Nearly 5 months have gone by since Apple launched Mobile Me. In the first months of Mobile Me being live, the service was plagued with downtime, lost messages, syncing issues and an overall stability meltdown. So much so that Apple launched a Mobile Me status blog and assigned a blogger named “David G.” to directly communicate with its customers.

Apple went through a series of public apologies, and ultimately offered Mobile Me customers a few months of free service. A few weeks after Mobile Me officially launched, an internal email from CEO Steve Jobs was leaked to Ars Technica. After some ethical debates over at Ars they posted the entire email verbatim. This came roughly two weeks after Walt Mossberg laid the hammer down calling Mobile Me “far too flawed to recommend.” By this point, most users who had attempted to make it through the Mobile Me transition were left stunned, frustrated and worse of all, had lost vital messages due to technical failures on Apple’s end.

A couple of comments from some MacBlogz readers during the transition:

“Seriously, a company with a market capitalization of about $150 BILLION dollars, with more than $10 BILLION available in cash/short term assets, should be able to provide a service to what, a few hundred thousand users, that doesn’t go down every couple of weeks.”

“It was Tuesday, July 29th when my email stopped working completely. Now it’s late Wednesday and it’s still not working. Signing on to the support site for an update and having them tell me everything is great is more than annoying. And now it’s too late for any chat support and they appear to have eliminated any kind of email support. If you are having a problem they don’t want to hear from you.”

“Well, I lost nearly 3 days worth of emails. Who can I complain to? How can they put a value on these emails?”

Looking back on the Mobile Me launch, it’s easy to say that Apple was over-ambitious. They launched the iPhone 3G, the App Store and Mobile Me on the same day. For a company that doesn’t launch many products or services throughout the year, was there really a reason to unveil all three things on the same day? After all, the Mobile Me issues were only a portion of the overall disaster. iTunes servers went down, people were sent home with bricked iPhones, and the new iPhone Firmware 2.0 was shaky to say the least. Not Apple’s brightest moment.

The problems with Mobile Me however, stem much deeper than what lies on the surface. Apple employees were fired over the meltdown, and iTunes service guru Eddy Cue was brought in to head Mobile Me’s team while reporting directly to Steve Jobs. It was evident that Apple was not happy with Mobile Me’s launch. After putting so much time into revamping dot-mac, when they finally thought they “got it right,” the new service didn’t work.

Apple should make it a point and take a serious lesson from its mistakes here. Internet services are not the same as downloaded desktop clients like iTunes. They require a much more scalable infrastructure, and when slammed to capacity, a backup plan (or five), should be in place. Considering Apple’s close relationship with Google, they should have reached out to the internet giant for some help.

The eternal battle between Apple’s priorities with form over function played a major role in this summer’s past Mobile Me meltdown. Apple puts so much emphasis on making sure every millimeter of the screen is pixel perfect, and that the User Interface is so shiny that you want to lick it. But when it comes to the core infrastructure of the service, or the back-end functionality holding up in critical times, it seemed like an after thought. Perhaps in the future they’ll spend less time on perfecting that gradient, and more time making sure their servers scale.

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Earlier this summer Apple launched a revamped version of their online life-suite Mobile Me. Although the services was touted as being “better than ever,” when launch day came around, servers were down and users were left without access to their data. Some customers, even lost their data. We haven’t had much detailed information about Apple’s process in getting Mobile Me to “just work.” However Ars Technica recently found a support document outlining the changes Apple made to squash Mobile Me bugs. Perhaps it clears a few things up.

The document titled “About the Late-September 2008 MobileMe update,” doesn’t give exact development details or update procedures, but it does lay out a list of changes, and some new/returning features. “Besides service-wide changes like improving localization support and member name suggestions when newbies sign up, MobileMe Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Account applications all received a healthy does of tweaks and improvements,” Ars Technica explains.

After a more than disastrous launch day, subsequent updates, free extended subscriptions, and a constant barrage of negative press, Apple setup a Mobile Me blog, and attempted to communicate directly with its customers, which was within itself a surprise. Apple is usually a very private and non-disclosing company. This support document, is also a very unanticipated move for Apple.

From Apple’s Support Document:This article provides more detailed information about some recent improvements and the resolution of known issues that Apple delivered in the Late-September 2008 update to MobileMe services.

Apple is always working to improve MobileMe. Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or “cloud”-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it’s easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just “work better”.

