I've just about had it with Apple.
The new iPhone is cool, but man, the third-party software is buggggggggy. I haven't actually managed to crash my phone with any of Apple's iPhone applications, but I've lost count of the number of times I've seen the unexplained return to the Home page with programs from the App Store.
I'm guessing that Apple doesn't do any QA on third party apps. Not surprising, really; their resources are not unlimited. The iPhone SDK is still very new, so there are bound to be firmware problems that surface only after a lot of third party programs are released into the wild. I'm irritated by the crashes but not really concerned. I think they'll clear up soon enough.
MobileMe, on the other hand, is a disaster. It's a passenger train that jumped the tracks on a bridge and crashed into a ravine where some outlaws were hiding a stash of dynamite.
The first few days of instability were predictable, and to a degree, forgivable. Apple was rolling out brand new services on Web 2.0 applications, and they'd never done that before. I continued to send and receive email, and I was happy. I figured it would all die down in a couple of days.
This morning, it is nine days since the launch of Mobile Me. My Mac Book Pro at work received the little Mobile Me software update a couple of days after it was ostensibly available via Software Update. My iMac at home received it three days later. (Why? God only knows. And by God, I mean, of course, Steve Jobs.) My Mac Book Pro then received a Mobile Me 1.1 update. My iMac still hasn't gotten it via Software Update, and Apple hasn't published a standalone installer for it yet. Nice.
And I'm thinking that accessing my iDisk really requires that update. I've been trying to mount it on the desktop for several days now. No dice. I get a polite little dialog box that says, Your MobileMe account is not set up. Would you like to open MobileMe preferences and set it up now?" with buttons labeled "Cancel" and "Open MobileMe Preferences". So what happens when I open MobileMe preferences?
Yup. I'm already all set up. I can even see how much disk space is left on my iDisk volume. And if I use Apple's web interface to MobileMe, I can even see my files there! i just can't get to them from this iMac. (That's good, because a lot of my writing is on my iDisk, and I don't want to lose it. Good thing I use an independent backup utility and store copies on two other hard drives. If I were stupid enough to trust Apple to preserve all of my data, I'd be in a blind panic just about now.)
The other problem with the MobileMe preference pane is that it doesn't accurately reflect the state of my account. My data syncs, but the MobileMe preferences tells me that I'm not set up to sync. The sync happens automatically, even though the check box for automatic syncing isn't checked. Other computers sync up with me just fine, even though none of them are listed in this pref pane!
I'm going to carry out a little experiment today: I'm going to rip that Pref Pane file out and see if Apple's software updater is smart enough to notice and download a new one. (Why it can't detect that it's out of date without manual intervention is beyond me.)
Apple, you are really beginning to piss me off.
11 comments:
"(Why? God only knows. And by God, I mean, of course, Steve Jobs.)"
Of course you mean Steve Jobs, gamer/asshole.
Ah, didn't take long for this post to attract a troll. Nice comment, "Boo". My guess is that your irony detector is defective. Better take that sucker to the shop! Or should I condescend to my readers by inserting smileys everywhere I'm making a joke?
Notice, no smiley.
FYI, nitwit, I've been doing Mac support professionally for eighteen years. I'm not exactly new to the game. Apple's OS and applications QA these days is bad and getting worse. The iPhone/MobileMe debacle is symptomatic of a worsening situation at Apple, and they'd better pull their heads out of rectal defilade and get busy fixing things. Preferably before they roll them out, instead of afterwards.
You know the way to avoid all this drama is simply to wait a week or two before playing with the new toys.
I would've been perfectly happy sticking with .Mac the way it was. Apple pushed MobileMe into .Mac users' laps. It wasn't an optional upgrade. It just happened. Badly.
I guess I could drop my .Mac service altogether, but once they get the kinks worked out, it should be fine again. It's just depressing that Apple is descending to Microsoft-like quality on their initial releases.
BTW, the fix for MobileMe on my iMac required an "archive and install" of Leopard, followed by an hour of additional software update downloads and installs. A quick perusal of the MobileMe support forum proved to me that I wasn't the first person to encounter this particular bug.
And though my iDisk works again, the pref pane still doesn't show the correct status for automatic vs. manual MobileMe syncs, and still refused to let me change it. Whee. The fun continues!
Yanking an app/prefpane will NOT help. The software updater ONLY looks at receipts (/Library/Receipts) AND you cannot trash them or it doesn't know files are there at all. Best to see if Apple has a download package. But I'd try trashing caches first. If you have a local copy of your iDisk, you may want to turn that off, wait for the disk image to appear on the desktop, then turn it back on so it is recreated. Since you do tech support, you may already have tried these.
Maybe these problems hit only certain ranges of users on their servers. My iDisk seems to be fine via windreck at work. Haven't tried it at home yet. I used to have local copies of my iDisk but can no longer as I just don't have the space. Just tried it on my MB with Leo. You running Tiger? Apple is horrible about supporting prior OSes.
Again, as a tech, I would imagine you tried killing prefs...
You sure you didn't get the dreaded resizing disk message? That will hose things especially if it doesn't get to finish, presumably. My recreation steps should fix that.
Pecos,
I haven't used the local iDisk copy for several years. It's never been especially reliable. I've only been using it by WebDAV. I do regular backups of it using Apple's Backup program to two external hard drives, though. I could've recovered the data without any problems. I just wanted the thing to work via WebDAV again. :-)
I'd already nuked the caches prior to trying the archive and install. I'm using Leopard, latest version.
Until I did the archive and install, I was never offered the MobileMe 1.1 upgrade. Perhaps the receipts were in some kind of ugly state as you've suggested. Oddly, my Mac Mini (original PPC model) with Leopard on it worked just fine with MobileMe, which first led me to think it wasn't an account problem or a server issue.
Versiontracker mentions MMe 1.1 and states that you must have 10.5.4 (which you do). Oddly, it pops up about installing it when you go to the dotMac icon in SysPref. So, do you still have a dotMac icon?
Sorry to hear that local iDisk didn't work for you (maybe that's a clue to longstanding problems?). It's worked very well for me when I had space. VERY. I ran a convention for nearly 1100 off it and it was fantastic.
Most definitely, MMe was rushed. There's no version indication inside anywhere.
Apple's trying to come (a little) clean on the mess, with a status blog. Anyone who's done operations work can read between the lines and see what a clusterfuck the rollout was. Ah, marketing-driven release dates!
-j
Hey. With the setup thing, try logging out and logging in again. That worked for me.
As for Jobs being God, that's not true at all. Clapton is God, Jobs is "The Leader."
Thanks. Actually it turns out that cleaning everything related to MobileMe out of the Library directory fixed most of it, and over the subsequent months they've patched the iDisk functionality enough for it to be useable. Very gratifying, if only a few months late.
As for Steve being "The Leader": Isnt' is "Dear Leader?" ;-)
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