Mactropolis.com - Your Friendly Global Mac Community

MobileMe has again been targeted by malicious users. They are using another phishing ploy setup to obtain your credit card info. According to sources, the scam comes in the form of a billing verification email from Apple. The email leads you to an official-looking website. Of course, the site is hosted on a bunk, fraudulent web server and the domain name used is klubdna.com. Beware. If you encounter this, it’s a scam. Delete the email or close the browser window and carry on about your day.

[via: MacNN]

If you have been following the mobile me story this past month, then you know that Apple has had a difficult release of their highly acclaimed service dubbed MobileMe.  The service was set to be out and running smooth along with the launch of the iPhone 3G.  Then the servers began to explode, and MobileMe crashed for a while (days).  Apple then realized their mistake and handed out 30 extra days to all the subscribers of their service.  They apologized and have had a status blog to keep all the patrons up to date on the corrections in MobileMe.

Tonight I received an email from the MobileMe team, and I assume all other subscribers got the same email, that told me that Apple has made improvements to their service but they still have more to go, and as a token of appreciation for our patients they are giving all subscribers a 60-day extension on their subscription.  That is on top of the free 30 days handed out earlier.

If you remember I started a story on the first day launch of the MobileMe service, and the bad things, and I said I would report at the end of the trial, well it looks like that story will be coming later on seeing that I have 60 more days to evaluate.  I hope that by the time my trial ends the service will have been completed and working great.

Good Luck Apple, and thanks for the extra time!

You’ll remember back at the end of July that a new MobileMe status page was setup at Apple. It is authored by one ‘David G‘, and was setup to provide the latest news and updates on the condition of MobileMe… and I say ‘condition’ because we all know how ’sick’ it was upon the launch. To date, the update page has only seen 3 new posts from David G, on July 25th, 27th and 29th respectively.

Some are probably dissapointed about the lack of news and updates. I know I would be if I had signed up for MobileMe… I’d want the latest and greatest news posted for me at that location, each and every day. Frequent updates assure users that problems are being addressed, and that the team at Apple is doing everything they can to fix all issues. Not to mention, if I was privy to all update information, I might be more inclined to subscribe once I knew the service was running at full throttle.

Now, I’m not saying they aren’t already doing this, but it would be a nice gesture to let the public (and paying MobileMe subscribers) know exactly what is going on.

C’mon David G, perhaps it’s time for another update!?

View the MobileMe Status Page

[via MacNN]

If you haven’t heard already, Steve Jobs recently crafted an internal email all about the botched MobileMe launch. It is very interesting indeed. You can tell that a CEO wrote the letter, as he puts it in a way that is constructive and positive.

Yet, I couldn’t help wondering to myself ‘Hmmmm… I wonder if this thing was actually MEANT to go public!?’ I mean, how hard could that be? And what better way for Jobs’ to indirectly apologize to the mac computing public at-large, without the embarrassment of issuing a public apology.

If you haven’t read the full email yet, I’ve included it below for your reading pleasure.

Team,

The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour.  There are several things we could have done better:

– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.

– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.

– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store.  We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love.  One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe.  Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services.  And learn we will.  The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

Steve

[via arstechnica]

Apple’s MobileMe service has been talking a beating over the past 3 weeks. Apple has now assured users that the service is fully operational. Mail issues have been resolved, including nagging Webmail and message history issues have been an issue for 1% of MobileMe subscribers.

If you are still experiencing e-mail problems, Apple has setup a dedicated chat line to assist and correct any further issues users might encounter. I think that’s the least they could do!

All this being said, an unrelated bug did appear on Monday which caused contact and calendar sync to break when connecting OTA from an iPhone or iPod Touch. This bug has since been fixed. Lets hope this is the last ‘bug’ to rear it’s ugly head… MobileMe is off to one heck of a bumpy start.

[via iPodNN]

As you may remember from my last post on MobileMe’s launch, I said that I would get a trial and provide a review of the service.  Well I was expecting to get the trial on Thursday, when the switch was made, but as most of you know Apple’s servers were up and down all afternoon.  Well today I was able to set up an account.

The first thing I did was try to come up with hilarious names for the service, like mymomyells AT me dot com, areyoulooking AT me dot com, and so on.  Well I decided that if I decided to keep the service and pay the $99, then i needed a legit name that wouldn’t scare people away.  So the first step in getting the trial is to give your information, so I picked itakepictures@me.com, seeing that I’m an avid photographer and plan on trying the gallery features.  The first major thing that shocked me was that Apple asked for my credit card information so that when the trial ends, they slam you with the bill if you don’t cancel the trial.  Well I decided to cave in and give the information and add an iCal event to remind me a few days ahead to cancel the service if it didn’t suit me.

