NY Times’ Pogue slams Apple over ‘MobileMess’

"On July 16, Apple took the very unusual step of sending an apology to all MobileMe members, saying that the launch 'was a lot rockier than we had hoped.' Fortunately, the letter went on, 'we have worked through those problems and the Web apps are now up and running,'" David Pogue reports for The New York Times.

"It also said that Apple would stop using the word 'push' in its advertising until Macs and PCs did their syncing nearly instantly. It concluded with an apology, and a free one-month extension to every member's subscription," Pogue reports. "Unfortunately, MobileMe's problems were nowhere near over."

"People [have] started calling it 'ImmobileMe' and "'MobileMess,'" Pogue reports.

"Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea for Apple to launch four enormously complex initiatives — the iPhone 3G, the App Store, the iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe — all on the same day," Pogue writes.

"It's a little mind-boggling that today, nearly two weeks after MobileMe's official opening, Apple still hasn't solved the problem. That's got to be a record in the short history of cloud computing," Pogue writes. "But the real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that's so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management."
Full article :http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue-email.html