Since MobileMe’s launch, Apple’s felt the heat over each and every item on the laundry list of nasty issues. They launched a product that simply wasn’t ready, and have been e-lambasted for it. Apple’s accustomed to a bit of name calling from blogs and forums, of course – but when Walt Mossberg calls your product “far too flawed”, it’s time to come out and say something.
Sometime yesterday, a new item popped up on the MobileMe section of Apple.com: Status. Looks like rather than going silent on the issues, Apple’s going to blog – the new Status page promises “new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.”
The first post, essentially a long-winded “We know – we’re working on it.”, tries to stay on the up-and-up (limited web access for the broken accounts, yay!). It does slip in one nasty little morsel: for those affected by the mail outage, 10% of messages received between July 16th and July 18th were lost. Oops! Oddly, the issues of reliability that have people chattering the most go unmentioned.
It’s also a bit odd that, after the opening line starting with”Steve Jobs has asked me..”, this first post goes unsigned. Who are you, Mystery MobileMe Man?
Regardless of its foibles, the communication from Apple is a nice gesture. To be honest, it’s just nice to see a big ol’ company talk to their customers in a way that doesn’t involve press releases.