The support doc touches upon All Mobile Me Mail Services, such as Mail, Account, Calendar, Contacts, and Gallery.

While we knew that Apple was more than aware of its mistakes, and a shake up in management definitely went down. Things on the Mobile Me front have been relatively quiet lately, and for the sake of the service, that’s probably a good thing.

Read - Apple Support Document

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The First Phishing Scam in early July was centered around the Online Apple Store and updating your personal account information. Many readers sent us tips on July 5th about a very “authentic-looking” email asking them to update their credit card information at the Online Apple Store, specifically for their .Mac (dot-mac) accounts. This information of course was not being collected by Apple, but instead by malicious hackers.

The second Phishing Scam was centered around Mobile Me. The timing for this one couldn’t have been worse for Apple users. With all the confusion surrounding Mobile Me’s launch, users were receiving this email (image link) which was asking them to update their credit card information. It was reported that this scam caught thousands off guard, with just as many users submitting their personal information into the fake Apple site.

Up until this recent update on Apple’s Mobile Me Blog, the company has stayed rather quite about the whole issue.

The full update from Apple’s Mobile Me Blog is below:

Being Phishing Aware

Phishing — the name for fraudulent attempts to obtain credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers and other sensitive information — isn’t an issue exclusive to MobileMe. Still, it’s as relevant to MobileMe subscribers as anyone else, and warnings about it bear repeating from time to time.

There are thieves in the world who work hard at creating emails that appear to come from legitimate companies, frequently even including links that go to real pages on those companies’ web sites. But at least one of the links will lead to a site that looks like it belongs to the company but is in fact a fake which asks readers to enter personal information such as their address, phone number, credit card number, or other information the thieves can use to steal from the unwary.

You will never receive a message from MobileMe asking you to send personal information over email. If we are ever unable to charge your credit card, for instance, we will send you a reminder email, but will not directly link to any web pages. The safest way to respond and update any necessary information is to type www.me.com into your browser and log in to your account directly. That way you can be confident you are at me.com and your personal information is secure.

For more detailed information about phishing emails, including how to use MobileMe webmail to see the real address hiding under a link, take a look at this support document. And for more information about phishing in general, try this Wikipedia entry. Finally, if you do receive an email that arouses your suspicions, select all the text in the message and use the Forward as Attachment command in the Message menu in Mac OS X Mail or the Action menu in Outlook to send it to reportphishing@apple.com. This will provide us with information that can be useful to our legal department and outside law enforcement, and we’ll be grateful for your help. Like crime in general, phishing can’t be totally stamped out, but it can be fought.

Click here to see a bigger version of the fake email that was being sent to users. As always, we’d like to remind everyone to please be extra careful when browsing the web. Always be sure to double check the web address and security before blindly typing your personal credit card information into any website.

[Attribution: TheiPhoneBlog]

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We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

Additional information from Apple’s website:

Why is Apple granting a 60-day subscription extension?

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.

Aside from a leaked email in its entirety from Steve Jobs himself, Apple has already issued two Mobile Me service extensions.

To get caught up on the amazing experience Mobile Me provided many users, read this and this. And we can’t forget about the Mobile Me Status Blog which seemed to be deserted by David G. But not before giving us three updates here, here and here.

In addition, Walt Mossberg’s review called the service “far too flawed to recommend.”

I’ve previously written in detail my thoughts about Apple considering some help from Google, who is very experienced in cloud computing and web based applications. Although it seems that Apple is content with sorting through bugs and developing solutions of their own.

The 60 day extension will surely be welcomed by many, however a stable service is more important. At this point, I cant help but keep wondering, should Apple have launched Mobile Me as a beta service?

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Even Apple’s own discussion boards have been chalk full of grievances with the on-going issue of not only being able to connect to the 3G network, but to stay connected for any lengthened duration.

Users have been noting that their iPhone 3G’s have had trouble remaining connected to 3G networks and will often revert back to the EDGE networks even while in a 3G-rich environment. One may come to the conclusion that this is a problem from within AT&T’s 3G network, yet users abroad have been experiencing similar problems.

As we are well aware, Apple has advertised the device as being “twice as fast,” as its predecessor. One would naturally assume that this is not sitting well with those that had eagerly awaited the release of the device to take full advantage of the faster speeds. Repeated attempts to get some sort of acknowledgment from both Apple and AT&T have proved to be ineffective. “Apple did not even attempt to answer the questions, deferring inquiries to AT&T, which declared that there were absolutely no widespread problems with the iPhone 3G on its network.” via ZDNetAsia.

