by Jean-Louis Gassée
Friday morning, I stop at Il Fornaio to get my last caffeine fix of the morning. Once arrived at the office across the street, I realize I “lost” my iPad. Not to worry, I’ve done this before. Find My iPhone will tell me where it is. It worked a couple of months ago when I left an earlier 3G iPad at a California Street burger joint. When I came back, 10 mins later, the iPad was gone. I fired up the iPhone app and saw the lost puppy still was in neighborhood. I got in my car as I saw the iPad move South on El Camino Real, ending up around a Hobee’s restaurant. Going there and asking around got me nothing. I remotely locked the iPad, displayed a message asking to call me. No joy. I then wiped it, that is erased its contents from my iPhone. Only a consolation, but an important one.
Still, thanks to the presence of mind of an IT consultant who was asked to unlock an iPad “found in a bus”, I was reunited with my tablet a few weeks later.
Interestingly, Apple recently made Find My iPhone a free service. Before, you had to be a $99/year MobileMe subscriber. This is another confirmation of Apple’s business model focus, anything and everything in the service of the real margins engine: hardware.
Still on the positive side, Back to My Mac, another MobileMe service, was recently and discreetly improved: it now works through (most of) aggressively firewalled corporate networks. This makes Screen Sharing (an Apple VNC implementation) even more useful.
So, MobileMe works, right?
Let’s see, I must have forgotten this iPad on the counter as I picked up my latte. It’ll be just a minute, I’ll log on MobileMe and confirm its location. No such luck, the system doesn’t know me anymore. Breathe three times, slow down, this is just a typo. Nope.
Same on my iPhone. Foraging around, I notice the App Store update tells me something like my password is locked because of a security problem.
Sigh. I go back to my computer and click on the Lost Password link. I land on a page offering to email a link to a password update page to my alternate email address. Done. I answer questions, set up a new password, log out and back in to my Apple ID account. No problem, I’m recognized again.
But back to MobileMe, no joy. I’m still locked out.
Another path to the Apple ID password restoration page, answering more questions. Success. New password. Out and back in. Success.
But no, I’m still locked out of MobileMe and can’t locate my iPad.
I still get MobileMe mail. But not for long. When I try and change the password to the latest one, I’m out. And reverting to the old one doesn’t work either.
One could see this as a banal security incident. Perhaps someone tried to log into my account and tripped the alarm system. I ended up on the phone and on email with a competent and pleasant support person and, around dinner time, I was back in business with a fresh temp password, changed to a new one of mine and a new secret question this morning. What’s to complain about?
Unfortunately, many things.
Let’s start with iDisk. A great idea if you want to share and synchronize files between machines. In practice, things can turn mystifying as some but not all files stubbornly refuse to synch between computers. I went to Apple’s support pages on the matter for guidance and to related discussion forums for empathy and reassurance about my mental state. Those dives weren’t entirely comforting. I tried progressively aggressive remedies and ended up having to nuke the entire set up — after careful backups — and rebuild the connections. Today, things work nicely, but I no longer try to sync “the most recent version” of a file, the burns still hurt. I just store and retrieve as I move from one machine to another as I write pieces like this one.
Unnamed Apple friends roll their eyes and tell me to go Dropbox myself. Not the Drop Box in my Public folder but the very successful backup and syncing service. The company is well-financed, supported by noted philanthropists such as Accel and Sequoia.
Still on Cloud services, we have iWork.com, not to be confused with the iWork suite for Macs and iPads. Not even a hobby. Contrary to the likes of Google Docs, Office Live and other Zohos, iWork.com won’t let you edit documents online.
MobileMe other offerings involve photo galleries. They work nicely but expensively. For $200/year one gets MobileMe and 60Gb of storage. For $100/year, Google will get you 400Gb and the free Picasa/PicasaWeb combo, which also works nicely. Actually nicer as it accepts bigger uploads than MobileMe.
