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.Mac suffers 15th outage as Mobile Me deployed

updated 12:45 am EDT, Tue June 24, 2008

dotMac outages

As Apple draws closer to unveiling Mobile Me, concerns echo throughout the .Mac community that the new service is compromising the current service's user experience, as .Mac suffers its 15th recorded outage for June. On Monday, .Mac saw outages for both the email service and homepage service, with the latter issue to be restored "as soon as possible". Apple has not commented on the problems, which are most likely occurring as the company lays down the Mobile Me architecture.

by MacNN Staff

(21)

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industry, .Mac, Mobile Me, Apple

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Guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

+3

06/24, 01:05am | report spam | close Reply |
are you sure?

I can't believe people really think that MobileMe will somehow instantly be more reliable than dotMac is. dotMac servers well-established standards [http/webdav/mail] and it's still not terribly reliable. MobileMe is going into more propriety protocols, which don't have reliable, open-source code bases available to build on, that Apple has to buy or build on their own.

ViktorCode
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2006

+1

06/24, 01:39am | report spam | close Reply |
Good thing you told

... otherwise I didn't know that there was .Mac outage again, despite being .Mac user. Maybe you should just report EVERY little glitch Apple conveniently tells about on .Mac home page? They happen like every second day. Now that would be a good journalism: ".Mac users experiencing service failure as Apple struggles through 117th problem this year! "

Guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

-5

06/24, 03:13am | report spam | close Reply |
are you really sure?

So we got the one guy saying .Mac follows standards, and mobileme follows proprietary protocols which don't have open source code-bases. well my experience with anything is any judge of things, im glad mobileme moves away from these "open source" standards, because most the open source stuff I touch turns out to be pretty damn flakey.

Guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

0

06/24, 04:51am | report spam | close Reply |
Look again

good thing OS X is based on an open source os.... if you believe ^^^

Guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

+1

06/24, 08:48am | report spam | close Reply |
Why is it going out?

Maybe it is hosted with 1and1.com, which has had alot of outages at this same time, also without explanation.

jvputten
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

-3

06/24, 09:04am | report spam | close Reply |
Scope of outages

For example,

"6.15.2008 :: 07:31 - 08:30 PST
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail. Normal service has been restored"

Wow! 1% of members! That's newsworthy! Not.

Wake up, MacNN.

jvputten
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

-4

06/24, 09:04am | report spam | close Reply |
Scope of outages

For example,

"6.15.2008 :: 07:31 - 08:30 PST
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail. Normal service has been restored"

Wow! 1% of members! That's newsworthy! Not.

Wake up, MacNN.

mgpalma
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2000

+3

06/24, 09:08am | report spam | close Reply |
Not for me

.Mac has not failed for me at all in the last year or so, sadly the same cannot be said for Gmail...

bjojade
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2007

+3

06/24, 09:37am | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
Random issues - major

Well, if you are using your .Mac account for business, random unexplained issues can certainly derail your work. I've been using .Mac for years and I can say that this month has been the worst yet.

Sure, email may only be down for a couple hours at a time, but when you use it as a means to communicate with your clients, a couple hours time may mean getting the sale or having them go somewhere else.

If this keeps up, I may need to look elsewhere for my internet services.

chas_m
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

-1

06/24, 10:55am | report spam | close Reply |
Well ...

bjojade said:
"Well, if you are using your .Mac account for business" ...

... then you are violating the terms of service. And are a fool.

.Mac is not an enterprise-class service (though the upgrade to MobileMe could change that). It's a consumer-class service, which means that small outages in the middle of the night (as most of them are) aren't any big deal.

Hopefully what we are seeing is an attempt by Apple to have MobileMe go through its "teething troubles" stage NOW rather than later. As a .Mac member since Jan 2000 I can honestly say I've been satisfied with the service overall till now, and yes this month has been a little frustrating. But when I think of the way most big corporations have let me down/inconvenienced me over the years, Apple is still the best of the bunch by far.

chas_m
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

-2

06/24, 10:56am | report spam | close Reply |
Well ...

bjojade said:
"Well, if you are using your .Mac account for business" ...

... then you are violating the terms of service. And are a fool.

.Mac is not an enterprise-class service (though the upgrade to MobileMe could change that). It's a consumer-class service, which means that small outages in the middle of the night (as most of them are) aren't any big deal.