“What we’re seeing is that the iPhone 3G is performing very well,” said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T. “I’m not denying that people are having problems. But we have to deal with these on a case-by-case basis.”

It is difficult to tell wether this is a case of an issue that a small minority are blowing out of proportion, or whether this really is a widespread issue. Yet due to the resounding outcry of those seeking answers, it may be safe to assume that this is a real problem. I can personally attest to this as I am more often connected to the EDGE network, despite the fact that I live in a 3G-heavy area.

“Without detailed testing, it is also difficult to say for sure what is causing the dropped calls or limited access to the network. Most likely, the cause of the problem is not solely an AT&T network issue nor is it an Apple device issue: It is a combination of both.”

We also must understand that the 3G network is not omnipresent. AT&T currently offers 3G service in a mere 300 metropolitan areas. They do however expect to increase service to 350 more areas by the end of the year. AT&T’s EDGE network, however, covers their entire U.S. landscape. Despite the limited areas that do currently have 3G coverage, those users should be able to connect to the 3G network more often than not. Unfortunately the majority of the complaints have been coming from residents of Chicago, San Francisco and New York, three major 3G hubs.

“That suggests either a hand-off issue or a capacity issue. The hand-off between the two networks is supposed to be seamless: 3G calls should automatically switch to EDGE when the 3G signal gets too weak. But the iPhone 3G seems to be hanging when it switches from the 3G network to the EDGE network, dropping service altogether in some cases. Apple technicians who examined Shaw’s phone found that 36 percent of his calls had been dropped.”

AT&T should want to minimize the number of handoffs that they are forced to do. This would require are larger 3G network. Just because AT&T is claiming to have an area covered, apparently does not mean that it truly is.

Independent industry analyst, Andrew Seybold, is suggesting that, “My belief is that because AT&T’s network is not built out to every cell site, people are getting frustrated because they’re finding places where the 3G signal isn’t available or is weak.”

AT&T’s Mark Siegel has noted that the company is fervently working on expanding the portion of its 3G network that is running on the 850MHz band, which allows signals to spread further and more easily penetrate walls than signals on the 1900MHz band. He did, however, go on to add that “this doesn’t mean that you can’t get a good experience on 1900MHZ.”

Network coverage may not be the only possible problem. Users of other handsets have reported similar issues with AT&T’s 3G services. This may indicate that users have to consider whether such problems are inherent exclusively to the iPhone 3G or whether the issues are stemming on AT&T’s behalf. Perhaps it is a combination of the two. Apple’s usual tight-lipped approach to a sticky situationhas been of no help in determining the core problem.

[via ZDNetAsia]

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This is how the last post from Apple’s David G, on the Mobile Me Status Blog ended:

“Next post later this week.”

David G.

Mobile Me has definitely been on a rocky road of unstability. To ease customers with the pain of losing contacts, emails and sensitive information, Apple set up a Mobile Me Status Blog so that an employee named David G. could directly communicate with their customers, and offer updates to Apple’s progress at the same time.

Macnn explains how “David wrote three updates, each came two days after the previous as promised. However, since the third update nothing has been posted.”

It’s now been nearly two weeks, and still the Status Blog has yet to be updated. Is Apple content with Mobile Me’s current state? Or is David G. on vacation?

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The following is taken from Chuq von Rospach’s post explaining some of the Mobile Me launch disaster situation, as well as attempting to debunk the Leaked Internal Email written by Steve Jobs to the Mobile Me team we reported about yesterday.

Rospach: I expect a bunch of friends and people I know were involved in that project, and I feel really bad for them. But the reality is, the thing wasn’t ready and the release got botched. And Steve and Apple aren’t terribly tolerant of that kind of major screwup. I expect heads have rolled and there are a few tanned hides waiting for the welts to go away.

Excerpt from Steve’s Email: “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

Rospach:There are two aspects to this. Steve is absolutely right — but also remember that ultimately, it was Steve’s call to go live (or not). he’s never been afraid to say “this ain’t ready” and pull something from release; his rehearsals for MacWorld Keynotes are legendary (and sometimes brutal), and stuff literally has disappeared in the last 24 hours, if he wasn’t satisfied with it.

