MobileMe

Apple offers MobileMe 60-day extension

For the second time in so many months, Apple has offered MobileMe subscribers a free extension of their current subscription. Earlier today, an email was delivered to customers stating that they’d receive a 60-day extension of their MobileMe subscription, in addition to the 30 days offered in July.

“We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of,” the message reads. “We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around.”

Thanks, Apple! Three months of free service is definitely a decent compensation. And for those of you spooked by the recent MobileMe-themed phishing scam, we assure you that the link in the email is legit. Thanks to everyone who sent this in. [Apple]

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Apple Gives MobileMe Customers 60 More Free Days

Apple’s tacking on an addition 60 days to the 30 days it already doled out to MobileMe subscribers, which means you’ve got an entire three months extra to wait out the issues you’ve been having. Apple sent out these emails today to MobileMe subscribers, but if you’re one of the ones with MobileMe mail snags, you might not have gotten it. Well you’ve seen it now! Apple has some qualifications, so click on to see if you’re eligible. [Apple]

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A month later, it’s still Mobile ‘Meh’

Yesterday, Mobile Me was down again, underscoring how little the service has improved since its introduction last month. Pockets of users have been affected regularly by outages and slowness since the service first came online. MacRumors calculates that Mobile Me has been up 96 percent of the time (that is, down for 13.5 hours) over the last two weeks.

As a Mobile Me subscriber, I wonder if the opening-day trial subscriptions will matter in yet another month: that’s when, for many (but not all) the 60-day trial period expires. If those disappointed with the service choose to flee, then perhaps the server load will decrease, and performance will improve for the rest of us.

Of course, we all read Steve Jobs’ leaked email, and surmised that he gave many more expletive-laden tirades before the memo was released. We have a promise from the top that service will improve by December, and that’s some solace, but what of the meantime?

And what of the blog? Your friend and mine, David G., hasn’t posted a thing since July 29, promising an update post that never arrived.

Until then, I suppose all we can do is watch the support page, keep calm, and carry on. [Macrumors]

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Former Apple Employee Says They Are Slaves, Sues

David Walsh, a network engineer who worked at Apple from 1995 to 2007, is currently suing them for making him work a little too hard. Specifically, he says they made him work more than 40 hours a week without overtime (because he was a “senior” engineer, a pseudo-management position he says was created to skirt paying overtime) and required him to be on call for seven days straight every six weeks. In other words, a pretty standard schedule in the Valley. Besides, if anything, MobileMe’s launch made it clear Apple’s network engineers should be working more, not less. I keeeeeed. Kind of. [Macworld via Valleywag]

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Apple’s MobileMe Failure: Management Changes Demystified

When we brought you news of Steve Job’s displeasure at the stumbling launch of MobileMe, we wondered what was happening in the management structure of the service. The chaps at Valleywag have worked it out, and it’s a classic. The guy now in charge of MobileMe, and all of Apple’s online services—Eddie Cue—was actually originally in charge of the iTunes Store: the place where service outages really messed up the iPhone 3G’s launch. Remeber the iPocalypse? Hmmm. That now makes us wonder what happened to Cue’s former boss Sina Tamaddon (on the right in the pic) and Rob Schoeben, who was in charge of MobileMe’s launch. Did they too get punishment promotions? [Valleywag]

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