GB of storage for that – double what .Mac provided. Apple isn’t the first company to sell this sort of cloud computing service but its relaunching it at a good time to capitalise on the wave of iPhone sign ups and pitching it rather neatly as ‘Exchange for the rest of us’. Without the iPhone, .Mac looked a little limp – every Mac/PC user knows by now to back up the contents of their machine – but with iPhone capabilities added in and the ability to recover the contents of the device if you lose it, suddenly MobileMe looks like it’s got legs.


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