I, like many, have been very excited about MobileMe since it was announced (see past post about it). I've been eagerly waiting for the new features to transform .Mac into something really useful. Wednesday, we were told that the transition would occur between 6P and 12A (starting at 9P my time) Thursday night. Come Thursday, that was pushed to 8P. Friday morning rolls around, and still nothing (I was able to hit the login screen once, but was kicked to Apple's MobileMe marketing site after that). Those of us on Windows (I know, as a .Mac subscriber, I'm in the minority) weren't told at all how to integrate MobileMe. Come to find out, after installing iTunes 7.7, it puts a Control Panel under the Network settings. So without the new web apps to play with, I download and install 7.7. Now, on the .Mac status page, it explicitely states at this point that web apps are not working, but that syncing is up. After cranking up the new MobileMe control panel, I input my username and password and I'm promptly told that the MobileMe service cannot be connected to. This didn't work until last night, almost 24 hours after the supposed deployment. Web apps had limited functionality; I could get into my Mail (which is awesome, but REALLY needs a Reply To setting), iDisk, and Gallery (which again, is awesome). I couldn't get to my Contacts until today, and Calendar is still really flaky. I got a BlackBerry Pearl (8100) last week, and while I know MobileMe doesn't support it, I do religiously sync it with Outlook, which syncs with MobileMe.
Which brings me to my next sticking point; Tiger integration. My wife has a 12" PowerBook G4 with Tiger on it, and I still can't get her synced. All I want is for her to have instant access to my calendar through iCal, and though the .Mac panel shows me as logged in with a verified password (I even have iDisk access), it gives me an error when clicking on the sync tab that ".Mac login failed". I did some research, and a TON of people on forums are hitting this same issue, though again, there's nothing about this issue on the MobileMe status page. Wanting to hear some encouraging "we know, we're working on it" response, I hit up the MobileMe support chat. The rep walked me through resetting this, deleting that, and creating that before she finally said she'd submit a ticket. How hard is it to regurgitate a canned "We're working on that known issue" response? Don't tell me Apple doesn't know about this. There are still a lot of people on Tiger, and they list 10.4.11 as the supported version of Tiger (which she is). Just acknowledge the issue, say you're working on it, and swallow your pride. Ignoring the issue (even if only publicly) will NOT fix it. It only angers people. I know I'm pissed.
And it wouldn't matter so much if it wasn't a PAID service. I pay for this. While I love that they are making it worth the $99 a year, there shouldn't be such a big gap in service. And I know that the reason this deployment has been a clusterf*ck has been them rushing to get the new iPhone ready and out the door, but they've even managed to botch that, I hear. It's rediculous that a company as large as Apple could, and would, hype something (in this case, 2 somethings) so much, and then not be prepared when they said they would be. Yeah, in a couple of days, this stuff will all be smoothed out, but they predicted it would be a 6 hour deployment of MobileMe (in order to be ready when the new iPhones went live). We're a day and a half later, and stuff still doesn't work right. There's a lot of people in Cupertino working extra hours this weekend, that's for sure. Let's just hope they get it together and figure this out...
EDIT: If you're on Tiger and having the same issue, search in Finder for all files that contain "dotmac". For me, it brought up 3 files. Send those to the trash, empty the trash, restart, and try syncing again in System Preferences. Worked for me! I wish Apple would publish this fix; I found it on a support forum.
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