Monday, July 28, 2008
MobileMe does not work
I am starting to have the feeling that MobileMe is the worst product Apple ever launched... This is quite surprising because they are maniacal in what they do. But push email and synchronization are tough beasts that require a lot of time and a ton of people to get right (you can count the scars on my back, if you do not believe me, seven years and 2.5M downloads after the birth of Sync4j ;-)The nail in the coffin came from Walt Mossberg (a.k.a. Uncle Walt) on the Wall Street Journal. His article on MobileMe is probably the worst review I ever seen him writing (and he writes a lot...). The title: "Apple's MobileMe Is Far Too Flawed To Be Reliable". Ouch!
The rest is worst:
[..] Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can't recommend it, at least not in its current state. It's a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises.Ooopss. I share with Walt that it is a great idea. Even better if you could use more than just an iPhone for it or more than just an @me.com account... A great idea of a service everyone would use, and even pay for. Unfortunately, it is not easy to make it happen. You need lots of time and lots of people that test and make sure the solution really works. It is called open source. Steve, give us a call, we'll come to rescue you :-))
I am not referring to the launch glitches that plagued MobileMe earlier this month, such as servers that couldn't keep up with the traffic and email outages that, for some users, persist as I write this. Those were bad, but they have eased considerably. Apple already has apologized for them and is giving customers an extra 30 days on their subscriptions to make up for the poor start. The problems I am citing are systemic. [..]
But in my tests, using two Macs, two Dell computers and two iPhones, I ran into problem after problem. One big issue is that while changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best. Apple has admitted that this is a problem, and says it is working on it.
But there's more. The Web site was sluggish, and occasionally calendar entries wouldn't load at all. Sometimes, you have to manually refresh the Web pages to see changes made on your devices. And when I tried to open my Web-based file-storage page directly from the MobileMe control panel on Windows, I got an error message on both Dells.
My MobileMe calendar, which originated on a Mac, didn't flow into the main Outlook calendar, but appeared as a separate calendar in Outlook, which was visible only by changing settings. My address-book groups on the Mac, which are simply distribution lists, didn't show up as distribution lists in Outlook, but as separate address books, and they also weren't immediately visible. Apple blames Outlook quirks for these issues, but in my view, it should have overcome them.
Other problems abounded. On one occasion, my synced contacts on the iPhone appeared as names only, without any information. In general, synced contacts on the iPhone loaded slowly.
When my Apple Mail program used rules I had set up to automatically file certain emails into local folders instead of leaving them in the inbox, they simply disappeared from my MobileMe account on the iPhone and the Web site. Avoiding this requires a tedious editing of all your rules.
Twice, MobileMe was unable to sync my bookmarks at all, and when it did, their order was scrambled. When I synced contacts to my iPhone, my custom ringtones for particular contacts were lost and had to be reselected.
Posted by Fabrizio at 11:45
5 Comments:
MikeyP said...
It is really too bad that Apple won't allow 3rd party apps to modify the calendar on the iPhone. I currently run a personal Funambol server at home, and sync contacts/calendar/to-do between my work computer (Outlook/Exchange), my home computer (Outlook standalone), and Treo (Synthesis client). When I got my iPhone, I used the Funambol client to instantly get all of my contacts, but alas, I'm left without a calendar. :-(
Comment Posted at 13:32
I didn't know MobileMe also syncs rowser bookmarks. Or syncs when it works.
Does it also sync/backup/archive text messages (SMS) from iPhone?
As a side note, those two would be nice additions to Funambol in the future.
It'd be nice to archive ones important text messages on the server as devices have limited memory and change from time to time.
Agree?
Comment Posted at 18:43
Ciao Capo, I just finished exporting my Thunderbird contacts to the iPhone via myFunambol. I had to tweak a bit with various releases of the plugin (0.43 works great with Thunderbird 2.00.16 and Lightning 0.8) but eventually all worked out for the best. Any solution in sight for the calendar? Thanks
Ciao - Alfredo (el fonsi)
Comment Posted at 12:40
I'm kind of confused. I keep reading that 3rd party calendar/notes sync will be available at some time in the future. But will it be a month from now? A year from now? Five years from now? If it's five years from now I'm going to get rid of my iPhone and get something else. If Steve Jobs said that when this will happen has not been decided or released, does anybody have any kind of ballpark estimate? Or is Steve Jobs keeping tight-lipped? Is some kind of NDA preventing more information about when calendar access will be available? I keep feeling there is a lot of secrecy about this. I hope problems with MobileMe don't somehow delay 3rd party calendar access. I keep getting the feeling Apple wants to get their Mobile Me well established first before they allow others to sync. Question: Is Funambol working on a jailbreak sync app for 2.0 that will sync calendars and notes? If so, how can I find out when it when it is ready? Will it be announced on this blog or somewhere else?
Comment Posted at 17:59
I recommend people run as far away from the iphone as possible if you want stuff like exchange sync. Get a decent WM phone, Blackberry, or any of the various Nokia and others that have standard protocol SyncML *built in* and ready to run funambol out of the box.
This is just an example of one of those times that Apple actually made a concept far more complicated than it needed to be. Very disappointing indeed.
