Opinion: Dear '.Mac member, we're sorry'


As a .Mac subscriber, I like a lot of others have been disappointed and occasionally quite angry with the level of service and support. However, the company is trying to make amends and is spamming customers with the following note:

Dear .Mac Member,

We hope you haven't been greatly inconvenienced by the two .Mac network outages we've experienced in the past two weeks (including this morning) and we sincerely apologize for any problems you've experienced. The outages were the result of equipment failures, and since the equipment vendor has not been able to persuade us that the problem will not occur again, we've already begun installing new equipment from a different vendor.

We're completely back up and running now, and no data or mail was lost. We expect the equipment change over to be complete within the next several weeks, and we'll be working hard to ensure that there are no further issues during that time. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience while we make this transition, and if you do experience any difficulties, please go to www.apple.com/support for up-to-the-minute information and status.

Needless to say, this letter is overdue and more than lacking in details -- i.e. "several weeks" until the service is stable.

More than just .Mac

Overall, the level of satisfaction with .Mac and Apple's iApps has to be low. iSync is betaware in every sense of the word. iCal's alarms don't work particularly well and not at all for some users. Moreover, a number of basic preference settings are missing from the app, like font and view settings.

Also, more than a few people are reporting that Backup only works spottily if at all. This app is not advertised as a beta, but its performance says overwise.

iPhoto's numerous and often quirky failings are well documented, and hopefully we'll be getting some relief on that front this month after Apple (according to rumor) releases a new or updated version.

Mail, though vastly improved, implementation of folders is horrible and has well-documented issues with sending attachments to Windoze users (i.e. 80-odd percent of the world), which are annoying and major problems, respectively.

As was the case with OS X itself until the release of Jaguar, Apple's .Mac and iApps smell, walk and talk like beta products. Therefore, it's overwhelmingly likely that's exactly what they are: betas.

The mothership is driving itself and by extension, us, incredibly hard to in order to achieve. The new, cludge-ridden G4s -- i.e. 2MB CPU caches, crippled FSB, roaring cooling fans, massive heat sinks, etc. -- are a telling example of this.

Nearly all of Apple's recent hardware and software products show evidence of this effort to over achieve. In many respects, especially as regards hardware, Apple can be said to be on the bleeding edge -- sometimes at the back of the wave, sometimes at the front.

We need relief from this performance anxiety and we need it soon.

What's your take?