For Web sites, MobileMe can be combined with the free iWeb desktop application, they work really well. But iWeb was left behind in the latest iLife iteration, no update. And, contrary to Google, MobileMe won’t host your domain name.
iTunes is a terrific product. Without iTunes there would be no iPhone, no App Store, no Ratatouille on my iPhone. And yet, it gives us a glimpse of how disjointed Apple’s Cloud services are. From time to time, for no stated reason, I’m asked to reenter the security code on my credit card. A security precaution or a bug? Amazon asks once and my credentials are valid in the US as well as on Amazon.fr, for example.
Not with MobileMe. This morning, after a full update of my Apple ID account, including the credit card security code, I’m asked again for it on iTunes when I re-synced my Apple TV which started by declaring my Mac wasn’t authorized. This got me a “This Mac is already authorized” message when I asked iTunes for the connection. Same trouble on my iPad when I updated an application. The new and improved password was accepted, but I had to state credit card security number again, for a free update, mind you.
Continuing to iCal. In the Mac, there is a Preference panel for MobileMe. You state your Apple ID, a mac.com or me.com adress and your password. (It used to be you didn’t need the suffix, just the first part, luser rather than luser@me.com, but that was too simple, let’s leave it to Google to accept spj for spj@gmail.com.) OK, you might think you’re done, you’re authorized. But no, if you have a MobileMe account in iCal, it doesn’t work. Hello iCal account, it’s me@me.com again and my password is moimême.
In the process of working with the Apple support person, I got another peek at how disjointed things appear to be in MobileMe. This individual explained that the new password validation process didn’t do anything. Yes my Apple ID account appear to work with the new password but, for unexplained reasons, the update didn’t propagate. I got a couple of emails to verify my information and was (no longer) surprised to see that the screen snapshot the support tech emailed me had obsolete information. I also fell into a Secret Question trap: Yes, you can design the question and the answer. But better make sure you remember everything down to the last detail. In particular, the answer recognition is case-sensitive: “boarding school” will get you locked out if the correct answer is “Boarding school”. Making progress in the obstacle course, I now have a simpler one word answer with an unforgettable capitalization.
MobileMe was launched in 2008, with a little bit of grandiosity: the new service was offered as Exchange For The Rest Of Us. That proclamation was quickly withdrawn. In August 2008, I wrote a less than laudatory Monday Note piece on the new service’s difficult beginnings. Sacrebleu! I shouldn’t have done that, such an infraction got me a robust personal attack from a Guardian of the Apple Faith who frequently posts on one of the dedicated Apple blogs. The individual, who otherwise produces very good, thoroughly researched pieces, applied his skills to a long litany of my misdeeds. That was good for my soul but didn’t do anything for the disquisition. So it goes: slam the man if you can’t take the argument apart.
In this vein, as an experiment, David Pogue, the NY Times tech expert, once wrote a two-part review of an Apple product, one laudatory, the other critical. You can guess what happened: rabid Apple fans latched on the negative half and labeled him anti-Apple; others, who object to Apple’s products or ways, focused on the positive half and accused him of having sold his soul to Apple. (See David’s piece here. A little tip of the hat to the NYT geeks, and to their bosses who didn’t get in the way: when you hit the Shift key twice on a NYT page, you see paragraph signs, like this ¶. A right click will get you the URL to that paragraph, as the relevant one on Pogue’s piece. Neat. Well… It doesn’t always work.)
Back to the MobileMe early days, Steve Jobs apologized to MobileMe users a bit later and extended their subscriptions.
Two and half years later, things are better, but MobileMe still looks disjointed, half-hearted, not very competitive. And certainly devoid of the flair and finish of most other Apple offerings.
When Steve returned to Apple, the difference between Mac 1.0 and Mac 2.0 was the team of computer scientists Jobs brought with him from Carnegie Mellon, Xerox Parc and Inria. They successfully remade the Mac OS into a modern operating system. Today, much engineering effort seems to go into securing the lead Apple got with iOS. Think hardware margins.
It would be a shame for Apple to leave its Cloud flank unguarded by not enforcing the high standards of OS X and iOS in its Cloud services.