Hopefully what we are seeing is an attempt by Apple to have MobileMe go through its "teething troubles" stage NOW rather than later. As a .Mac member since Jan 2000 I can honestly say I've been satisfied with the service overall till now, and yes this month has been a little frustrating. But when I think of the way most big corporations have let me down/inconvenienced me over the years, Apple is still the best of the bunch by far.

broohaha22
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2006

+3

06/24, 11:48am | report spam | close Reply |
Depends on the business

The .mac membership agreement can be found here
http://www.mac.com/1/membership_terms.html

".Mac has been designed for personal use and is not intended to be used to host e-commerce businesses conducting commercial sales and/or transactions over the Internet, including, but not limited to, any online store or shop, or software distribution. "

You can still use it as a tool to communicate via e-mail with your clients. Something that I do for my side gig.

ZinkDifferent
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2005

-2

06/24, 11:56am | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
reliability

I have every reason to assume MobileMe will be more reliable, as Apple is moving the infrastructure into their own data center - which are the moving pains we are experiencing right now.

I wish people would stop bitching about irrelevant minutiae, considering what Apple is getting ready, and the benefits of the new service.

It's just the usual ungrateful idiots.

testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

+1

06/24, 12:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: reliability

I have every reason to assume MobileMe will be more reliable, as Apple is moving the infrastructure into their own data center - which are the moving pains we are experiencing right now.

Where has it been reported that they are moving to their own data center?

And since the servers are all the same, how is it magically going to be more reliable? I seriously doubt all of Apple's issues are with the internet connection dying at their current location.

And can it really be that hard to
(a) Announce a shutdown (everyone else manages to release this information up-front during an upgrade)
or
(b) keep the services running while setting up their new space?

I wish people would stop bitching about irrelevant minutiae, considering what Apple is getting ready, and the benefits of the new service.

It's just the usual ungrateful idiots.

I'm sorry. h***, we're only paying $100 a year. Why should anyone expect such a pay service to be up 100% of the time, or even be told when it will be down. You'd only expect that kind of service from those lame-a** companies that offer such things at cheaper rates, if not free.

jefort
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2008

+1

06/24, 03:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
.Mac

I have been generally satisfied with .Mac and I use it as my primary, non-office, email. But I really needed it on Monday. The outgoing mail wouldn't work, yet the .Mac web site said all was well. Finally, after a half hour with technical support, they agreed that the .Mac server was having problems. Until then, I wasn't sure at which ended the problem was. I definitely was unhappy.

testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

+1

06/24, 05:39pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: .Mac

See. And look at how much trouble, irritation, and manpower Apple could save (both on its end and on its customer's end) if they just were open about the issues and let people know when the system was actually going to be down.

ender
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 1999

+1

06/24, 07:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
No notice

As others have pointed out, the problem isn't that there are outages. The problem is that any responsible service provider would be giving advanced notice to their customers of planned, and even just potential, outages due to the upgrades they are putting in place to allow people to plan accordingly. Otherwise people are stuck having to figure out on their own if it's a problem with their computer, something they should report, or just sit on their hands until Apple finishes their upgrades.

At my company the engineers are absolutely forbidden to perform any work on a production system during weekdays unless it's an emergency fix. They work evenings and weekends for all upgrades. Apparently Apple's engineers are not bound by such restrictions.

dimmer
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Feb 2006

+2

06/24, 10:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
Errr

"Apple is moving the infrastructure into their own data center"

iTools was built out in Apple's Valley Green 3 Data Center, being initially positioned as an Apple owned ISP. After a year or two of the free "WhyTools?" .Mac was launched (the rebranded same old thing) at which point the daily outages couldn't go on (it's OK to f*** up when it's a free service: not so much once you start asking $$ for it). Still in VG3.

.Mac and MobileMe are still hosted at Apple's data centers in Cupertino and Elk Grove, but the "head end" delivery from these centers to the Internet has been moved to co-location facilities at AT@T and MAEWest using GigaMAN circuits.

broohaha22
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2006

0

06/27, 11:16am | report spam | close Reply |
Down again

We're being routed to:
http://www.mac.com/unavailable/

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.Mac suffers 15th outage as Mobile Me deployed

updated 12:45 am EDT, Tue June 24, 2008

dotMac outages

are you sure?

Good thing you told

are you really sure?

Look again

Why is it going out?

Scope of outages

Scope of outages

Not for me

Random issues - major

Well ...

Well ...

Depends on the business

reliability

re: reliability

.Mac

Re: .Mac

No notice

Errr

Down again

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.Mac suffers 15th outage as Mobile Me deployed

updated 12:45 am EDT, Tue June 24, 2008

dotMac outages

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are you sure?

Good thing you told

are you really sure?

Look again

Why is it going out?

Scope of outages

Scope of outages

Not for me

Random issues - major

Well ...

Well ...

Depends on the business

reliability

re: reliability

.Mac

Re: .Mac

No notice

Errr

Down again

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