Apple takes extraordinary step ... blogging about its MobileMe woes

MobileMe continues to have significant problems even two weeks after its launch. Apple's solution? Keep users informed of outages and updates via their first ever, "blog"...

The "blog" is located at:

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/status/

Up until now, MobileMe users would have to check updates to support documents like this one which gives the omnious details:

While the vast majority of your email messages will be fully restored, a small percentage of email messages in the affected accounts have regrettably been lost. This includes approximately 10% of messages received between 5:00 a.m. PDT on July 16 and 10:20 a.m. PDT on July 18. We sincerely apologize for any email messages you may have lost.

Ugh, lost emails. Two days. Ouch...maybe the blog will soften the blow..

While not very exciting, it shows that the company is acknowledging the use of the blogging medium to disseminate Apple information. It looks like this idea came straight from the top. The first paragraph of the first post reads:

MobileMe Status

Friday, July 25, 2008

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.

My ISP (MediaTemple - which has been absolutely horrible lately) has been doing this for years. Any time one of our sites go down -- which is about once a week -- I head directly for the blog. In Media Temple's case, it is usually some PR speak for "an upgrade went bad" or "we have no idea what is going on" or "sorry your site has been down for a few hours during the middle of a business day". It isn't particularly helpful in immediately solving the problem, but at least I know that they know their systems have fallen over and I can get a general idea on when it will be solved.

In this case, Apple knows MobileMe has fallen over and Steve Jobs is personally making sure that people know that he is taking on the problem. According to the blog, all will be well in another two weeks.

Does it help? A little. I don't use MobileMe (I am a Google Man, myself). It does mean something that Apple has taken the extraordinary step to blogging to help people deal with this situation.

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