Cupertino (CA) – Following a rather bumpy launch of MobileMe in July of this year, Apple tried to stabilize the cloud service and improve its reliability. But the company did not address any of the major bugs, although Steve Jobs promised that Apple will turn MobileMe into the service that lives up to company standards by the end of the year. As part of that promise, Apple yesterday patched MobileMe, which results in performance enhancements, minor tweaks and fixes for the most annoying bugs. Although the updated MobileMe is still not the service we would expect, it is a step in the right direction.
Yesterday evening, Apple quietly updated MobileMe. "Apple is always working to improve MobileMe," the company said in a statement. "Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or "cloud"-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it's easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just 'work better'."
All MobileMe services now have an enhanced web interface and improved member name suggestions when attempting to sign up with a name that is already taken. The MobileMe webmail interface is much faster in Internet Explorer 7, especially when logging into the webmail interface for the first time and when Junk Mail filtering is enabled. The mail interface now allows users to add contacts and displays a "loading" graphic when messages are being retrieved. The company also fixed a problem that prevented messages from being removed from the Drafts folder after sending, a bug that did not enable the Reply All option in some messages and patched several bugs that caused keyboard shortcuts to work incorrectly.
The Account section of the MobileMe web interface now accurately displays the used storage capacity in a group iDisk and improves granularity of the account data transfer details, in addition to an improved storage allocation menu for family pack sub-accounts. The company also fixed a bug that prevented users from fully logging out when choosing the Logout option from Account section.
The Contacts web interface now runs faster in Internet Explorer 7. Apple also improved the reliability of this application and brought back the option to export contacts as vCards.
The Calendar section is promised to be more stable during the first launch and provides more speed when views are switched in Firefox 3. Other tweaks include improved international time zone handling, better calendar performance with recurring events and a large number of To Do items. The company also squashed annoying bug that prevented event editors from fully displaying in some browsers.
If you have been using the web gallery templates in MobileMe, you may have noticed that accessing the web gallery from the iPhone or iPod touch was relatively slow. Apple addressed this issue and MobileMe web galleries now show up faster and enable a smoother navigation when viewed on the handset. The company also fixed a bug that prevented some web gallery buttons to fully display in Firefox 3. Finally, the company claims that editing a photo's information in www.me.com/gallery will now correctly update the photo on gallery.me.com/membername.
Yesterday evening, Apple quietly updated MobileMe. "Apple is always working to improve MobileMe," the company said in a statement. "Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or "cloud"-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it's easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just 'work better'."
All MobileMe services now have an enhanced web interface and improved member name suggestions when attempting to sign up with a name that is already taken. The MobileMe webmail interface is much faster in Internet Explorer 7, especially when logging into the webmail interface for the first time and when Junk Mail filtering is enabled. The mail interface now allows users to add contacts and displays a "loading" graphic when messages are being retrieved. The company also fixed a problem that prevented messages from being removed from the Drafts folder after sending, a bug that did not enable the Reply All option in some messages and patched several bugs that caused keyboard shortcuts to work incorrectly.
The Account section of the MobileMe web interface now accurately displays the used storage capacity in a group iDisk and improves granularity of the account data transfer details, in addition to an improved storage allocation menu for family pack sub-accounts. The company also fixed a bug that prevented users from fully logging out when choosing the Logout option from Account section.
The Contacts web interface now runs faster in Internet Explorer 7. Apple also improved the reliability of this application and brought back the option to export contacts as vCards.
The Calendar section is promised to be more stable during the first launch and provides more speed when views are switched in Firefox 3. Other tweaks include improved international time zone handling, better calendar performance with recurring events and a large number of To Do items. The company also squashed annoying bug that prevented event editors from fully displaying in some browsers.
If you have been using the web gallery templates in MobileMe, you may have noticed that accessing the web gallery from the iPhone or iPod touch was relatively slow. Apple addressed this issue and MobileMe web galleries now show up faster and enable a smoother navigation when viewed on the handset. The company also fixed a bug that prevented some web gallery buttons to fully display in Firefox 3. Finally, the company claims that editing a photo's information in www.me.com/gallery will now correctly update the photo on gallery.me.com/membername.