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Find My iPhone and iDisk Support Make MobileMe More Attractive

Christopher Ryan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:18:59 +0000

When June 17 comes around, iPhone customers will definitely want to upgrade to the latest iPhone 3.0 software to take advantage of huge improvements with Apple’s oft-discussed MobileMe service.

iPhone 3.0, Where Are You?

If you are like me, losing things (it happens to all of us) is unfortunately common. While I haven’t lost my iPhone yet, I’ve had it happen to many friends. With the 3.0 software, Apple has introduced a new feature called Find My iPhone which will allow MobileMe customers to log into me.com via any Internet-enabled computer and remotely locate their phone via the iPhone’s built-in GPS (or through cell phone triangulation on the original iPhone).

Additionally, users can now remotely display a message on their iPhone with the intention of alerting whomever may find their treasured mobile device. In case the screen isn’t attention-getting enough, users also have the ability to play a sound that will override the iPhone’s silent setting to make it easier to find a lost or misplaced phone.

Sometimes, however, bad things happen and you may not be able to retrieve your iPhone. In this case, Apple provides a solution that will allow a user to remotely wipe everything on their device, preventing the nefarious person who has acquired your iPhone from being able to do any real damage. In one click on the MobileMe web site, all of your personal information, including addresses, phone numbers, photos, email and more are deleted from your iPhone. If you eventually find your iPhone after you’ve wiped it, simply plugging it back into your Mac or PC will allow it to restore from its latest iPhone backup.

iDisk Now On iPhone

In other news, Apple announced that iDisk support will be coming soon to the iPhone. A free application will be available on the App Store that will allow you to browse content from your iDisk. You can also share content from your iDisk to friends and family via email, all from your phone. Since the iPhone features built-in support for a variety of formats, including Microsoft Office and iWork documents, you can browse these as well. Editing these documents, however, is not supported at this time.

Public iDisk folders are also supported, both in terms of allowing you to browse other public folders as well as other users uploading content to your own public folder, which you can then browse from your phone.

These features are iPhone 3.0 OS and MobileMe dependent. Find My iPhone & Remote Wipe will be available on June 17 and iDisk support will be available at a later, unannounced, date.

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Apple makes amends with MobileMe users

Nick Mediati — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:12:54 +0000

Let’s face it, MobileMe’s first few days of life have been, well, difficult. It was problematic from the start, with the transition from .mac to MobileMe taking well over 24 hours, as opposed to the planned 6-hour outage. And when the web apps did go online, even though they were a step in the right direction, they were also slow and flaky at first. And then after a couple days it dawned on users that computer-to-MobileMe push was nonexistent. Well today, Apple made amends with its MobileMe subscribers by not only apologizing for all these issues, but extending every MobileMe user’s subscription by 30 days for free, reports Macworld. Wow.

Here’s the full text of a letter being sent out to all MobileMe customers:

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

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.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. 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.

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 to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

Thank you,
The MobileMe Team

While I had hoped that Apple would acknowledge MobileMe’s issues, at no point did I expect them to offer a free month of service to all subscribers. For that all I have to say is thank you, Apple.

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What happened to Mac-to-MobileMe push?

Nick Mediati — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:40:08 +0000

There has been a bit of confusion over the existence of Mac-to-MobileMe push, as explained by this article on MacRumors. Apparently as it stands, there is no way to “push” changes made in Address Book and iCal up to MobileMe right away; instead you have to wait for your Mac to sync with MobileMe, which occurs every 15 minutes or so when set to Automatic in MobileMe Preferences. There is some dispute in the associated forum thread about whether or not Apple misled users regarding Mac-to-MobileMe push.

Let’s take a quick look at three pages on the MobileMe promo site, and compare them to Google caches of the same pages.

Page One

The current MobileMe on your Mac page makes no mention of Mac-to-MobileMe push whatsoever:

MobileMe works with the applications you use on your Mac every day. Changes you make in Address Book and iCal are synced with MobileMe every 15 minutes, then pushed to your iPhone or iPod touch. And your Mac receives the changes you make on your iPhone, iPod touch, or the web. MobileMe even syncs Safari bookmarks.

[...]

If you have more than one Mac, you can use MobileMe to keep your email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks in sync across all your Mac computers and even a PC. You can also sync Dashboard widget preferences, Dock items, many application and system preferences, and Mail notes across all of your Macs running Mac OS X Leopard.

So what the current page says is what’s actually happening: MobileMe syncs with your Mac every 15 minutes. However, doing a little digging with cached versions of the page provided by Google, it’s easy to see where the confusion stemmed from. Here’s the cached page‘s text (cache from July 9, 2008; screenshot link in case the cache link expires):

MobileMe works with the applications you use on your Mac every day. Just about anything you do in Mail, Address Book, and iCal on your Mac is updated on your iPhone, iPod touch, and on the web at me.com. MobileMe even syncs Safari bookmarks on your Mac with the bookmarks on your other computers, iPhone, and iPod touch.

[...]

If you have more than one Mac, you can use MobileMe to push email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to all of your Mac computers and even a PC. With Mac OS X Leopard, you can also sync Dashboard widget preferences, Dock items, many application and system preferences, and Mail notes with all of your Leopard-based Mac computers.

