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MobileMe 'Not up to Apple's Standards,' Says Steve Jobs
Posted by Kit Eaton at 5:53 PM on August 5, 2008
We all know that Apple's MobileMe had a difficult birth: but it's quite another thing to be able to read the criticisms of the service from his Steveness himself. And over at Ars Technica they've got hold of an internal Apple email that Steve Jobs sent out to Apple employees detailing his displeasure that MobileMe was "not up to Apple's Standards." It needed both more time in testing, and a piece-by-piece launch, rather than attempting to launch it as a "monolithic service," he thinks.
Our favourite Martian gadget of the moment is experiencing some performance anxiety. While all of Phoenix's parts are working just fine, including the 8-foot scoop arm, the little guy just couldn't seal the deal when NASA scientists gave the green light to scoop dirt and put the bun in the oven. None of the inaugural sample made it into the first oven, you see, and scientists at the University of Arizona are scrambling today to find out why.
London Heathrow airport's latest building, Terminal 5, launched last month after almost two decades of planning, US$8.5 billion dollars in cost, and 100 million hours in manpower. It is a glass and concrete and steel marvel, the largest free standing building in the UK, with over 16 kms in suitcase moving belts, and was supposed to be a cure for the Airport's famous congestion by way of massive automation. On its opening day, and it just did not work right. This week, British Airways' plans to move its long haul operations from the crowded main terminal to the new terminal were pushed back til June. Much of the press was quick to say that tech was the source of the failings in parking, luggage handling and check in, but here are the details I can find on what exactly caused endless lines and delay for so many passengers of Terminal 5.
Complete NeXTcube system on eBay: $780 w/ S&H (and climbing).
Just to remind you how thin the thread is upon which we hang every day, consider that one faulty network interface card stranded 17,000 people for nine hours last weekend at Los Angeles International Airport. According to government officials in charge of the infrastructure at the airport, a network card inside one computer experienced "a partial failure that started at about 12:50 p.m. Saturday," and then the house of cards that is the LAX Airport computer network came crashing down, stranding a gigantic crowd of people for the better part of a day.
