Leaked: The Full Steve Jobs Mobile Me “Mistake” E-Mail
Posted by Aviv on August 5, 2008 at 4:32 pm PST
After getting an “outpour of requests” ArsTechnica has revealed the entire leaked internal email that Steve Jobs sent Apple employees on Monday afternoon.
The following was sent from Steve Jobs to the rest of the Mobile Me team:
Team,
The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better:
MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.
Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.
It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.
We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love. One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe. Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.
The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.
What I haven’t seen reported anywhere is the story behind the story. Great, Eddy Cue got promoted, and MobileMe is on the road to becoming as lovable as OS X and iPod Touches (and as iPhones will also be once a few more of their rough edges early v2.0 pioneering are rounded off). OK, and swell (in the presumably near future).
But how many execs or others got unpromoted, canned or at least dressed down with a wet noodle? I.e., how much turmoil has this caused in Cupertino and how many (and what size) were the fall guys?? Enquiring long-time followers of the Oracle of Infinite Loop want to know……
One Comment to “Leaked: The Full Steve Jobs Mobile Me “Mistake” E-Mail”
What I haven’t seen reported anywhere is the story behind the story. Great, Eddy Cue got promoted, and MobileMe is on the road to becoming as lovable as OS X and iPod Touches (and as iPhones will also be once a few more of their rough edges early v2.0 pioneering are rounded off). OK, and swell (in the presumably near future).
But how many execs or others got unpromoted, canned or at least dressed down with a wet noodle? I.e., how much turmoil has this caused in Cupertino and how many (and what size) were the fall guys?? Enquiring long-time followers of the Oracle of Infinite Loop want to know……
[Reply]