In the end Mobile Me will be judged not by the today outage, but by how fast Apple will be able to sort out the issues. No doubt Steve is kicking some poor bugger's butt right now back at Cupertino...

While I agree the majority of this will be a distant memory to most tech-savvy Apple enthusiasts by Monday - first impressions are huge when dealing with the rest of the mainstream consumer market.

Basically, tens of thousands of fresh newbies - who have no prior reasons to be forgiving of Apple - checked out the Apple website after hearing about all the iPhone 3G buzz from the NYTimes, their Yahoo! and Google homepages, USA Today, or wherever, and may have decided to check out this new MobileMe thingy and only found a "Temporarily Unavailable" message. Or even worse, had to wait almost a minute watching a blank window (like it did for me earlier), and they just gave up and said "See ya - it's not even working on opening day??" And they snapped back to their Yahoo! or Google homepages, which feed millions more people day in and day out tons of web-based functionality without a hiccup.

Steve was definitely kicking some butt this morning. And since he's on Pacific Time, he was up early too. Not a happy camper I'm sure.

...for thinking he was God and could release an entirely new online service, major iPhone software upgrade, iPhone app store, and a new 3G iPhone ALL IN THE SPAN OF 2 DAYS! Give me break, there was no way this was going to run smoothly. To many things going on that are all interconnected.

it was a bit spotty yesterday but today it seems to be working fine for me. it wasn't the smoothest deployment but i for one have a little patience and if you put this in the lens of Vista deployment, a few hours of spotty isn't much...

UNSAT, Apple. Totally unsat. The MObileME project manager should be FIRED immediately, as well as everyone who worked on the project.

This is something you'd expect from Micro$oft, not Apple.

WORST product rollout in Apple history. They should be ASHAMED.

while it's saying "no new members" now, I managed to get the page loaded earlier and signed up for a 60 day free trial with completely new membership details.

haven't been able to use it since, but at least I got a great email @me.com while they were still available! they better pick up on handling the server load, I'm willing to wait a few days for uninterrupted acces, but I'll be expecting a very fast and reliable service to keep the £60/year account after the trial expires.

I hate fanboys. "oh no someone said something bad about apple! Mark their comment down!"

This is totally like a Microsoft release, its horrible. Site is up then down then up and nothing works or works painfully slow. Don't burn the 1st bridge(.mac) before the new one is here. Test your products before you release them apple!

I've decided to cancel my service. I just spoke to a mobileme representative and asked that they credit my account for the two days of service that I paid for but didn't receive. This seemed to be a reasonable request but I was told this was not possible. I wasn't satisfied with that answer so I'm not going to renew my account.

You all know Apple. They will get it right. How often has something not worked out with them. Hmmmm....zero. The only unforgivable (for now) would be lack of email. Email works. Have a cup of coffee and chill!

Part of what makes Apple products and services so appealing is that they are designed and intended to elicit an emotional response for users. This is why there is such a high loyalty to Apple products and services. The iPhone, for instance, is cool to look at and it gives one a distinct feeling of pleasure due to its functionality. MobileMe is intended to be cool as well. But, out of the gate this week, MobileMe has produced other kinds of emotional responses in people--frustration and anger.

Part of what makes Apple products and services so appealing is that they are designed and intended to elicit an emotional response for users. This is why there is such a high loyalty to Apple products and services. The iPhone, for instance, is cool to look at and it gives one a distinct feeling of pleasure due to its functionality. MobileMe is intended to be cool as well. But, out of the gate this week, MobileMe has produced other kinds of emotional responses in people--frustration and anger.

I've waited for MM so impatiently just to find out that some of the advertised features are missing. Am I the only one who's unable to locate the "share file" button under idisk? And boy, is the whole thing slow here in Europe. Any faster overseas?

Mobile Me is a more extensive roll-out of a web-based service than any I have ever seen, with more potential issues related to syncing, massive quantities of data and endless links. I don't think it is totally fair to flame at Apple about this, there really isn't a lot to which you can compare. Microsoft has never build a web service of this scale, what they offer is simple by comparison.

Mobile Me isn't working 100% for me yet, either - but I'm not worried that it won't. I am sure lots of testing occurred, but public roll-outs on this scale are damn hard to simulate.

I do understand those of you showing compassion and patience, but it is unacceptable. Completely.

Apple is a large company, and can certainly afford QA Testing and stress analysis tools. One cannot complain of "surprise," since testing software can simulate various production scenarios.

Currently, the service is spotty and slow. When you accept mediocrity for a paid service, you become complicit in the uninspiring result.

You all know Apple. They will get it right. How often has something not worked out with them. Hmmmm....zero.

That's completely the wrong attitude to take, and why apple gets away with stuff like this. The fans do the "it'll all work out" routine and gives apple a pass.