So Steve has some responsibility here a swell, but with a caveat: someone he depended on to tell him what reality was told him it was ready to roll, and Steve believed him. And whoever told him that was wrong, and made everyone (including Steve and Apple) look bad. That’s not a good way to advance your career at Apple.

That this release was botched isn’t about Apple not having a clue, but about the MobileMe people either blowing it (I can think of any number of scenarios — scaling it hard). The ultimate failure seemed to be more capacity planning mistakes than anything else, if I’m guessing right. but the ultimate failure was not being willing to tell Steve “we aren’t ready” and taking that heat. They thought they could release and make it work, and guessed very wrong (or thought they were in good shape, which is worse).

Some areas of Apple “run their own show”, effectively using Apple’s IT datacenters as a hosting facilities. Others build and operate within Apple’s IT infrastructure. One of the groups that basically runs its own IT outside of Apple’s core IT group is Eddy Cue’s group — because of the way stuff Eddy is in charge of gets built and managed.

Eddy’s name isn’t familiar to most apple people, but he’s in his way as important to apple’s success as Jonathan Ives. His specialty: the back-end infrastructures that make Apple’s online universe tick. His groups did the Apple online store, iTools (later .Mac), iTunes store, etc, etc. It’s the not-sexy part of the company, but it’s the guts that make all of the sexy front ends actually work.

I’m actually amazed that Eddy hasn’t been poached by a startup, much as I’m amazed that Tim Cook hasn’t been poached — but the reality is that if you survive and become one of Steve’s inner core of people he trusts (and that ain’t easy) — you tend to stay. Apple doesn’t generally get poached by startups or other places at the exec level often, anyone notice?

Rospach’s thoughts on Eddy Cue, Mobile Me’s head honcho, who reports directly to Steve Jobs.

I’m actually amazed that Eddy hasn’t been poached by a startup, much as I’m amazed that Tim Cook hasn’t been poached — but the reality is that if you survive and become one of Steve’s inner core of people he trusts (and that ain’t easy) — you tend to stay. Apple doesn’t generally get poached by startups or other places at the exec level often, anyone notice?

A lot of that is because it’s not easy working for Steve, but if you can do it, you get to do really great stuff, and that’s addictive. trust me. you just don’t see people running off from apple to CEO a startup the way you do Yahoo or Google, not out of the top few levels of the company.

Eddy’s real specialty is to be able to take what Steve asks for, implement it, hit the target dates, make it work, and KEEP THE DAMN THING A SECRET UNTIL STEVE ANNOUNCES IT. That’s a big reason why his team is self-contained. It also means his people can do what needs to be done to implement things that never existed before and which don’t fit into normal IT “this is how we do things” standards. he and his teams spends most of his time off in uncharted territory where a need to be innovative and flexible is a must, and yet they have to do it on huge scales.

On the other hand, Eddy’s no easier to work with than Steve is, for obvious reasons. I invariably warned people not to hire into his groups unless they wanted to donate their life to the cause. When I was there, I worked pretty closely with various parts of his world, and it was populated with equal who were just as maniacal about this as Eddy and steve and people who were in process of burning out. Not much middle ground (but it works).

(full disclosure time: Laurie worked with Eddy way back when; me, I once almost got re-orged into his world until management remembered my vow to die before working for him, and re-arranged reality to fit (otherwise, lists.apple.com never would have existed….) — but I had a chance to deal with him while I was there and I’ve got a lot more respect for him now than I used to. I still wouldn’t want to work in the kind of grind his organization demands, though, but it does pretty good work under really scary conditions.

So you can bet, MobileMe will get fixed.

For the full article, (must read) click here.

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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.

Steve

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We have been given public apologies from Apple, 3 blog posts from David G., and seen a leaked internal e-mail where Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls Mobile Me a disaster. When are we going to see the leaked email where Apple asks Google for some Mobile Me help?

Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) controls nearly 80% of the internet. Yup, the entire internet. There is no way to sugar coat the vast influence the company has over web based technology and how it is used. Yet, alongside using Google’s technologies, Apple naturally attempts to compete with Google at becoming your “digital hub” both on and off the web. At this point, it’s probably best to align priorities with Google so that Mobile Me can become at least a sliver as stable as any of Google’s products.

