Apple shame spiral continues with MobileMe data loss
Over the last few months Apple has had some interesting snafus. It all started with Leopard’s initial release. Nearly every user agrees that the initial release was more like a beta (or an alpha, depending on who you ask), and was released fraught with bugs.
It took Apple months to fix even the smallest of this long list of bugs. It ended up offering an update months after the fact that fixed over 200 bugs. That was unacceptable for a new product launch by an established company, but Apple was unapologetic.
Add on the mundane things like poor service at many of the Genius Bars when dealing with repairs, plus major issues with battery fires and laptop heat, and you have a veritable soup of customer distress building up over months. Frost it all with iPhone 3G activation issues and AT&T problems and you have a very restless customer base.
You’d think a company dealing with so many issues back to back is going to be on their A-Game with the next major release, right? Wrong! Apple has encountered even more issues with unhappy customers since releasing (and I use the term “releasing” loosely, here) MobileMe.
The week ended in a major Mea Culpa from Apple, as Steve jobs seemingly assigned a staff member to the task of keeping the Apple blog updated about the status of MobileMe every other day, minimum. Why the extensive attention to MobileMe? From the status blog for MobileMe:
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.
MobileMe doesn’t work yet. Period. With a whiff of Leopard style release issues, MobileMe has been down intermittently since it came out in the first part of July. The bigger problem is data loss.
Apple admitted this week that the data loss they’d been ignoring and avoiding discussion about did actually occur. Customers have lost emails, and that is a huge, huge, mistake. Apple is having “server problems” with one of the MobileMe servers, resulting in loss of email data. Possibly loss of important email data.
Worse, they admit to having no recovery plan in place for that data. The company claims to be implementing security and backup plans to prevent the problem in future, but it seems a bit too little too late right now. While MobileMe customers keep getting more and more money knocked off their annual bill to compensate, this final email problem may prove a customer service issue even the cult of Apple can’t surmount.
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July 29th, 2008
It was PLAIN from day 1 that MobilMe was “alpha”, or “beta” at best. Anyone that trusted in such a service that clearly wasn’t ready for prime time I have no sympathy for them crying now over “lost” emails…
March 7th, 2009
I just lost all my phone contacts. I picked up my Iphone in the morning and there was no contacts in the phone or on Mobile me…
I think the biggest problem is having to deal with all the different company’s that “work” together to provide the service. let alone the company’s contract thier “help line” to India.
Dont get me wrong, i love it when its working, my Iphone is only for personal,so not that affected, but if i used an Iphone for work it would be a whole different story!
I still have all the data in Entourage at home so i’ll just fix it myself, can i invoice apple or optus or mobileme for the time it takes??:)
but in reality its not good enough for the money i pay each month.