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Thu, 13 Nov 2008 "MobileMe still has issues", Apple tells developers

MobileMe still flakey, with Time Machine and Mail issues also highlighted in Apple MobileMe developer notes

Macworld staff

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Apple has told developers that MobileMe still has performance issues. The information came in release notes accompanying the recent Mac OS X 10.5.6 build 9G35

The note included some of the following statements:

“MobileMe syncing issues - If automatic syncing is set and the user does not open the pref pane, automatic syncing will not occur.”

“Please help test MobileMe automatic syncing. We are particularly interested in testing automatic sync on portable computers and on networks with medium to high latency and or constrained bandwidth. Please include the ~/Library/Logs/Sync/dotmacsync.log with any radars you file.”

“If you are working behind a firewall (ie. corporate proxy), we would like to know your experience with the syncing. If you have auto sync turned on, and you make a change from me.com, or MobileMe website, does that change sync within a reasonable amount of time? Also attempt general syncing of Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks and other sync data. Please watch for excessive syncing and file radars for any abnormal syncs.”

Time Machine

The notes also reveal potential issues with Time Machine performance:

“The 10.5.6 release includes changes to improve Time Machine reliability in both the AFP Client and Server. The changes in the client will detect conditions that lead to corruption of a Time Machine backup disk image and eject the AFP volume before damage to the disk image occurs.”

And requests with help in testing Mail:

“We need people who send messages entirely in non Latin character sets, such as Hangul, Kotoeri, Traditional Chinese character sets. Including attachment names, punctuation, everything. We would also like to include those who send messages and enclosures in Latin character sets as well (French, German, Italian, etc). Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic would be another good set of writing systems to extensively test.”

These are not the first issues plaguing Apple’s online service. Earlier this month, MobileMe was down for seven hours. MobileMe users trying to access the Me.com home page Monday 3 November saw the message: “Not Found: Resource does not exist.”

Apple launched MobileMe in the summer to much fanfare, and also a number of complaints. The rebranded .Mac service had some problems at its initial launch, when many users couldn’t login or sync information properly. Apple apologised for those problems in July and extended users’ subscriptions.

In October, Apple published an update on its work improving its MobileMe service. The lengthy list of improvements and tweaks covered most services, including Mail, Calendar, Contacts and the MobileMe Gallery.

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Comments received


Michael said on Fri, 14 Nov 2008

I am not a big user of Mobile me, but...

When I use iWeb it often fails to publish and requires restarting to make it work.

The mobile me web sites I makes are SloooooooW.

Still not a first class service.

Stuart said on Fri, 14 Nov 2008

I cancelled my MobileMe trial yesterday because it wasn't giving me the service I would want to pay for. I've had a problem recently where I was getting someone else's numbers etc. Apple Support didn't seem to care that much!

Brian said on Fri, 14 Nov 2008

MobileMe has been great for my family. My wife and I both have iPhones, and we sync our contacts & calendars to a single MobileMe account. Sharing a calendar and having it update within a few minutes wherever we are is fantastic - no more confusion or double bookings, and no more out of date contacts. On a single iPhone the bugs that remain might outweigh the benefits, but with multiple phones it is truly superb. Most of the bugs have been with the web interface, so we just stay clear of that as much as possible.

DD said on Fri, 14 Nov 2008

MobileMe is also working well for me. It is managing my .mac email, calendar and contacts flawlessly. I alos love the MobileFiles iphone app. It allows me to access my files on my idisk from my phone. A terrific added value.

DD

oldannyboy said on Mon, 24 Nov 2008

LOTS of trouble for me from MobileMe--I would lose all of my contacts and calendar events every time I left town, for the duration of each trip, at least till recently. I lost everything at least 50 times. In other words, I wasn't Mobile at all! Albert at the Apple Store in KC has been a big help tho--much more stable since he got involved, and my family & friends REALLY like My Gallery.

Simon said on Tue, 25 Nov 2008

I'm rather astounded that Apple asks how MobileMe is performing behind a corporate firewall. If there is a proxy in place, and in most corporates there is, MobileMe simply will not work. This is because it does not utilise the Internet settings used by almost every other product on your computer. Even itunes and safari use these settings, but MobileMe doesn't even have the option for manual proxy settings.

For me, this is about to become a deal breaker, I Want to use MobileMe I will even forgive the odd downtime, but if I cant make it sync my personal AND worklife together, its a waste of time.

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