Software

Mossberg has rolled out an in-depth review of MobileMe backed by a week of testing in today’s WSJ, and if you’ve been following our coverage it won’t come as too big of a surprise that he’s not a fan. But his problems with the service go well beyond the launch hiccups you’ve read about. So what’s got Mossberg so riled up that he’s thrown down his big badhammer on MobileMe?

His review is behind WSJ’s curtain, so to summarise:

His major gripe with MobileMe is that unlike most Apple products he’s reviewed, it doesn’t “just work.” He cites changes made on computers taking “15 minutes, at best” to sync out to the web interface and iPhones, which is a big no-no for a service touting instant syncing across all of your devices. Other results from his test are equally disappointing:

• Web interface sluggish, and needs to be hard-refreshed to get changes to show up.
• Web-based storage is full of bugs when trying to connect with Windows machines
• Tons of incompatibilities bringing Mac contact groups and calendars into Outlook–things showing up as separate address books and calendars rather than groups or merging into the main calendar.
• Synched contacts loading slowly on iPhone, occasionally loading with no phone numbers and dropping custom ringtones (to play the Rocky theme when Pogue calls?)

In short, MobileMe is still full of substantial bugs and isn’t close to being ready for prime time, if you haven’t been able to tell already. Coming from Mossberg, though, means Apple needs to get serious about fixing this thing. So if you’re on the fence of whether to drop the US$100 on a subscription, it’s probably a good idea to wait a bit.

Here’s the report straight from Walt’s iSight.

[WSJ]