MobileMe upgrades detailed

After a very rocky launch to its much-anticipated cloud-based web-service, Apple on Wednesday published a new article with details on its recent upgrade to its MobileMe webservices, including better localization, improved and resolved mail and calendar issues, the ability to export vCards from MobileMe contacts and improved performance with Internet Explorer 7. The paid service (about $100/year) offers users push-email, web-based access, online storage, easy photo/movie sharing, data synchronization between multiple Macs, and much more. article outlines more detailed information about some recent improvements and the resolution of known issues that Apple apparently delivered in what it calls a "Late-September 2008 update" to MobileMe services -- released after it updated the MobileMe client software in early September -- but did not formally announce or report the update on its member pages (in August, the company suddenly halted its blog and replaced with a detailed service status page).

Saying that it is "always working" to improve MobileMe, the company delivered updates to the server-side, or "cloud"-based, service without any interaction by users of the service.

"[T]he MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it's easy not to notice that updates are occurring," the knowledge base article outlined. "Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just 'work better.'"

The company last notified users about updates to MobileMe in early August when it sent an email acknowledging that the launch was "not its finest hour" and that it still had many more improvements to make. After mail outages (and data loss) and persistent/reoccurring issues following its launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs apologized and finally offered every MobileMe subscriber a free 60-day extension (in addition to the one month extension most subscribers already received). The last status update showed that last week Apple resolved a mail outage that affected about 6 percent of its users.

Specifically, Apple said the "Late Sept Update" brought a number improvements to MobileMe mail, including resolution of issues when attempting to Reply All to some messages, using Keyboard Shortcuts, and properly removing Drafts after being sent. Apple also touted improved performance in Internet Explorer 7, with page titles and Junk Mail filtering, and when first logging into MobileMe Mail. Apple also said it has created a "loading" graphic to indicate that messages are still being loaded instead of a blank page.

The company has also taken steps to improve the accuracy of the MobileMe data transfer details and also addresses an inaccuracy of used storage in a Group iDisk. It also improves storage allocation menu for family pack sub-accounts and fully logs out users when users click "Logout" from.

The update also addresses a number of Calendar issues, including improved calendar performance with reoccurring events, better International time zone handling, and improved performance in Firefox 3 when switching views. In addition, it brings offers better performance with a large number of To Do items and improves reliability when first loading MobileMe Calendar

Apple also noted that it has now re-enabled the ability to export vCards from MobileMe contacts.

by MacNN Staff