Friday, July 25, 2008

Apple... Do your Job Steve Jobs.

Oh Shit! Someone within Apple out in Cupertino, CA had to have said that in the office at one point or another. I knew that my number one "go-to" company with a great history of efficient machines and support wouldn't last. It was too good to be true. As most of you may or may not know - Apple recently switched their .mac account(s) over to a new feature called Mobile-Me. At the same time they also released the new Apple iphone 3G, iphone software 2.0, and itunes 7.7.

This was a relatively large task that most consumers and Mac users were highly anticipating and now asking "What the hell happened?". I think the shit really hit the fan when AT&T's servers were overwhelmed with thousands and thousands of iphones being activated all within a very small amount of time. Even though AT&T was largely blamed for the iphone fiasco it still made a lot of Mac users a little uneasy.  
Many people with the older iphones tried to update the their phone to the new 2.0 software which turned out less than excited for many users. Most ended up with what they called a $500 functionless "brick" that would turn on, use battery life, but not make calls or anything else useful. Luckily my phone didn't "brick". 

Now onto the Mobile-Me fiasco. Mobile-Me was introduced to act as Apple's version of "Microsoft Exchange". New apple users could purchase a Mobile-Me subscription and the previous system users (.mac) would have their accounts automatically transferred over. This would allow anyone with a Mobile-Me subscription to "seamlessly" sync their iphone, home, personal, and laptop computers together. This was to include calendars, contacts, mail accounts, bookmarks, and apple based web applications such as iweb. Apple also loosely used the word "push" email and contacts which also created a lot of flack. Ultimately a great idea that was disastrously executed. 

I was one of the lucky few once again. My computers and first generation iphone were able to sync together. Mainly and luckily because one of my newer machines (MacPro) has the latest platform (10.5.4) which works best with Mobile Me, even though my older 15" powerbook is running 10.4.11. The only problem I've run into is not being able to publish my new website I've been working on via iweb on my macs.

Other people are experiencing far worse problems. There are many people with mail accounts that no longer work correctly and are being told they need to upgrade platforms in order for their older .mac account to work correctly and be able to switch over to Mobile-Me. That is total bullshit since Mac announced the Mobile Me and previous .mac accounts would seamlessly work with 1o.4.11. 

Apple has pissed a lot of people off including me. It's ironic I was just telling my sister how great a .mac account would be for her this morning and even though I wouldn't use anything but a Mac, I kind of feel a small sense of worry about what's to come of this whole shit storm. 

Way to go Steve - take off your stupid black turtle-neck and get to work. 


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