Steve secured Apple’s independence from carriers for iTunes, the App Store and installed apps on its devices. A similar independence or preeminence in Cloud services is equally strategic.
Put another way, it’s a great opportunity.
We’ll review Google’s array, or disarray, of such products in a future Monday Note once the dust from this past week’s three announcements (books, Chrom Web Apps and Chrome OS) settles.
Related columns:
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15 Comments
Typos: speaking of “finish and flair” above, I need to apologize for the abnormal number of typos in today’s note… JLG
Typos aside;-), another excellent post. Given the content, services and apps of increasing variety that Apple wants passing through its ecosystem, their MobileMe and related cloud services are showing limitations and signs of breakage. A potential fatal flaw? Perhaps.
“And, contrary to Google, MobileMe won’t host your domain name”
I beg to differ, I actually bought my domain name from Google but host it on MobileMe. Actually one of the reasons I stuck with MobileMe. Just to correct your misconception.
Thank you for this! Being a non-techie, I tend to blame myself when these things happen with my iPad, iPhone, Google Docs passwords and user names. What did I do wrong? But if JLG has the same kinds of problems, I feel better.
Amen on Dropbox. So easy! It’s making me forget to use Mobile Me.
@JulianT: You’re right. I was relying on my experience on an earlier version. You can now have http://www.yourdomainname.com designed on iWeb and published/hosted on MobileMe. But… that’s it, one domain name. For more domains, you have to resort to the older http://www.me.com/YourSubscriberName/iWeb/YourWebsiteName scheme. I just checked the Apple support page: http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/
JLG
I gave up on Apple’s “cloud” offerings long ago. Expensive, slow and just plain never worked. Apple makes great hardware, great software, but they have never really embraced the cloud. You would think they would leverage their technology and create something better than the other guys. But in reality, they don’t do cloud services very well at all. All of their cloud offerings need huge improvements. Interesting how the free services like GMail and DropBox out perform Apple’s offerings, yet they are….free and even cross platform. So what’s up with that Apple?
I have rarely had the issues you have had. In fact, I’ve moved away from Google in preference to MobileMe. Doing so I now feel comfortable that I don’t have to worry about how Google wants to make money off of my content (read advertising).
always in the comments: “gave up long ago”… the thing is, MobileMe has improved considerably over the last two years, the iDisk drop box has worked well for the last year, maybe even two… and with the data center, it is improving even further…. and what the author is experiencing is part of that improvement.
what he failed to realize is improvements mean change, they changed/improved how the syncing works… when you you do this, things go wrong with old syncing…
and the only way you are going to get this to work is by wiping and resyncing after such improvements… (should it just work, well yes.. but we are in the baby stages of the cloud, so deal with it)
such is change… (the only real thing Apple did wrong was begin to charge for the service, a 100 million users would still be on mobileMe if not for that… all demanding change/improvements quicker) and we’d be on to even more advanced criticism of some other new feature, instead of these few features.
watch what happens when ChromeOS has a few “updates” in their future…(well once the vaporware is actual ware).. trusting your data to a cloud like this… well… it is great for a backup safety, but for your primary… have fun with that google.
imagine what the person says when his “syncing” goes wrong in a Cloud only enviro… then looks for a way to find his old data. i can see the howls now.
but keep up with the crits of MoblieMe… unfortunately since it is overpriced, we only get a few crits every once in a while, where if it were still free, these crits would have moved on to even more handy features.
It would seem that the mileage varies a good deal from user to user — yet another indication of the disjointedness of Apple’s cloud offering. While there are those who have good luck with it (more power to them!) I have not been so lucky.
Slow: Why is MobileMe so slow? I have had simple operations actually time-out.
Undependable: I once tried (shame on me) to sync *two* computers with my iDisk. Eventually the iDisk became un-sync-able with either computer and I lost data in the process. Even syncing with only one computer can be problematic: Every time I edit a file directly on my iDisk from another Mac, syncing fails initially on the synced Mac. And, of course, the process for all but the simplest syncs takes forever.
