Apple says MobileMe transition complete, lost messages recovered

[AppleInsider]

Apple said Tuesday evening that it has rid Mobile Me of the kinks and bugs that plagued its launch from the onset nearly three weeks ago and will now focus on improving other areas of the service.

Most importantly, the Cupertino-based company said it has successfully restored mail service to the 1 percent of users who had been locked out of their email accounts for nearly two weeks following a mail server crash.

Although Apple had originally feared that it had lost some subscribers' emails as a result of that crash, an update on the matter posted to the official MobileMe status page indicates that those emails have now been recovered and should start appearing subscribers' inboxes.

Any subscriber affected by the issue who continues to experience problems can contact a Mobile Me mail specialist via a newly established dedicated chat line on Apple's website.

"By completing this restoration of Mail services, we hope we have put the vast majority of MobileMe Mail problems behind us and can now focus on improving other aspects of this new ambitious service," the company said.

In its Mobile Me status update Tuesday evening, Apple also acknowledged a syncing bug that caused contact and calendar data to disappear from iPhones and iPod touches on Monday.

"When we fixed the bug in the late afternoon, the problem resolved itself for most users: their data simply reappeared on their iPhone or iPod Touch," the company said. "If you are one of those affected users and your data has not automatically reappeared, follow the steps at this link to restore your data."

Apple's "David G." promises that the next update on Mobile Me's status will be posted to the company's website "later this week."

Update: A number of AppleInsider forum members are reporting that Apple's most recent update on the status of MobileMe is misleading and that they continue to experience mail outages, loss of emails, and other problems.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Ireland]

Now jasonfj, at least they acknowledge you

[bloggerblog]

That was a close one!
Now they can focus on the mail interface glitches and the sluggishness.

[umijin]

This is a lie, at least in my case. They haven't recovered my lost messages, and the mail service is not functioning.

[Magic_Al]

Apple restored HomePage editing tools by bringing the legacy .Mac pages back online with no MobileMe re-branding. It's accessible by clicking HomePage then Go to HomePage under the iDisk pane of me.com. By the way this lets you see the old .Mac toolbar but clicking iCards or Bookmarks leads to dead ends because those features are not part of MobileMe.

[jk33mac]

Um over... I wish! My email is not back at all, and neither are a number of other peoples' on the apple forums.
I am in a chat at the moment with the MobileMe support, I am hoping it is slowly dawning on them that there are people who have been affected that were not on that one server!

[macologist]

Mail is slow...........

Can't add Addresses from Addresses on Outgoing Email. A few times Address Book appeared as available, but when I clicked on it, I got a Spinning Rainbow Ball, and had to do a Fors Quit, cause my Fireforx Was Not Responding


Can' add Address from Incoming Mail

When Switching to Address Tab, I get "Script Interrupted, Stop or Let it Complete" -- I click to let it complete, and after a while, spinning and waiting, Addresses show up

All of the above is true for Safari as well, and Logging Out in both browsers didn't solve those issues!

I recall others reporting the same symptoms in one of the forums.

Wish SOMEONE at MOBILE.ME read this... Who has the time to wait forever to Chat with some kid that doesn't know much more, cause he/she might not even be told what's actually happening!

Apple will have to make ME.COM really shine in order to restore the confidence... I am looking to upgrade my laptop, and the new ones are coming soon. How am I to know if they, being the 1st Generation, are gonna be buggy!? Until the ME.COM/iPhone Launch Fiasco, I never had those kinds of doubts, no I do! And, as as LOYAL APPLE USER, it doesn't feel good to think that way! My guess is that a lot of folks might be feeling that way! And now, I hardly see I am a Mac, and Windows are bad commercials on TV... Coincidence? Maybe it's now hard to be as cocky after Mobile Mess!!! Oops... Enough venting.... Let's hope that ME.COM rocks soon, and all this is forgotten....

[teckstud]

Shouldn't that state 1% of reported users?
And why would only 1% be affected? What did they do/have to make them so special?

[aasantana]

For me the main issue has been to successfully sync calendars and contacts between my home MacBook and my work Dell. Contacts are being placed in a Mobile folder in Outlook, which is annoying but not critical; while syncing calendar is a total failure. I can't get the cloud to load my events and showed them on my account online, much less sync them to my Dell.

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by bloggerblog

That was a close one!
Now they can focus on the mail interface glitches and the sluggishness.

The launch was a disaster -not a close one.

[paxman]

When the service first started I would get a nice red dot with indicating in white the number of unread mails I had. It never accurately reflected the number of unread emails but it was there. Then it disappeared. Anyone had this?

On the mobileMe blog - Nice to see that they heeded complaints about corporate anonymity and patronizingly added a "David G" at the end of the blog entry. Who the f*** is David G? Why can't they just make it simple and tell it like it is? It's not like we are asking for a preview of an upcoming product, or for the ingredients to SJ's dinner last night. If someone from Apple is going to address us regarding something that they screwed up and that directly affects a lot of us we should know who it is that is talking to us. Its just common courtesy. I know it is a nothing but it pisses me off.

[bloggerblog]

Originally Posted by teckstud

The launch was a disaster -not a close one.