The first thing that pops up is a video that will explain what MobileMe is and how to use it. Then you are at your inbox for your new address.  On the top left you can see the menu of different services that Mobile Me has to offer: Mail, Contacts, Calender, Photos, iDisk, and Profile.  When you click on the icon you are taken to the respected site.

First, let’s try Contacts. First thing I notice is that it is relatively slow going from site to site, which will hopefully be fixed.  Contacts gives you pretty much the feel of Address Book, so no real excitement, but I have no contacts so maybe that’s why it is not that exciting.

Next we’ll try Calendar. Well I am getting an error message saying that it can’t get calendars from the server, so we will try to move on to the next app.

Let’s give Photos a try! Photos didn’t take as long to load, but I have none uploaded so that could be the reason.  So lets upload a new album to show the world my love of photography.  After creating the album name and permissions, you are shown a green arrow asking you to click it to upload.  The upload process was very speedy compared to the other functions of MobileMe, less than one minute for six 1MB photos.  Here is the first album of many to come, Pictures!  The gallery has not changed from what little I know of the .Mac service.  Along the top menu bar you are allowed to change the permissions, upload more photos to the album, rotate pictures, etc.

The last real part of MobileMe is the iDisk function. You can sync items from your Mac into your iDisk to store for backup or to share with friends.  There isn’t much to say about iDisk, because it kind of explains itself.  Also Account Settings really explains itself, you can change your settings and so on.

My final first impression of the MobileMe service is: Wait a few week before you try this. As you may know, Apple has had server issues all day today.  This is the first time MobileMe is up and running completely, so I assume that everyone is trying the site out, which bogs down the speed.  If Apple makes the site faster, this service is pretty much like .Mac.  I have not been able to try the push function because the 2.0 firmware has not been available for the iPod Touch.  With this review, I plan on doing a final review right before my trial officially ends, hopefully the service will work to its full potential in sixty days.

See you then!

Members of the .Mac community will be experiencing some technical difficulties Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. Pacific time, because the www.mac.com will be switching to the new MobileMe site.  The subscribers received a message today warning them that they will not be able to access the www.mac.com address but will be able to get emails through the Mail app, iPhones, and iPod Touches.

If you aren’t familiar with the MobileMe platform, let me give you a quick rundown.  MobileMe runs the same e-mail, photo galleries, and web pages as .Mac did.  The better pat of MobileMe is that it can now work as a push service for your iPod Touch, iPhone, Mac computer or even PC.  If you are familiar with the Microsoft Enterprise service, you know that when you receive an e-mail or update a contact or schedule a meeting, that is automatically added to your wireless device or vice versa.  Well MobileMe works the same way, except a lot cheaper and more focused on the average person, while Enterprise is more for the big, bad corporate world.  Essentially, if you update John Doe’s address and picture in your iPhone contacts, that information is sent to, what Apple calls, a “cloud.”  This cloud then transfers that data to all your devices and computers using MobileMe.

I don’t have a .Mac address, but plan on trying out the MobileMe trial that will be released when the official launch of the site goes live.  I will try to give an in-depth review of the features and processes of the site and all the bells and whistles that go along with it.

Happy June everyone! We took a well deserved day off around here at Mactropolis. Thankfully the weather co-operated… just popped back into the office to see what was up and this story caught my eye.

Rumors have been going back and forth this past week about upcoming changes to the .Mac service. One rumor in particular is the potential renaming of the service. It seems that the leading candidate for the .Mac rename is now ‘MobileMe’, with Me.com being the home domain for the service.

Why? Well it seems that the domain name has been registered to the MarkMonitor domain service. MarkMonitor is a leader in enterprise brand protection. Apple and a whole bunch of other Fortune 100 companies have leaned on this service for brand protection in the past. So, with that said, it could be Apple is now sitting on the domain, getting ready for the rename… Or this is just complete hogwash, and some other company has registered the domain and is going to use it for something else.

Interestingly enough, MarkMonitor purchased MacBookAir.net, MacBookAir.org, MacBookAir.us, MacBookAir.info and MacBookAir.biz earlier this year on behalf of Apple.

If you try and hit up www.me.com, you’ll notice a redirect page that guides you to www.snappville.com, a social networking website that used to be called me.com until it changed its name in December of last year. Could it be Apple bought out the domain name and asked them to relocate to a new domain name? And with a ‘grace’ period since last December, a redirect page was put up at Me.com for the time being? Could be. Really hard to know the real answer.

Even more interesting are these 2 points:

1. Apple filed a patent for the MobileMe name back in 2006.
2. The term ‘MobileMe’ has been found in numerious iPhoneSDK files.

Who knows the truth. Lets just wait till the WWDC as I’m sure news on this, the new iPhone and a whole lot more will come to light. Sometimes it’s just fun to speculate isn’t it!?

[via MacRumors]