Their fist mistake was calling it "MobileMe". Didn't they
learn anything from "Windows Me"? Why model your product after a horrific failure? They might as well have called it "MobileE.T.2600". I am surprised it wasn't "iMobile".... or "iCan'tEmailWhileBeingMobile"...

Mr.SithNinja

Their fist mistake was calling it "MobileMe". Didn't they learn anything from "Windows Me"? Why model your product after a horrific failure? They might as well have called it "MobileE.T.2600". I am surprised it wasn't "iMobile".... or "iCan'tEmailWhileBeingMobile"...

Mr.SithNinja

I hear they're launching a new internet product called Mojave that's much better.

92BuickLeSabre

@Pope John Peeps II: Uhhhhhhh

snitch29

I think the most important take-away from this is that Eddy Cue just got a really nice promotion. Congratulations, Eddy!

homerjay

@92BuickLeSabre: I second that. Horrible name. It's as bad as Popcorn Express.

GeekyNerdGuy

@snitch29: yah, fucking steve jobs. Of all people I'm SURE he knew nothing about Mobile Me. Not like good old snitch 29. Hey snitch 29, how's your enormous computer programming company doing today?

Pope John Peeps II

damn, he's like the Kennedy of CEOs.

nutbastard

@jaredgibbs: While I really admire the man, Jobs is no saint and he's known to "periodically reduce subordinates to tears and fires employees in angry tantrums". For all you Apple fanboys on Giz read this article and gain some insight behind the duderino behind your gadgets...

[money.cnn.com]

=opportunityfanboy

and oddly enough, steve's collection of heads on lances increased in size.

godwhacker

People Mobile me is free for 60 days, so before you start talking out of your ass, try it out you might learn something, then if you don't like it bash it all you want, but don't talk about what you don't know cause your going to sound just dumb

snitch29

I was expecting a better caption for the headline; something along the lines of ppl getting force lightened idk just maybe a lil more creativity?

Alex2643

@snitch29: Actually, a lot of people aren't having a problem with it. According to Apple, and David Pogue, the problems are only limited to about 1% of MobileMe's users.

However, when you're Apple, and you pride yourself on making your products "Just Work," a 1% failure rate is going to cause a huge stir; especially when other products have been doing the same thing for years.

grafxguy

somebody hold me.

agentUrge

"And learn we will!"

Then, Jobs pulled on his jaunty irish green jacket, buckled his boots, and danced out the door! Pirouetting through the yard, he reached out and daintily plucked an ostrich feather from his surprised pet Birdo. He was last seen dancing on a magical cloud, leaving a trail of cinnamon and gold, heading into the moonrise!

Aaaaah me boyos, tis a magical toyme een the old citee of dublin tonoyt! Steeeve Jobbs ta Leprechaun will grayce oos weeth his presence, and perchance will give us all a little golden kiss on ta rump for good luck.

And once teh steve is safely on teh moon, we'll a-noo loonger haf ta see his goddamn jesus-becursed smugness on god's green earth!

Saints be praised!

Pope John Peeps II

@92BuickLeSabre: *sneaks back in with a red pen and turns "No" into "Now."*

92BuickLeSabre

"One more thing, WhoTF came up with name 'MobileMe' anyway? The rest of this I can chalk up to growing pains for us, but 'MobileMe'? Actually, don't tell me who did it. Just pray to whatever god or gods that you worship that I don't find you, because if I do, you will wish that you were fired. And if you don't worship any god? No would be a good time to find one. *BOOM!*"

92BuickLeSabre

hmmm... mobileme... mobileme... oh your talking about the bullsh*t mail wannabe that came out 4 years after push technology hit Exchange. Nooooooooow it rings a bell.

praevalesco

The right stuff.

altus

@jaredgibbs: Although this is true, what isn't being reported is the fact that jobs also had a secret meeting with all the people responsible for the failed launch where he destroyed them with his laser vision.

bobojuice

What's the big deal with Mobile Me???? i haven't had a problem with it, i do admit the first 2 days where kind of rocky though, but hey if they wanna make it better, i guess i can't complaint, go ahead make it better, at least is not like the (mojave experiment) where you make customers think they're wrong, knowing in 3 days they might wanna hang themselves for listening to you

snitch29

@jaredgibbs: Link to this letter?

Kraftwerker

@radikaled: ip0wned!

Joseph

"And learn we will."

Wow. I love the determination in this one line.

TheSonOfKrypton

Unlike that Bill Gates email about Vista, Jobs doesn't berate his employees, rather choosing to encourage them to do better. Say what you want about the guy, that's the stuff great CEO's are made of.

jaredgibbs

Do we know it was Steve Jobs? It might have just been some guy named Steve. I didn't think that Steve Jobs was into the whole brevity thing.

OMG! Ponies!

I will re-read this e-mail every time Apple tries to convince us that 'at heart they are a software company.'

Now get back to putting touch screens on things!!

Hiphopopotamus

p0wned

radikaled

You gotta love steve :)

macgeek_pro

I am somewhat disappointed.

