Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal is
usually very positive about Apple and its products, so it was a surprise
to many of the Apple Faithful that he posted
an article highly critical of the new MobileMe service. In that
article, Mossberg makes these essential points based on his experience
with the service:
"Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can't recommend it, at least not in its current state. It's a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises. I am not referring to the launch glitches that plagued MobileMe earlier this month, such as servers that couldn't keep up with the traffic and email outages that, for some users, persist as I write this...[snip]... The problems I am citing are systemic."
"...in my tests, using two Macs, two Dell computers and two iPhones, I ran into problem after problem. One big issue is that while changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best."
"My MobileMe calendar, which originated on a Mac, didn't flow into the main Outlook calendar, but appeared as a separate calendar in Outlook, which was visible only by changing settings. My address-book groups on the Mac, which are simply distribution lists, didn't show up as distribution lists in Outlook, but as separate address books, and they also weren't immediately visible. Apple blames Outlook quirks for these issues, but in my view, it should have overcome them."
Mossberg also points out other flaws with the service, concluding his article by saying that "If Apple does get MobileMe working smoothly, it could be a terrific service. But it's way too ragged now."
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