Apple has just published a MobileMe to iCloud transition FAQ. Of note, there has been a lot of confusion as to whether or not iCloud apps would be accessible on the web. We had previously heard that yes, they would for sure be available via web apps on icloud.com (similar to the ones currently found on me.com) set to launch at an undisclosed date in the future. But plenty still refused to believe that. So today, Apple has answered the question once and for all. Sure enough: → Read More
This is a fantastically fun story. Former England Rugby captain Will Carling’s iPad was stolen, yeah, but he had tracking software on there. What followed was a gripping tale, told on Twitter, of Carling’s attempts to hunt down his missing iPad using MobileMe. → Read More
In June of 2008, we wrote about SproutCore, and open source framework that was demoed that year at the WWDC event put on by Apple. The reason they were demoing it was because it was going to be the technology powering the soon-to-be-released MobileMe experience on the web. Apple had actually been using the framework with .Mac before that as well. And for good reason: the guy who created it, Charles Jolley, worked for them. Now Jolley is trying to open up that work to the rest of the web with his startup Strobe. And they’ve just gotten some big backing from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Hummer Winblad to make it happen.
So what exactly is Strobe? GigaOm’s Om Malik had a nice interview with Jolley back in July after he left Apple to talk about the project. Essentially, Strobe is a company built to help developers around the web code mobile applications with the SproutCore framework, which again, Jolley created. The idea is to use JavaScript and HTML5 to create touch-based apps which run as if they’re built using native code. The best known examples to date are some of the MobileMe apps and iWork.com, which Jolley helped drive the development of at Apple. → Read More
Over the weekend, some rumors were circulating that Apple might be on the verge of making MobileMe free to some iOS users. This news (which seems to come up about once a quarter) sprung out of some code in the latest golden master build of iOS 4.2 (which was officially released today). Well, sadly, the rumor isn’t true. Well, it mostly isn’t true.
You see, with iOS 4.2, Apple is making one part of MobileMe available for free: Find My iPhone/iPad. Users will be able to sign up for a free MobileMe account for the first time in order to use the service, which works on iOS devices in the form of an app. However, those users signing up for free accounts will not be able to use the other MobileMe services without paying the regular $99-a-year price, we’ve confirmed with Apple. → Read More
As the phones in our pockets become our second computers, it will become increasingly important to sync data between the two. Not just emails, but contacts, calendars, photos, music, apps, browser bookmarks, files, and more. Nearly every Web phone out there comes with at least some sort of rudimentary syncing app. Apple has MobileMe, Nokia has Ovi, Palm has Synergy, Blackberry has Internet Services, and Microsoft has My Phone.
An open-source competitor to all of these is Funambol. The startup evaluated all of the syncing services and scored them based on criteria such as how many kinds of data each one supports, cost, usability, and number of supported devices. (Full study embedded at bottom of post). It came up with a score for each out of a maximum of 40. Naturally enough, Funambol scored the highest, but if you throw that out you end up with the list below (with accompanying scores). → Read More
It looks like Microsoft is finally ready to roll out the mobile version of Windows Live Mesh, it data syncing service that competes with Apple’s MobileMe (which ran into problems at launch). Live Mesh was first announced last April, and currently only supports Windows PCs and a Webtop in the cloud. Mac and mobile versions are shown to be “coming soon.”
Tom Warren at Neowin reports that Microsoft is set to launch a mobile syncing product called SkyBox at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. This builds on earlier reports based on job postings. SkyBox sounds exactly like Live Mesh (it syncs pictures, calendar, contacts, emails and text messages between your mobile phone and the cloud): → Read More
Sharpcast has raised a $10 million round from existing investors Sigma Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Selby Venture. This brings the total raised to $26.5 million. Sharpcast offers file-syncing through its SugrarSync service, which syncs data across multiple devices and the cloud.
Syncing is becoming a serious technology trend as people split up their digital lives across devices and the Web. It is one of the promises of Windows Live Mesh from Microsoft, which won the Crunchie for best technology innovation. Apple offers syncing through its MobileMe service. Startups like Sharpcast are looking to carve out their own niche here with both free and subscription services. → Read More
Creating email spam lists is a multi-billion dollar business. Most webmail providers long ago closed a number of the more obvious methods spammers used to put together their lists in an automated way. One example – you don’t get bounced email messages from webmail services for emails to address that don’t exist. That way spammers can’t verify if an email address is good unless they get a response (clicking the opt out link is one sinister method to verify an email is good) or include a tracking pixel. Apple, however, has created a dead simple way for spammers to easily spider their idisk property to retrieve the entire MobileMe user name list. And each of those usernames can be converted to an email address by adding @me.com or @mac.com to the end of it. Here’s how it works. Every MobileMe user gets a public idisk file sharing site where they can post files for their public or private use. It’s simple to set the page to private, but it still shows the username if you to to the page. An example of a bad username: idisk.mac.com/mehmehmeh-Public. Here’s a good one: idisk.mac.com/steve-Public (That’s Steve Jobs’ account). There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one. Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial. Apple knows about the problem but insists it isn’t an issue because no one has complained publicly. An Apple representative said to one of our readers: “We’ve never had a complaint from a customer about people spamming them because of their iDisk public folder name. There is no way to remove your account name from the iDisk folders. I’m very sorry.” So here’s our public complaint. The bad guys already know about this. Your engineers shouldn’t have designed the product without thinking this through. Please fix it. CrunchBase Information MobileMe Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
MobileMe has stunk on ice, so to regain users’ trust Apple will give them two free months of service. Anyone with an account active as of August 19 at 00:00 PDT (note Apple’s correct use of timestamp, PDT) is eligible for the two free months. Apple is giving away the free months “to express appreciation for [its] members’ patience as [it] continue to improve the service.” It’s a shame MobileMe has been so buggy, since push for the everyman (because every man needs push) should well be a hit. → Read More
Below you’ll find the entire “MobileMe launch wasn’t very good” e-mail Steve Jobs sent to employees. He sent it on Monday, claims Ars. Team, The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better: – MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing. – Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts. → Read More
Steve Jobs has admitted that the MobileMe launch was “not up to Apple’s standards.” That’s in reference to all the problems the service has had since it launched last month. Jobs admitted as much in an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees, which Ars Technica got a hold of. He said MobileMe shouldn’t have been launched on the same day as iPhone 3G, Firmware 2.0 and the App Store. Rather, Apple could have launched it one service at a time—on the first day it could have launched over-the-air; the next week could have been push e-mail; and so on. Another bit of fallout: the MobileMe development team will now report to the same guy in charge of iTunes and the App Store. Good to see Apple recognize how poor MobileMe has been, and even better to see that it’s trying to fix it. → Read More
Updated sometime yesterday, Apple has given it’s status report regarding the epic failure of MobileMe. Here’s what they had to say. Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date. In the 14 days since we launched, it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering. Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters, and we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later. → Read More
As if you didn’t know, MobileMe hasn’t exactly launched without a hitch. Now Walt Mossberg, angel, has jumped atop the dog pile, and is refusing to recommend the service right now. Mossberg cites too-infrequent-to-be-useful 15 sync times; sluggish performance; weird Outlook glitches; and so on. Basically, MobileMe is a little buggy, which we’ve known for some time now. But now that Mossberg has said as much, all the more pressure is now on Apple to fix its $100 per year service. AlleyInsider → Read More
