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Apple adds another 60 days free for MobileMe members
Apple has sent out another email detailing an additional free extension for members of the £59 per year MobileMe Service, this time 60 more days on top of the 30 already provided last month as an apology. A total of three months extra is very generous, and a sign that the company is not only looking to recruit new subscribers to the service from the world of Windows, but to ensure that those of us whose accounts date back to the days when it was called .Mac, and was for Mac users only, stay along for what has so far been a very bumpy ride.
The transition from .Mac to MobileMe has been a disaster. It hardly seems likely that Windows users have flocked in their millions to the new offering, at least not if they’ve read any of the reports across the Web of MobileMe suffering extensive downtime and sychronisation problems.
My own experience hasn’t been as bad as some stories that have emerged. I’ve had access to my email ninety per cent of the time when I’ve wanted it, but I have noticed bookmarks and other items including Mail failing to synchronise between my MacBook Pro, iMac and iPhone within a reasonable timeframe, taking many hours to do so. Bookmarks added on the iPhone don’t ever show up on either of the computers, which I think they’re supposed to—it’s certainly the case that links added into the Safari web browser on the computers show up on the iPhone within four or five hours. Pop-up windows repeatedly ask me which copy of a file I wish to keep—the one on my computer, or the one hosted by the service inside my personal 20Gb online iDisk. I click to tell the service I want to keep the local file, and still I get asked, again and again.
Whenever I’ve tried to access MobileMe via the Web, only Mail has been available—and then only sometimes—and nothing else. Sometimes the Sync Now function on the iMac and MacBook Pro fails to operate, whether I’m letting it run as usual in automatic mode or trying a manual sync.
Apple always took flak for its .Mac service offering little for high cost compared to the free offerings from Google, but rather than respond to the criticism by reducing the price or making the service free, the company chose instead to remove some familiar tools from .Mac altogether when switching to MobileMe, and up the storage space from a few gigabytes to 20Gb. The company has managed to produce something that is worse value for money, offering less. But the reason many, including myself, took up .Mac and wanted to stay with MobileMe was for the ease of synchronisation both services promised but, so far, only the old .Mac managed to deliver consistently and reliably.
But Apple isn’t only having problems with MobileMe.
Little has been written on the problems with the new iPhone 3G and the latest version of iTunes. I still get asked, intermittently, by a pop-up window, to send my iPhone usage statistics to Apple, and still I say no, clicking the box not to be asked again. My decision is ignored, the question asked time and again until I am now thoroughly sick of it. I won’t, no matter how much I am harangued by iTunes, send those stats to Apple. Applications for the iPhone can be purchased or downloaded for free on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and through the iTunes Store on a computer. So the theory goes. I find applications obtained on one device don’t always synchronise to the other devices, deletions of applications aren’t always followed through universally, updates can’t be downloaded, and the iTunes Store sometimes tells me updates are available but won’t let me get them.
My iPhone is automatically backed up every time I sync it with iTunes, but the backup process takes just under half an hour. It’s thought by some to mean that all the added-in applications are backed up as well as personal data, which seems likely to cause the ridiculously long sync time but is utterly pointless when you consider that iTunes stores your applications along with your music, videos and podcasts. Why back up applications when they’re already present on the system? You can bypass the backup by clicking on the little ‘x’ in the small window that sits above your library listings, but then you’re not getting the benefit of backing up personal data. What’s needed is an urgent upgrade of iTunes to address the problems brought in when a new version was released concurrently with the iPhone 3G, but there’s been one upgrade already that failed to fix any of the complaints people have been raising.
Adding further injury to insult is the fact that the ringtones I make using the third-party iToner application are often wiped from my iPhone during the synchronisation process, and always wiped whenever there’s an iPhone software upgrade. Apple makes us jump through hoops and rely on software made by third parties presumably in order to keep the music industry executives happy—for, as we all know, converting one of your CD or mp3 music tracks to make a ringtone for your iPhone causes widespread poverty and will eventually lead to the collapse of every major music label on the planet. You might even get a knock at your door from the RIAA accusing you of being a thief, carrying a crucifix over their shoulders for you to be strung up on to serve as an example. That, or they’ll bring a rope to go round your neck.
Until you own an iPhone, your focus tends to be on its failings—a laughably poor camera, no photo-messaging, limited (indeed, non-existent) to-ing and fro-ing of files with Bluetooth, despite Bluetooth being built-in. But the iPhone more than makes up for those omissions and weak implementations by being the best mobile phone you’ve ever owned, when you indeed own one. Yes, battery life seems poor, but the iPhone is used for much more than calls. It serves as a PDA, and does a better job of that than a BlackBerry or Palm or anything running Windows Mobile. It is also an iPod, and a video player. It can also, using its GPS chip, locate services in your local area quickly, providing, for once where searches are concerned, actually relevant results.
And my iPhone hasn’t once crashed or played up in any way (although some users report different and disappointing experiences). Yet it’s a computer. How many reliable computers (Macs aside) have you encountered? All told, the iPhone 3G ain’t at all bad on that score.
Simply put, when it comes to usability and usefulness, the iPhone is the best mobile phone ever brought to market. It’s a shame, therefore, that the MobileMe service has failed to be anywhere near as good, and so a full three months extension for current members is only going to be well-received if the problems are sorted out, sharpish. Three extra months of crappy service is neither acceptable apology nor gift.
To make things even better, Apple needs to prioritise fixing the inconsistencies and annoyances of the iPhone and iTunes as well, how they work together, and apart. And, while this next point is sadly unlikely to be acted upon, Apple should seriously consider making MobileMe a free service to which anyone can sign up. It could always do that, and introduce additional premium paid-for (but much cheaper than at present) services as optional extras. Until that happens, and don’t hold your breath, the alternatives, being free and generally reliable and extensive in what they offer, will always make MobileMe a service only worth signing up to by Mac and iPhone users keen to take advantage of effortless people-friendly ‘no geek required’ synchronisation of mail, bookmarks and system preferences across devices.
But of course, that’s the one thing we don’t yet have with MobileMe. And it’s costing Apple a fair amount already to try to keep everyone on board. One last thing—before any Windows die-hards cry ‘aha!’ in pantomime fashion, using the tired old argument of, ’see, Apple is just as crap as Microsoft’–always an odd stance—just let’s ask, to keep things in perspective, what Microsoft has done to appease the anger of anyone who bought into the Ultimate Vista Experience…. That’s right. Nothing. At least Apple doesn’t solely rely on a stubborn insistence that its products are always great, all of the time, and anyone in disagreement simply hasn’t seen the light yet.
But still, while Apple always looks best when set against Microsoft, it needs to do a whole lot more to make the gap between the two even wider.
