I've read enough of your posts to know you are far more inteligent than to think the email quoted above actually serves the purpose of notifying paying users of an outage properly.
That's not what I said... Read my entire post.. This was simply a notification of changes taking effect.. As I said, the notice of the services being down was on the .mac homepage.
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
What's the equation you used to come to that particular dollar value? Not challenging you on it, I'm interested.
I received the .Mac Team email. My desktop client still works. Lo, it has been a long day at the grist mill without being able to sync mine iDisk, but somehow we toil on.
I realize, for some, that even a moment of downtime can accrue losses that could be financially, emotionally, educationally, spiritually or gastronomically decimating. I sympathize with you, I truly do. I understand that it may be causing you to underline words in an effort to lend them more gravitas. I hope your pain draws to a close soon.
For the rest of us, just lie back and think of England. We'll be computing in THE CLOUD soon enough.
That notice was NOT there weeks ago, as you suggested earlier. (By the way, "8 pm PST on July 10, 2008" has not yet arrived! )
Ok, look. You read these message boards. So do I. So we both knew about this planned outage because it was discussed here. You obviously visited the .Mac home often. I do not go there as often. If not for these message boards, I would have no idea what was going on this morning. So from a personal perspective, I have some idea of what's going on.
Now let's both step outside of our own personal little worlds and think more broadly. The vast majority of .Mac subscribers most likely do not read these message boards or visit the .Mac home page on a daily basis. The only way to get the message out to those folks is via email, which Apple did not do (apparently, as I and many other people did not get emails warning of this planned outage). Those people are left to wonder why they can't view their online photos, why they can't get to their group web sites, etc.
Yes, it's frustrating that I can't get to my mail due to apparent problems with the switch-over (no, I can't configure a mail client at my current location, and even if I could, I'd still have no address book to get addresses), but like you I am "in the know" about the planned outage, so I can live with it. But what about all those other people who are left in the dark wondering?
YES, the notice HAS BEEN ON THE .MAC HOMEPAGE FOR WEEKS. There have been multiple emails sent by Apple all notifying users of the service change. So even someone not visiting these pages should know what is going on. And by the way, I did not learn about the outage from these forums, I learned about it from the .mac homepage. July 9th, it was a typo.
well i look forward to the new MM service but currently there is no webmail access for existing .Mac subscribers. Additionally, you are unable to log into the iChat/AIM service with a .Mac login at this time. Errors simply states service is down...
if you're going to launch a new service, have your proverbial ducks in a row and don't hinder user access to what could be mission critical web apps.
try to find a login page on the MM micro site... not there
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
Well you are not entitled to that $42 so I don't see what your point is.. You may be entitled to .14 cents if you call a make a stink about it..
And with 300 students using the .mac service, at least one of them should have visited the homepage and seen the notice that service would be down..
I understand all the inconvenience. If there is something crucial, I would suggest to have another account (like gMail) temporarily pick up the .mac account mail.
For gMail, while in the app, goto settings and add another account. Takes only a couple of minutes and voila. Turn it off when done.
Yes, Apple could have done this better. But there are always options.
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
I tried it and got an error that my browser is incompatible. I'm using Flock, and the error said that it would only work in Firefox and Safari. There didn't even seem to be any way to bypass the error and try it anyway. There is a "continue" button, but clicking it just brings the same error up again.
In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason to make a web site that only works in certain browsers. Yes, some features may only work on certain browsers, but it's ridiculous that I can't even use the site AT ALL unless I use the two "approved" browsers - especially since this is a service that I'm PAYING FOR! There needs to at least be a bare-bones alternative for those of us using different browsers.
I shouldn't have to use a browser that I don't want to use, just to use a service that I'm paying for! And I shouldn't have to have two browsers open just to use it.
This seems more like the kind of thing that Microsoft would do, not Apple.
By the way, I've noticed that going to mac.com seems to get the maintenance error, but going to me.com gets me the unsupported browser error.
Actually, sometimes going to me.com redirects to me.com/idisk (and gives me the unsupported browser error) and other times it redirects to apple.com/mobileme (the ad for the service).
"really a good thing" ?!?! Are you nuts! Sure, maybe if they had left the .Mac site operational while they brought up MobileMe it would be a good thing. But they didn't. I now have NO access to anything.
For a paid service, this is horrible! No warnings or advanced notice to paying customers of the planned interuption to service, and now it appears that they've totally botched the transition!
Well you are not entitled to that $42 so I don't see what your point is.. You may be entitled to .14 cents if you call a make a stink about it..
And with 300 students using the .mac service, at least one of them should have visited the homepage and seen the notice that service would be down..
Heck lets not drag this out its too painful...
[CENTER]
IF YOU ARE EXPECTING 24/7/365 WITH ZERO INTERRUPTIONS **EVER** NO MATTER WHAT!! THEN .MAC .me IS NOT FOR YOU!!!
[/CENTER]
Oh if you even find someone willing to give you that kind of INSANE level of 100% GUARANTEED UPTIME (including acts of God) then you'll be paying a HECK of alot more than .27 a day.
I would recommend using Firefox or Safari with MobileMe. I don't know how well IE7 would handle all the intense javascript going on. The Firefox 3 javascript engine is excellent.