How long before you grant them to 'get it right'? Because .Mac has never been 'right' to a lot of people.

Oh, and as to "not worked out", how about iBook G3s and G4s and mobo issues and PowerMac G5 power supply and mobo issues. Owners of these computers would argue with your "they'll get it right" argument. (And I didn't even count the computers Apple has needed to do extended repair plans on).

They don't always get it right.

Mail finally lit up for me (Los Angeles area). Seems about the same speed as .Mac, perhaps a bit slower. I agree that this roll-out has been a fiasco. This is a paid service for Pete's sake. Given the scope and duration of the outage, I'm betting Apple will have to issue one of their rare "mea culpa"s and extend everyone's account by a week, or something like that. I'm disappointed with the outage, but the things that really tick me off are Apple's downplaying of the severity in their status message ("lying" would be a harsher, but perhaps more accurate description), and lack of any advance warning or caveat that there may be issues. By reversing the age-old maxim "under-promise and over-deliver", they end up looking like arrogant incompetents.

There is more missing from MobileMe than Apple previously let on. They only said the online bookmarks and iCards would be gone. But so is the ability to create group web sites (it appears you can still use the ones you previously created, but no new ones). There may also be an issue with HomePage, but MobileMe went down before I could check into it more. I'd check now except they've dropped support for IE6, the only browser I can use at work. (Which also makes MobileMe USELESS for me! The whole reason for getting .Mac was to access contacts and calendars while at work. So how do I get my money back since Apple can't deliver the 12 months of service I paid for?)

This is extremely frustrating.... I'm a huge Apple fan. I own 5 Apple machines (all less than 3 years old) 4 Ipods, Time Capsule, etc.... But there is no excuse for this at all. I feel sorry for the poor SOB's in Cupertino right now having to pull the shoe out of their asses (and deservedly so). There are thousands of current iPhone users with Bricks, new G3 users with a useless phone, .mac users who can't sync c***(who didn't have access to the service for 2 days), yet this isn't the initial rollout of the product. This is the second generation of both the iphone and the online service. I hate to say this, but I hope they pull some miraculous comeback to renew consumer faith in their product launches because they've f'd up the last 2. Come on Apple, walk the talk if you want to be considered a player with the Big Boys (and take off your I'm a Mac commercials for a bit and save face).

Saturday 10am, .Mac online still down. Getting past the "Well, everyone was hitting it, it was bound to crash" reasoning, no one's hitting it now.

Apple, maybe if you did MobileMe as a new service, got it up and running, and then moved the .Mac over when MobileMe was working, you wouldn't have irritated two different groups of people.

Apple was clearly not ready to reveal MobileMe quite so soon. The me.com site is extremely slow, if it works at all! Also, the automatic sync feature which lets you use the push email/calendar/contacts in conjunction with iCal, Mail, and Address Book on your mac "isn't ready yet" according to Apple... Whats the point of push email/contacts/calendar if you can only use it all on one device (the phone its self). Not to mention, Apple only has chat support for MobileMe. Who do they think they are? Dell?

MobileMe is just so bad -- what were these people thinking. I've been going through the Help pages on video tutorials trying to figure out how to do simple stuff, and time after time I'm finding that basic issues are either undocumented, or that the documentation refers to non-existent interface elements. This premature roll-out accomplishes nothing other than to undermine Apple's credibility and alienate existing users. Now that their market share is becoming more significant are they taking a page from the way MS has traditionally operated? This simply stinks

I purchased it three days ago and entered my serial number to activate it before I realized I could try it free for 60 days. Of course I wasn't credited with the 60 extra days they should have given me!!

Anyway, if you don't have it yet, stay away. I can go into detail with the problems, but there are just too many. Its broken, crashes my Macs, etc. I can't believe they released this thing.

Yesturday I called Apple and demanded my money back. They said I'd get an e-mail in 3-4 hours to confirm. A day later, no e-mail. The Apple rep laughed when he told me that I wasn't alone in wanting my money back.

Welcome to the NEW Apple. It seems like its starting to look more like Microsoft everyday.

I purchased it three days ago and entered my serial number to activate it before I realized I could try it free for 60 days. Of course I wasn't credited with the 60 extra days they should have given me!!

Anyway, if you don't have it yet, stay away. I can go into detail with the problems, but there are just too many. Its broken, crashes my Macs, etc. I can't believe they released this thing.

Yesturday I called Apple and demanded my money back. They said I'd get an e-mail in 3-4 hours to confirm. A day later, no e-mail. The Apple rep laughed when he told me that I wasn't alone in wanting my money back.

Welcome to the NEW Apple. It seems like its starting to look more like Microsoft everyday.