I expected the following words in the letter:
-RETARDS
-FOOLS
-IDIOTS
-SUCK
-TERRIBLE
-FIRED

and words similar to those

MadColombian

Why they decided to do away with the .Mac name is beyond me.

Even an obvious one, like iMobile, would've been better.

Kaiser-Machead's BSDM Shenanigans

@newgalactic:
please re-arrange my previous post to go above yours.

dogcow

@i_prefer_sasquatch:
had to have known it would be 'leaked' to the press too.

dogcow

This email was not written for the benefit of Apple developers, it was written as a marketing point for the benefit of consumers. Leaked email? When does Apple have any "leaked emails"? Not when they have an earth-shattering new product in development, when hundreds of individuals would pay handsomely for the smallest bit of information. But when Steve sends a "we need to do better" email, that's what's leaked? I don't buy it. Too brief, too encouraging, too "we'll do better next time, don't leave us". This email was written to be leaked on purpose. It reads like it was written for the blog-sphere, not Steve's directors/employees.

...that's my guy feeling. No proof to back it up. I could be completely wrong. Let me know if you disagree.

newgalactic

That's a great email.

Short, to the point, gives clear information, shows comprehension of the problems and an understanding of what could have been done better. Also admits fault and regret.

Not to mention that he announces an immediate change to the team & a clear path of communication.

All in six paragraphs. Nice.

i_prefer_sasquatch

@Mr.SithNinja: their 2nd mistake was double posting...

On another note, I wonder who had to lose their job for Eddy to get his new position, hmmm.

Kaspir

@homerjay: I'm pretty sure Eddy has one eye on El Jobso's infamous temper and the other on the door. That or he's signed up for an Amazon subscription of Pepto Bismal. It's his nuts on the chopping block now.

bobdobbs

I initially had some issues with the calendar syncing correctly between Outlook and the MobileMe servers and how it looked on their web-based application, however it was resolved (I think it was mostly problem with the web app side). Syncing between my 1st gen iPhone, mail, contacts, calendar, and outlook has worked nearly flawlessly so far for me though and any problems I did have I think were side effects of the outlook syncing issues I was having. The gallery features for photos are great. One thing I wish it would do is use the gallery of mobile me to determine what photos to sync with the iPhone, but maybe it'll come in time.

The last week or two its been great overall though. Overall, while a bit rocky, I wouldn't call it a complete failure by any means. They aren't perfect, the problems have been resolved from what I can tell, and they've stepped up and taken responsibility for the flaws so far and adjusted their game plan to prevent them in the future. Name another company that does that as quickly and without weeks/months of run around first pretending its all in the public's imagination.

aquajaws

Mr.SithNinja, look, I totally agree. But take a deep breath. We all make fist mistakes.
Your fist mistake, for example, was double-posting.
My fist mistake was allowing that guy to punch me in the face.
It happens.

92BuickLeSabre

Well, at least Apple recognizes fails and tries to fix them. Microsoft had this very same problem and they released Vista

faunaman

@jaredgibbs: I agree, but it also tells of Jobs' micro-management style vs Gates' hands-off style.

Gates has/had too many people to manage to micro manage them. Jobs, on the other hand, is so interwoven with everything going on that he probably felt ultimately responsible for having made the decisions that led to the failures.

And when he says (paraphrasing) "...we will learn from this..." I really hear him saying "I."

FritzLaurel

@jaredgibbs: You've obviously never heard of Steve's horrible dressing down of staffers who fail him. He's legendary for verbally destroying subordinates in front of their peers.

EBone

I had Tier 3 support on the phone for hours working on MobileMe problems. The Apple Store replaced my phone 3 times, and no-one ever suggested that perhaps the problem was that the MobileMe product was releasead too early. It works just fine for me now and seems like it will be a great product. Beats the shit out of .MAC.

Ham_Sandwich

Unlike MS and the b.s. that Ballmer and Gates spit out, this stuff Stevo just laid out will come true. He's pissed and he cares about what Apple represents. He's also a hands on guy, unlike the other guys who just loves collecting automatic revenue.

Ken_Darrow

@jaredgibbs: are you kidding me?

froggy

i love mac but this is a case of...

iFail

CharitableNinja

@Kaiser-Machead: How about iMe?

92BuickLeSabre

@thebear91: Your right. The name sounds just, weird for apple. seems like something from facebook

mikail511

the best thing about it:
EVERYONE AT APPLE JUST GOT TOLD BY A BUDDHIST NERD

mikail511

@thebear91: So you're saying that Cupertino is borrowing Redmond's copiers...

OMG! Ponies!

Until I can use my GMail account to send and receive, I won't touch the damned thing. On my BlackBerry, I plugged in all the server info and it...

Well, it just worked.

OMG! Ponies!

BTW - Even the "Me" looks the same:

[en.wikipedia.org]

thebear91

Another "Me" product fails.

When I heard "MobileMe" the first thing I thought of was Windows ME.

