On MobileMe and Life in Apple’s Cloud
A former co-worker once said to me that he hated Apple for its insistence on putting form ahead of function. After nearly two years of being a Mac and iPhone user I’m pretty certain I agree with his assessment. Most of my frustration with Apple has to do with its MobileMe service. In theory, it’s a great idea. MobileMe has email, contacts, calendar, picture galleries and a cloud storage all for $99 a year. If you own a Mac and an iPhone it’s a great (in theory) way to keep yourself organized.
Unfortunately, the web app is simply horrible for email. Really horrible. After a few conversations with Apple’s live chat, it’s obvious they just don’t care. Below are some excerpts from a recent conversation. I had explained to the support rep that it’s painfully slow to get into my inbox and that when I click reply, I often have to wait for a great deal of time for a new message window.
First suggestion (and the obvious one):
Javier C.: Go to the Edit menu and choose Empty Cache. Click Empty in the “Are you sure you want to empty the cache” dialog.Close any open Safari windows.
Javier C.: So let’s try to clear your cache. I listed some steps to clear your cache up above
Javier C.: You must make sure you close all windows that you have open in safari
That did nothing. And interesting that he presumed I was on Safari, even though I told him I was on Windows. I use Chrome.
Javier C.: What email application are you currently using for example outlook, thunder bird?
OK, I’m asking about a web app problem. Unclear…
Javier C.: It is showing that you have over 13,000 emails in one folder, and another 13,000 in a sent folder
Yup, I send a lot of email. Why should this be a problem I wondered…
Javier C.: What were probably going to have to do is archive the folders or delete some messages. Since there are so many messages in your folders your computer may act slow due to having so many messages in your folders. Over 5000 will cause your computer to act slow and you have 13,000 in one folder and another 13,000 in another
Uh, really? How does having thousands of emails on Apple’s server make my computer slow? When they’re in archive folders that I rarely click into? And again, on Apple’s servers…
Javier C.: What were looking for is something called outlook or outlook express, I really think this could help our situation.
ok…
Javier C.: If we setup Outlook then messages will download once instead of over and over when you open the browser.
Javier C.: It would help with the loading process in me.com we are just removing the messages off of the server.
I complained that I shouldn’t have to remove my email from the cloud. That’s why I use MobileMe after all…
Javier C.: The email will remain on the cloud
But he just told me to download it all to remove it from the server… So lost. I mentioned to him I thought it was crazy to suggest that too many messages on the server were causing problems with MobileMe’s web app. I mentioned that I have a Gmail account with 300k+ emails in the inbox. No delays with Gmail…
Javier C.: I completely understand where your coming from. Basically since there are over 20K emails in the webmail though, it is going to have a hard time processing that much data, as were are not an email only service such as gmail. Since we have over 6 services integrated with our online application, this is why the performance may be degraded. Currently at this time, the best option, would be to setup your MobileMe email in your email application such as Outlook, then once all of the emails are copied and downloaded there, create an archive of them on the computer that way they are no longer on the MobileMe server, and slowing down your optimal performance.
Wow, so he’s telling me that because MobileMe has other services, it’s OK for the web app for mail to suck.
So that’s Apple support. Impressive, no?