One of the things demoed by Phil Schiller when MobileMe was introduced was the ability to easily share files on your iDisk with others. The idea was that you’d select a file on the iDisk, choose to share it, and you’d have a couple of options:

• Password protection
• An expiration date for the link

Then you key in the email address(es) of those you want to share the file with, and they’d get an email with a download link. 

It all looked pretty slick, but there was just one little thing wrong: When MobileMe went live, this feature was MIA. 

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Apple’s documentation for changes in the recent 10.5.6 system update includes a line of interest to MobileMe users on the Mac:

Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.

So we now have “push” for those items on the desktop, as we’ve always had on the Web and the iPhone. That’s good news.

However, the MobileMe changes go deeper than that. Apple didn’t just change Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks to “push” distribution (for Macs only), they changed the sync times for all items in the MobileMe control panel, and also made changes to the MobileMe service itself. Let’s take a look…

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Recently MacLife magazine reviewed Apple’s MobileMe service. My problem with the review is that it lists something as a negative that continues to spread misinformation: 

Doesn’t “push” your email instantly, rather every 15 minutes.

This is wrong. In this article I’ll touch on what gets synced with MobileMe, when it occurs, and why I’m happy with it. 

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Just got this from the MobileMe team: 

The article link in the email points here. 

At this rate, I may never need to renew my subscription.

One annoying issue with MobileMe is that it does not sync subscription calendars to your iPhone or the web app.

Like many people, I subscribe to a holidays calendar and, perhaps not like many people, a moon phases calendar. I wanted these back on my iPhone, and on the new Calendar web app as well. 

Doing this is actually easy, it consists of bringing the calendar in as local instead of subscription: 

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See it and subscribe here. 

This was a good idea, and they seem to be “coming clean” with some details of the extent of the damage caused so far. For example, in referring to the infamous 1% of users with no email access: 

As of today a team was able to restore limited web access to those accounts so the affected members can use their browsers to read mail that has arrived since last Friday (though not before) as well as send and receive new mail. The team has already begun rolling out restoration of full access for all the accounts and expect to finish by the end of next week. We particularly regret to report the loss in the affected accounts of approximately 10% of the messages received between July 16 and July 18.

Not the best of news, but better than Apple’s communicated so far. Another interesting tidbit is this: 

We’ve since added server capacity and tuned our software to scale better — i.e. behave more gracefully when traffic spikes. The team has also fixed over 70 bugs…

They’ve already added server capacity? They only launched two weeks ago, yet they had servers sitting around available for adding? Either they got those servers in place very fast — and clearly miscalculated what was needed at launch — or they launched without all the servers online. 

I’ve subscribed to the feed and am anxious to see what updates we get in the coming days.

Compared to the 1% above my problems are minor (but quite annoying), and in total they harm the MobileMe experience. Further, it’s hard to be comfortable with this system knowing that some people are getting rocked by it. Until the system truly settles down, there’s no particular reason to think any subscribed account couldn’t be next.

I’ve written about MobileMe’s horrid rollout on two separate occasions (more, if you consider the updates and comments of those posts). I’m happy to see some heavy hitters are now calling Apple on it as well. 

Walt Mossberg and David Pogue both blasted Apple on this today. Even the extremely pro-Apple MacDailyNews site had this to say in their “take” on Pogue’s article (emphasis theirs): 

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I’ve made no secret of the fact that the MobileMe rollout was a disaster. It isn’t over yet. 

Apple’s apologies (one to all users, another to trial subscribers erroneously billed early) were the right thing to do, and I appreciate Apple for doing it. And of course their 30-day subscriber extensions (one each to the two groups above) are also a great gesture. 

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See the end of this article (and the comments) for a couple of updates. 

Soon I’ll write about how I put on the iPhone 2.0 software this morning, and have been running it all day. It went smoothly and works wonderfully. 

I’ll write that Exchange sync works great (just email, I’m not using it for contacts or calendars). 

I’ll write that the new MobileMe “push” services work great so far. Tried emails, contacts and calendars and it’s working just like it’s designed. That is, comparing the phone to my desktop apps I can see data entered in either place move back and forth. 

I’ll write about the App store and how sweet it is, and that the new freebie Remote app is so cool. 

But that will all come later, for now I just want to say to Apple that the MobileMe site was up early today, and then shut down (I didn’t try it then). Now it’s back up and, Apple, you should shut it down again. Quickly. Before you become the laughingstock of the industry. 

S-L-O-W. Disgustingly and embarrassingly slow. Setting new world records in slowness. So slow that, for all practical purposes, it’s unusable. And that’s the good news, because at least when it’s slow it’s working. I have yet to get contacts to pull up on this thing. I get calendars — sometimes — but then get server crashes. Or Safari will tell me it can’t display the page. It’s a miserable experience

Apple, shut it down and fix it. Google and Microsoft are both laughing their asses off at your first real step into cloud computing. They may have been a little worried yesterday. Not now.

[UPDATE:] Not very long after I wrote this post the MobileMe site was shut down again. Good. Apple has stated that everything about MobileMe is working except the web aps, but the push features that worked for me all day today are no longer functioning, and other people are having issues as well. This is more than just the web apps. 

Meanwhile, to keep informed about if MobileMe is up just check here.

[UPDATE #2:] As of noon on 7/11, things are no better with MobileMe than yesterday. Apple’s having a bad day today, what with their app store and activation servers getting barraged with requests. No surprise there, and I do not believe Apple should add hundreds of servers just to get over the peaks this weekend. All the issues related to activity will sort themselves out over time, and do not necessarily point to any bugs on Apple’s (or AT&T’s) part (though I think Apple should have staggered the 2.0 availability, i.e., roll out the iPhone 3G for a week and then make the 2.0 software available for the 2G unit). 

However, the MobileMe fiasco does not fit into the above category of issues with the new iPhone, software, and App Store. This is not about server activity because only valid .Mac subscribers and trials would be accessing the servers. And yet Apple’s been at it now for over 40 hours!! There is a problem there. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big, and they can’t seem to find it.

OK, I’ve watched the videos, including the downloaded Guided Tour, and have some thoughts on Apple’s new MobileMe service. 

I’d heard rumors of a .Mac revamp and wrote a post on it, so my comparison will be within the context of that post and what I stated I’d like to see.

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