Apple's MobileMe suffers more downtime

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Apple's MobileMe suite of Web services suffered another outage Monday that affected an unknown number of its users.

Of the included services, Mail was inaccessible for approximately two hours. Earlier in the day we had received scattered reports from users who were unable to access their mail. Those reports were later confirmed both through Apple's MobileMe status ticker and Twitter's real-time search tool. For those affected, all other aspects of MobileMe were reportedly up and running.

Monday's problems centered on a lack of access to Mail on three fronts: through the Web, on the iPhone, and on IMAP for use on desktop e-mail applications. The same thing happened in mid July, with enough blowback to cause Apple to offer a 30-day extension to both free trial and paying users.

Despite the known outage, there hasn't been an update to the MobileMe Status Blog since July 29. The blog was provisioned specifically to address any known issues with the service. For now, most of the chatter has been on Apple's support discussions with dozens of threads from users frustrated by the lack of communication and lost productivity.

As a reminder, if you're a MobileMe subscriber with continuing issues, Apple has a special customer service chat tool for you access.

Related: Gmail is down, Twitter sizzling with the news

Update: corrected customer service chat reference from a call-in service.

[fshepinc]

Your article is incorrect -Apple does NOT have a special phone number for MobileMe(ss) support. It is a link to a live chat feature. The problem is that the system is so overloaded with complaints that the wait time today for a tech support chat was just shy of 3 hours. I waited, and then spent over an hour on hold in the middle of the chat, because the tech person couldn't figure out what was wrong. After a three-hour wait, then an hour and forty minutes in the chat, I finally had to give up -without getting an answer or a solution. Calls to Apple are met with polite murmurs and no action. According to Apple's customer relations department, MobileMe support is completely isolated from the rest of the company. No one in customer relations or tech support has any direct communication with them; no email addresses or phone contacts. Somehow I don't quite buy that... When I called regular tech support about the problem, once they found out I was a MobileMe customer they hung up on me.

A quick visit to the MobileMe support page shows that half the discussion threads have been cut off by Apple. Attempts to read threads of complaints results in an error message saying you are not authorized to view that thread/discussion. Maybe if Apple spent as much time working on their MobileMess as they do censoring their boards the entire problem would go away...

FYI, I am a long-time Apple fanboy; I own six Macs, three iPods, and an iPhone, and I've been with Apple's internet services since back in the iTools days. Never in all these years have I seen Apple drop the ball so badly, or have so little regard for its customers.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Hey fshepinc,

Your experience sounds terrible, and thanks for the note about the live chat/call-in number--I had them mixed up.

So are you dropping MobileMe or asking for a refund if you're already past the pay period?

[Travis Ernst]

I could still access mail through the web, so it was only a minor glitch again. Don't make a large issue of this. Yes it's a slight pain when you can't access through your mail program, but you can still use your browser. The last two "minor glitches" I could still gain access via the web. I say so the heck what. As long as I have access to my mail (the rest of the services were fine) I don't complain.

I doubt Apple is your ISP, so you must have a secondary email. Use that to send outgoings until dot me is back up in an hour or two. Annoying, maybe. However it works. Worst case grab a hotmail or other freebie email account to have a backup (to let garbage pile in it) "just in case" or to use as a handout email, so you keep your "real" emails from getting out in the ether.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

You're right--for many this is not a big deal. Like me, I use Gmail and am not bothered when MobileMe goes down. This is a big deal for subscribers though, as it's a paid service. When large scale pay services go down repeatedly without word from whoever is offering them it should be noted.

[walletless]

Things not to do when you launch a web mail:
1) Down time after launching the service
2) Require credit card to signup for "free" trial
3) Nagging when you use a browser that is used by a majority of web surfers (IE 7)
4) Have another down time just after things seem to have settled down

Now go back on that list and see how many of these were done by mobileme...?

[apcarandang]

I've had a Mac account for years and never had my email gone down once. But since they changed to MobileMe I've had two instances of not being able to access my email. For a paid service this is not acceptable. Yahoo and Gmail are free and are not having the downtime Apple seems to be getting with MobileMe.

APC
Houston

[jdien]

Perhaps you were lucky but for me it was a loss of e-mail through all three interfaces of web, Mail, and iPhone. The MobileMe website now acknowledges that it was a generalized mail failure as well. Don't be an Apple apologist. This is a serious problem and resulted in lost productivity for those of us that rely on e-mail for work needs. Apple is building up a bad reputation for internet services here. :(

[jdien]

The amazing thing to me is that when the e-mail problems first started with my Mail client I got into a chat session with MobileMe support and even the support guy didn't know that the service outage was going on. He kept trying to convince me to delete my Mail account (BAD idea since you permanently lose all your e-mail records!) and otherwise mess with my settings. When the web interface finally put up an error message (status page still claimed all green) I had to tell him about it and even then he didn't believe me at first.

[daniel hobbs]

either way, i'm interested in giving it a shot.

[joetesta70]

WHY APPLE WILL NEVER SCALE.

$teve job$ understands how to make cool proprietary and overpriced products but he doesn't know how to run a business that scales. It's one thing to have 3% marketshare of the PC market, it's another to create a reliable service that scales.

Go back to selling music, $teve.

[dylan214u]

Thanks Cnet for posting another Apple mishap. What a watchdog for the dark side!

[dctechguy]

I find it amazing that Apple is having so many problems with MobileMe, After all, Hotmail (Microsoft) and Yahoo Mail seldom experience outages. I have never experienced one with either of these services. Nor have I ever had problems with address books or archived emails with these services. This is a testament to Apple's lack of Web services infrastructure and software. And to think they actually charge for these services. I even maintain a company website through MSN and have not experienced difficulties. I own an iPhone, use it on t-Mobile (unlocked and jail-broken) and love it. But that has yet to make me an Apple fan boy. Equally pathetic is Apple's lack of customer response and support - as least according to the media. I was going to get a Mac laptop...I think I'll wait awhile.