.mac has such a nice ring to it.

thebear91

@92BuickLeSabre: or, in England "LiMey"

Xavoc

@EBone: Yeah... That's what I was thinking. "Whose selfesteem was destroyed in order for them to kill themselves to provide the blood to be used as ink for Steve's letter."

This is the same guy who likes to park in handicapped spots w/ no plates on his car.

Xavoc

@92BuickLeSabre: Man, that was an unclarification.

"The Longhorns are in Austin at the University of Texas.
The good folks at Texas A&M are Aggies."

92BuickLeSabre

Is it just me, or does that email feel like Steve wrote it just to ME personally?

navstar

@OMG! Ponies!: Excellent comment. However, my family honor requires me to point out that The Longhorns are in Austin at U.T. Texas A&M is The Aggies.

92BuickLeSabre

Look, I hate to be a contrarian, but everyone needs to ease off the name-hating.

I'm not saying that MobileMe is a good name. I'm saying that there's plenty of bad tech naming out there.

I know that NutBastard, the house Ubuntu-proselytizer is running Herpes Heron or whatever took over from Gassy Gadfly. Meanwhile, we're all waiting for Snow Leopard, which is what you get when you pour White-Out onto a Leopard. And from Redmond, we have "Mojave", home to Death Valley, which is what happens when your fully loaded system runs out of RAM. Much better than Longhorn which was an invitation for Microsoft to get sued by Texas A&M.

Going back into recent history, there's the Wii - the lame replacement name for the Revolution. There was Sony's attempt to convince publications that the proper spelling of the PS3 is PLAYSTATION 3 because every letter in the name is more important than the last. There's the iPhone 3G, which makes people wonder where the iPhone 2 went. There's the XBox 360, leaving a 358 generation gap between it and the XBox.

Then there's the Zune, the Rolly, the iBeat Blaxx, ATRAC (sounds like 8-Track), and every four-letter name for a Motorola cell phone.

Of course I'm leaving out two glaring errors - Microsoft Bob (thank you very much, Melinda Gates) and the Walkman, which I name because Sony managed to throw it away.

Know what the last decent name for a gizmo was? The iPod. And Apple didn't even mean to come up with that. It was just an unused "i" name from the iMac series.

My point is, as long as committees and focus groups make up names, there will be crap, whether it's the Edsel or the PMP923729038.

I decree that the only gadget/tech names that I will find acceptable are "BFG-9000" and Hasselhoff.

OMG! Ponies!

He wrote all that without saying "You're f*cking losers!!!" or "I'm a f*cking loser!!!". Way to go, Steve.

heroineworshipper

So this is not new news. In fact lets keep in mind that the "Steve's" minimum acceptable standard level is about 6ft above every other companies best level.

High standards...its something Apple has....and yes MME didnt start out up to it....but they will fix it.

The important thing here, is instead of telling everyone its fine, they are well aware it needs improvement and will do it.

Dont you wish other companies would actually do this instead of making ads telling you your too stupid to judge them.

Apple gets it.

Wowwzers

Sometimes I wonder if half of the individuals praising/panning Apple/MS on these blogs are actually paid bloggers just trying to influence the masses. I'm even more convinced when I see posts from different people that have almost the same verbiage/discussion points.

newgalactic

At least they acknowladged the fail.

gamecrazychris

@newgalactic: No, friend, we do this for free. That's why the tech companies love us.

OMG! Ponies!

And of course producet is my own special spelling of product.

:)

BlackSmokeDMax

This is how the email originally went:

To: Marketing Department
From: Big Steve
Subj: memo

You guys send me something real nice to leak, 'er I mean send out to the team about "MobileMe." Stat!

Steve

.
.

Now, I'll give them credit for accepting credit for a bad running producet, but this has gimmick written all over it.

BlackSmokeDMax

@newgalactic: Um, this *is* Giz. Unless you're giving Apple an HJ you're not doing your job...

ceriphim

Boom Outta here! www.jimrome.com

markadmin

Ahem...take two:

@homerjay

What happened to Eddy's predecessor? Did Steve-o mind-choke him?

callitfriend-o

@homerjay

callitfriend-o

I'm inclined to a agree that this is not a real mea culpa (if one was even warranted, having not used MobileMe, I have no idea if it is an epic fail). This was a PR ploy. I work in an office that was just racked by scandal, and we got these kinds of "too everyone," emails all the time. Shockingly, they were constantly getting quote time in the news.

This is fairly typical. I'm sure there were brutal dressings down. But this just smacks of PR.

makanai

Funny thing is I can actually picture him sitting with a few advisors thinking about what to do with mobileme. They didn't want to apologize to consumers, but didn't want to do nothing...I guess this sortof works. But in no way was it "leaked"

Substance_D

Yeah, the name itself "Mobile Me" is Fail. Too close to Window ME, which is epic Fail. And even the logo is el lame-o. Also I think some .Mac karma is occuring. When you kill .Mac and rename it Mobile Me you're messin' with some baaaaad mojo.

cdiggy