Emphasis mine. It’s pretty clear that Apple has changed the copy of this page to reflect either some sort of change in the service, or simply to clear up some ambiguities. The earlier version of the page mentions MobileMe-to-Mac push (cloud -> Mac), but not the other way around, while the newer version makes no mention of pushing—to or from your Mac—at all. I can tell you that I haven’t noticed push to my Mac working, either. Also, there is a fair amount of uncertainty about what happens to what “you do in Mail, Address Book, and iCal.” Is it pushed up to the cloud right away? Or does it sync at regular intervals? This was completely unclear in the original text.

Page Two

Here’s another interesting change, this time on the Features page. First, the current text as of this writing:

MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and keeps them in sync across your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change in one place, MobileMe pushes the new information up to the cloud, then pushes the change down to your other devices. Choose a sync interval for your Mac or PC. On your iPhone and the web, sync happens continuously.

Emphasis mine.

Now let’s look at the cached version of the page from July 12, 2008 (screenshot link):

MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone and syncing manually — to stay up to date.

Again, emphasis mine.

Again, nothing in the original version concretely says that information is pushed from your Mac to MobileMe, but it does seem to be implied. After all, “devices” is a broad enough term that it could include a laptop or desktop. Apple may have simply been too vague on what “devices” means. And in the new text, Apple seems to use “push” in a broad sense of information being sent from one device to another, as opposed to the more technically correct sense of it being “pushed” out as soon as it is updated (which causes a fair amount of ambiguity too!). Apple’s misuse of “push” here sounds more like the writer couldn’t think of another way to describe it.

Page Three

But here’s the clincher. From the current MobileMe on your iPhone or iPod Touch page:

No dock required.

Since your iPhone and iPod touch receive updates over the air, you don’t need a dock to keep your contacts, calendar, and bookmarks in sync. Make changes anytime or anywhere you want. MobileMe takes care of the rest.

And now the cached version from July 13, 2:59 AM GMT (screenshot):

No dock required.

You don’t need a dock to keep your contacts, calendar, and bookmarks in sync. Make a change on your computer or at me.com and it’s pushed over the air to your iPhone or iPod touch. And vice versa.

Once again, emphasis mine. In this case, however, there isn’t really any ambiguity; it seems pretty clear that Apple was planning to implement push from computer to MobileMe. Or at least that’s what their marketing copy states, unless they misused “push” here too (see my not above); somehow I doubt that.

MobileMess?

These aren’t the only pages where the marketing copy has been changed. Poke around the MobileMe site and compare it to the Google cache versions of the page, and you’ll likely find more changes; I sure did.

So that brings me to the question, did Apple really intend on providing Mac-to-MobileMe push and were unable to deliver? And did Apple intentionally mislead customers? Regardless of what Apple planned and what Apple delivered, I don’t think it was Apple’s goal to mislead customers. That said, if Apple was unable to implement some of the planned functionality, it would have been nice to let customers know what was up. After all, push from everywhere wasn’t just a minor feature; it was the key selling point to MobileMe.

What say you? Did Apple drop the ball on this one?

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Most problematic launch in Apple history?

Josh Pigford — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:30:01 +0000

The past two days were supposed to be one of the biggest launches in Apple history in terms of the number of big products being released. Unfortunately the launch has been anything but smooth.

Four different products were scheduled to be launched in the past 2 days: MobileMe, App Store, 3G iPhone, and an update to iPod Touch software. Three of those four products have had noticeable setbacks.

MobileMe

Apple’s replacement for their .Mac service, MobileMe, was set to launch yesterday. Not only did the launch not go smoothly yesterday, it’s still not going today. 36 hours later, Apple has the following message up:

The MobileMe transition is underway but is taking longer than expected. While core services such as desktop mail, iDisk and sync are available, the new MobileMe web applications are not yet online. Thank you for your patience as we complete the upgrade.

All of the services that previous .Mac users had have been unavailable for the majority of the past 36 hours or so.

iPod Touch Update

The new software for the iPod Touch is still on target for being released today, but the update process has been subpar to say the least. Users (myself included) see there is an update for their iPod in iTunes but when they proceed with the upgrade process an error message is displayed saying the iTunes store link can’t be accessed. I personally have had iTunes switch back and forth about a dozen times between saying there is and there isn’t an update for my iPod Touch.

Apparently server issues are to blame for this.

3G iPhone

The same server issues that are plaguing the iPod Touch upgrade also seem to be causing issues with some 3G iPhone activations. According to Macrumors, some Apple stores are just sending people home to activate their new iPhones because of the issues.

Now, let’s put somethings in perspective here. I would say of these three issues, the MobileMe one is really the only massive fail. The iPod Touch and 3G iPhone issues are more of a nasty inconvenience than anything (and we’re still only a few hours in to their launches).

To me it just feels like Apple bit off a bit more than they could chew and the consequence of that is their usual seamless user experience is getting hit hard.

Have any of these issues affected you? What has your experience been with these updates in the past couple of days?

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