I was referring to Losing all the data as the close one. But, Yes it was and still is a disaster, and I do believe that me.com is still in its late Alpha stages, just look at the Reply-All email feature, it doesn't work unless some changes are made to the CC fields!!

I believe Apple has their top-end developer teams working on something "more important" or they are spread too thin.

[ascii]

When I logged in to MobileMe earlier today through the web interface, the only 2 mailboxes showing were Inbox and Sent Messages, Trash and others had disappeared. Also, whenever I tried to read a message it said "this message is unavailable as it has been moved to another mailbox," (which it hadn't been, by me at least.)

It's ok at the moment though.

[mblasick]

My e-mail is still a mess.

I have two Macs (work and home) plus a new iPhone. I get all the same messages in all three places no matter what has been deleted. (gotta love that cloud that syncs things up)

Plus my Mail rules do not sync, and my iPhone is a portable spam machine. I rarely ever get spam on my two PowerMacs, but my iPhone is letting all of the spam get through.

All of this is very annoying. At least I haven't lost anything...yet.

[SpamSandwich]

Originally Posted by umijin

This is a lie, at least in my case. They haven't recovered my lost messages, and the mail service is not functioning.

Uh, oh. Don't tell me this is Apple's equivalent of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech?

[Foo2]

I believe the July 29th status update is intentionally vague, as it doesn't really claim no one lost mail. All the update really seems to claim is that all mail that could be recovered--or that Apple intends to try recovering--has been.

"We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members."

[gas_pig70]

Well, I'm happy to report that at least my email is back up and seems to be fully functional. The web interface is still a bit slow, but much quicker than the hacked fix they had running recently.

[astro]

I have experienced a mail server crash before, and it is annoying, and painful... but I wouldn't call it a disaster. Maybe if it had affected, well, any significant number of people, then we could get a little more upset.

I guess, I am in the lucky 99% of people who didn't experience any problems with MobileMe whatsoever. I was able to access the Web apps with no hassle, I received my Mail during this time on my Mac and my iPhone with no problems, MobileMe works perfectly since day 1.

With "MobileMess" only affecting 1% of "reported" .Mac/MobileMe users, I think its is yet another topic blown out of proportion by people with short fuses.

I am a loyal and happy apple customer, I'm not saying that I haven't experienced my share of hiccups or faulty equipment. But I won't jump to conclusions and throw Apple under the bus because I'm sensible, and I know that Apple, like other electronics manufacturers is not perfect all the time. And I can accept that. Because they offer a better user experience and better products in general over whatever else is offered out there. In my opinion.

[bloggerblog]

Astro, some of the problems affect a few people and some affect everyone! such as:
- Not always filling in the email address as you type.
- The address book being grayed out.
- The send button being grayed out.
- Deleting an email sometimes gets deleted on the server but not on your screen, and if you try viewing another email on your screen, you'll receive a message saying that the message your trying to read does not exist or has been moved.
- Reply-All includes the full name of the person in the CC field and therefore the email client returns an error saying that the address is invalid. The workaround is to reformat the address.

These problems are coding problems and not a server or service area problem. Basically these are tell-tale signs of a premature launch.

[astro]

I feel like this kind of service needs 100% uptime... As people move more and more of their lives online, uptime becomes critical... BUT

It's hard to blame them because how can you really test such a thing before it's used by thousands, or even millions? A mail server crash is not a sign of a premature launch.

I don't understand how you can make a sweeping generalisation like "This problem is affecting everybody" when it isn't, its been reported among 1% of users.

I have not experienced any of the problems listed.

I still believe this has been escalated to "DISASTER ZONE" because of dramatic and touchy users who didn't have the good sense to make a backup! The media certainly hasn't helped. Apple is under huge scrutiny right now because of their immense worldwide popularity, I think that is also a factor.

[AHeneen]

Now that it's fixed, where's our compensation? If Apple could give all MobileMe users 30 days free (which still have not been credited to my account) for just a few days of non-functioning features, what will we get for not having email for a week or more? A year of free service? A refund? An Apple gift card(like early iPhone users got)? Something else?

[mistergsf]

Great! Finally some progress, I think. Now can you guys work on my account renewing properly? It’s been two weeks now since I entered my activation code for renewal and my account info still says “Your subscription will end in 1 day.” That was seven days ago. I have a Family pack that can’t be fully used right now until they fix this. And chat support said I would have a response in 48 hrs. Still waiting…

I apologize for the rant. My push mail is not working either. So much for the "transition complete". Remember when George W. declared "mission accomplished"?

[MacAloy]

After 2 weeks of no service at all, I finally got my email up and running 2 days ago thank goodness.

I have had steady service since then but still a few glitches here and there including contacts being deleted and email not sending nor receiving

[a_greer]

And you wonder why most enterprise situations are hesitant to adopt the iphonr...well, on top of the bug ridden 2.0 firmware, this doesn't exactly boost our confidence that Apple is a competent provider of complex back-end apps like cell phone management..

[MacAloy]

Ugh, service was down tonight for me when I got home

Come on Apple, get it fixed