AddressBook: Why are there dozens of repeated entries when I sync my iPhone?
I see a lot of chatter about these problems (and more), so those who have issues with Mobile are not alone, nor do they suffer in silence. The puzzle is why it has taken Apple so long to do anything about it. I cannot claim to be over comforted by Steve Jobs’ assurances that things get better. We’ve heard that before.
I sometimes question why I keep a MobileMe account though I haven’t had any difficulties at all with it other than iDisk being too slow compared to the competition. Talk about a hobby, Apple just hasn’t delivered a product that is up to snuff let alone up to Apple’s usual elan or Google’s free offereings (which are just too ugly for me, not to mention the big brother feeling I get whenever I use their “services”).
It’s doubly strange to me because Apple could make MobileMe into a real competitive advantage against Google. Apple’s strategy is generally threefold: 1) create lustworthy hardware, 2) create software products (iWork, iLife, Aperture) which follow the hardware theme of well thought out and easy to use products which hide complexity to gain mass market appeal and amortise the cost of these products so through large scale purchasing and 3) behind the scenes linking products which add value to any and all Apple products which are already owned (iTunes, MobileMe, Find my phone, Bonjour, QuickTime, etc).
I can’t believe that MobileMe is a very important revenue tool as it stands but it could play such an important role in binding an Apple CPU user to the whole Apple ecosystem. If it were free IMO it would bring benefits far outweighing the costs. Like Facebook’s attempts to create an insular world/”walled garden” in its battle against Google, MobileMe with cloud based iWork and iTunes could play an important role in keeping Apple users in Apple’s walled garden, increasing the motivation to buy yet more Apple hardware and btw weaken its chief anagonist Google.
Perhaps the new data centre is gearing up for such a role. Apple has shown itself to lack the kind of innovative vision with cloud services which power the rest of its product line. Surely things must be changing, someone at Apple must “get it” but right now I hold on to MobileMe out of loyalty to Apple. Disclosure: I own AAPL and given what the stock has done for me, my MobileMe account seems justified. For others…?
Another excellent Post. I use MobileMe… parts of it are brilliant, other parts “not so much”. What really fascinates me is that fact that the Internet still doesn’t know Me. And if it does start to learn about Me… all of a sudden I’m locked into a walled garden, never knowing if the real Me is allowed to cross over to some other platform.
In the future the Internet will know Me, it will be incredibly simple, in as much as the protocol (HTTP) that binds all of these walled gardens together will support new information about Me… and I will be able to control who gets to really know Me.
MobileMe is a great idea, lack of execution notwithstanding – but the real power comes when the internet knows Me. And that chapter hasn’t been written yet, or should I say, it’s in draft mode right now.
Update: Typos in the Note fixed, thanks Frédéric.
And… Screen Sharing mysteriously stopped working, but not all the time, on one of my Macs. I “see” the machine remotely, I can even log on it, get files. But screen sharing mysteriously stopped working. I didn’t touch anything, Your Honor, I swear! JLG
@JulianT: To expand on my reply, besides the “one domain name per customer” limitatiob, another reason not to use MobileMe for your domain name is you won’t be able to get mail for that domain name, only iWeb publishing: no JulianT@yourself.org.
Just want to point out that I experienced the same issue you commented on in terms password mismatch and not being able to log in. After reading your post, I was certain that it was another example of MobileMe not being ready for prime-time. What did I discover?
Well, after spending over TWO hours with Apple support, who have always been great, I discovered, that the problem was due me inadvertently blocking the ports that communicate back to the Apple servers. You see, I use LittleSnitch to protect my machine from the bad guys, but in so doing, I mistakenly closed off the ports that communicate with me.com. I won’t go into the details as to how I figured this out, because it took over two hours of troubleshooting until I determined what the casue was. Suffice it to say that once I opened the ports, reset my password, I was good to go and now my password works across all my Apple services.
The point that I am making is that even those among us are considered “power” users, can screw things up and get in the way of things working the way they are supposed to work. I was cussing Apple all day and it turned out that it was ME along!
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