Comments
I've read enough of your posts to know you are far more inteligent than to think the email quoted above actually serves the purpose of notifying paying users of an outage properly.
That's not what I said... Read my entire post.. This was simply a notification of changes taking effect.. As I said, the notice of the services being down was on the .mac homepage.
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
What's the equation you used to come to that particular dollar value? Not challenging you on it, I'm interested.
I received the .Mac Team email. My desktop client still works. Lo, it has been a long day at the grist mill without being able to sync mine iDisk, but somehow we toil on.
I realize, for some, that even a moment of downtime can accrue losses that could be financially, emotionally, educationally, spiritually or gastronomically decimating. I sympathize with you, I truly do. I understand that it may be causing you to underline words in an effort to lend them more gravitas. I hope your pain draws to a close soon.
For the rest of us, just lie back and think of England. We'll be computing in THE CLOUD soon enough.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=88712
That notice was NOT there weeks ago, as you suggested earlier. (By the way, "8 pm PST on July 10, 2008" has not yet arrived!
Ok, look. You read these message boards. So do I. So we both knew about this planned outage because it was discussed here. You obviously visited the .Mac home often. I do not go there as often. If not for these message boards, I would have no idea what was going on this morning. So from a personal perspective, I have some idea of what's going on.
Now let's both step outside of our own personal little worlds and think more broadly. The vast majority of .Mac subscribers most likely do not read these message boards or visit the .Mac home page on a daily basis. The only way to get the message out to those folks is via email, which Apple did not do (apparently, as I and many other people did not get emails warning of this planned outage). Those people are left to wonder why they can't view their online photos, why they can't get to their group web sites, etc.
Yes, it's frustrating that I can't get to my mail due to apparent problems with the switch-over (no, I can't configure a mail client at my current location, and even if I could, I'd still have no address book to get addresses), but like you I am "in the know" about the planned outage, so I can live with it. But what about all those other people who are left in the dark wondering?
YES, the notice HAS BEEN ON THE .MAC HOMEPAGE FOR WEEKS. There have been multiple emails sent by Apple all notifying users of the service change. So even someone not visiting these pages should know what is going on. And by the way, I did not learn about the outage from these forums, I learned about it from the .mac homepage. July 9th, it was a typo.
if you're going to launch a new service, have your proverbial ducks in a row and don't hinder user access to what could be mission critical web apps.
try to find a login page on the MM micro site... not there
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
Well you are not entitled to that $42 so I don't see what your point is.. You may be entitled to .14 cents if you call a make a stink about it..
And with 300 students using the .mac service, at least one of them should have visited the homepage and seen the notice that service would be down..
For gMail, while in the app, goto settings and add another account. Takes only a couple of minutes and voila. Turn it off when done.
Yes, Apple could have done this better. But there are always options.
Almost. Times the approximately 300 of my students who cannot access my class websites to do their work = about $42. Not factoring in all the time I put in emailing them about this problem and setting up alternate plans.
Odd thing is, my .mac homepage is working fine.
In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason to make a web site that only works in certain browsers. Yes, some features may only work on certain browsers, but it's ridiculous that I can't even use the site AT ALL unless I use the two "approved" browsers - especially since this is a service that I'm PAYING FOR! There needs to at least be a bare-bones alternative for those of us using different browsers.
I shouldn't have to use a browser that I don't want to use, just to use a service that I'm paying for! And I shouldn't have to have two browsers open just to use it.
This seems more like the kind of thing that Microsoft would do, not Apple.
By the way, I've noticed that going to mac.com seems to get the maintenance error, but going to me.com gets me the unsupported browser error.
Odd thing is, my .mac homepage is working fine.
My homepage loads but it looks like half the css is missing and links to my gallery goes straight to the apple mobileme website
"really a good thing" ?!?! Are you nuts! Sure, maybe if they had left the .Mac site operational while they brought up MobileMe it would be a good thing. But they didn't. I now have NO access to anything.
For a paid service, this is horrible! No warnings or advanced notice to paying customers of the planned interuption to service, and now it appears that they've totally botched the transition!
I believe there was a notice of interruption.
Well you are not entitled to that $42 so I don't see what your point is.. You may be entitled to .14 cents if you call a make a stink about it..
And with 300 students using the .mac service, at least one of them should have visited the homepage and seen the notice that service would be down..
Heck lets not drag this out its too painful...
[CENTER]
IF YOU ARE EXPECTING 24/7/365 WITH ZERO INTERRUPTIONS **EVER** NO MATTER WHAT!! THEN .MAC .me IS NOT FOR YOU!!!
[/CENTER]
Oh if you even find someone willing to give you that kind of INSANE level of 100% GUARANTEED UPTIME (including acts of God) then you'll be paying a HECK of alot more than .27 a day.
Dave
Heck lets not drag this out its too painful...
[CENTER]
IF YOU ARE EXPECTING 24/7/365 WITH ZERO INTERRUPTIONS **EVER** NO MATTER WHAT!! THEN .MAC .me IS NOT FOR YOU!!!
[/CENTER]
I guess my work email is not for me either