Google’s fundamental technology practices have evolved into a carefully organized and well oiled machine. They know what to release, when to release it, how to maintain it, how to design it and how it should work, both on and off the web. Unlike Mobile Me users, Gmail users have never experienced lost email due to Google’s internal issues.

Apple uses Google’s technologies in places like the Maps Application on the iPhone, or anywhere else they want to integrate mapping, such as Mobile Me. You can give your contacts a location, tag them in Google Maps, and everything (is supposed) to work harmoniously through the main application/service that is being used. On the current iPhone, location awareness is hands-down the most important feature (aside from the phone itself). The inclusion of GPS in the current iPhone 3G only furthered what could be done with the device. By “location awareness” I am referring to the combination of a GPS, Edge or Wi-fi signal being paired with a mapping service such as Google’s, and a Graphical User Interface for user input. This package of usability is known as “location awareness.” Without it, the iPhone would become rather dormant, and seem stuck, rather than being flexible and able to adjust based on your location. You could argue that the actual hardware (GPS chip) or the front-end (Interface Experience) is the most important part. But Google’s back-end Mapping technologies are the driving force behind location based applications on the iPhone. Without this extremely extensive web technology, location based applications simply could not be developed.

In times of crisis, like what we have been experiencing with Mobile Me, Apple should turn to Google and ask for some help. It may have even been wise to include Google in Mobile Me’s development from day one. After all, Google has successfully rolled out numerous web based applications that work like they should. Yes, I know, Gmail has been in beta for over 4 years (Gmail), but it still dominates the email service market share. What would have been wrong with releasing Mobile Me as a beta? What would have been wrong with asking Google for some advice? After all, Google CEO Eric Schmidt does sit on Apple’s board.

It may be entirely possible that Apple and Google don’t want to share code for their services. Google may look at Mobile Me as direct competition, in which case Eric Schmidt would need to leave board meetings where Mobile Me is discussed. Just like he’s done for the iPhone because of Google’s competing mobile development platform Android. Chances are that Apple didn’t want to include Google where they didn’t need them, keeping them on a “need-to-know” basis, just like most employees at Apple are treated. How much longer does Mobile Me need to flounder before Apple gets serious about stability? I don’t mean stable for a few days, or a few applications being stable. I mean, the service as a whole being stable and usable.

The bottom line, is that just like Apple, Google is good at what they do. Just like Steve Jobs was quoted as saying [directed towards Google] that entering is not easy, and not everyone should do it. Google could say the same thing about Apple and the web services field. By Steve Jobs’ own doing, Apple has become a loved hardware and software company. But the software is for the Mac, not the web. Apple is entering a new field of intense competition with Mobile Me. And they are choosing to do it with closed source code, which means that barely anyone outside of the company’s immediate engineers will ever be able to help with the service.

For Apple’s Mobile Me to truly thrive, and utilize what the web has to offer, Google has to be more involved. Google has done this before, and they’ve done it well. Apple and Steve Jobs primarily have had nearly 20 years to perfect their flawlessly written Operating System (OS X). They don’t have another 20 years to get Mobile Me right, so maybe that “need-to-know” basis they keep Google on can change into a “we-need-you-to-know” basis.

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“The e-mail, seen by Ars Technica, acknowledges MobileMe’s flaws and what could have been done to better handle the launch. In addition to needing more time and testing, Jobs believes that Apple should have rolled MobileMe’s services out slowly instead of launching it “as a monolithic service.” For example, over-the-air iPhone syncing could have gone up initially, then web apps one by one (Mail, Calendar, etc.),” Jacqui Cheng reports for ArsTechnica.

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Steve Jobs continues to explain in the email. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

We have reported in the past about the beliefs that this past July 9th was simply too ambitious. A company like Apple, who by choice decides to only release a few products a year, should not be releasing 4 major products on the same day. It is simply too ambitious (not in a good way) and they don’t have enough support to handle the possible disasters that can ensue.

Because the Mobile Me launch was such a failure, Apple has reorganized the entire Mobile Me team, which will now report to Eddy Cue. Cue will report straight to Steve Jobs, as well as head all Internet-related services at Apple (iTunes, App Store, Mobile Me).

“The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services,” Jobs continues to explain. “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.”

Additional thoughts: Hey Apple, why don’t you ring up Google? They’ve been dealing with online services for some time now. You guys are such healthy and bountiful partners.

Don’t you think it’s time to stop being so secretive and ask a company (Google) who has seemingly been successful in this space for a little help?

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