Can you imagine a new BlackBerry coming out that only works with a simultaneously released new version of BES that doesn’t work and RIM not being able to get it fixed 3 weeks after it launched? I can’t imagine that either, but, apparently, a ton of iPhone users can.
MobileMe, the $100 a year service from Apple supposed to bring corporate, dare I say, BES-like synchronization of email, calendars, and contacts, to Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones, and iPod Shuffles has been having problems from the start. I don’t want to say that it flat out doesn’t work, but, it has enough bugs, outages, and flaws in it for me to say that it flat out doesn’t work a lot of the time.
Now, you might think that since I am a BlackBerry blogger and all that I might be a bit biased against the iPhone. Well don’t take it from me. Take it from someone who is widely regarded as one of the most influential technology writers out there, Walt Mossberg.
Yeah. Hopefully it’ll get smoothed out eventually. I’ve had .mac for a year, and I gotta say while it’s been extremely useful for certain things, it’s also given me my fair share of headaches. They really shouldn’t push (no pun intended) this stuff on people if it doesn’t work properly. If I had purchased MobileMe thinking it to be a BIS or BES substitute I would be less than thrilled with Apple right now.
If RIM were having these types of issues they would be getting raked over the coals right now. It is amazing how forgiving some Apple fanatics are…
To be fair to Apple, they are taking a little bit of heat over this. Additionally, I tend come down hard on RIM whenever they have an outage and there are more then just a few folks here who don’t think that it is a big deal.
Granted, BlackBerry outages don’t usually last for 3 weeks…
Right, because RIM has *never* had an outage.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my Curve (BB user since 2002) and our corporate BES is rock solid, but RIM’s infrastructure is not. I’ve been a .Mac user since 2000 and the MobileMe upgrade is the only issue I’ve had with the service.
Unsubscribed. This should have been posted under Trolling instead of Opinion.
Apple should should have learned from M$ that putting “Me” on the end of a product name will spell disaster.
I love the picture!
@bluehorseshoe
I am just waiting on the sies and desist letter from Apple 🙂
The reason why RIM has an advantage in this area is the same reason why Apple has an advantage in multimedia, usability, etc…it’s simply experience.
RIM has been doing this for years, and has it perfected. Apple is just now getting into this type of service. It’s unrealistic to think Apple can just snap their fingers and produce a BES type service that will work as well as RIM’s, just like it’s unrealistic to think RIM can quickly catch Apple in doing what Apple does well.
One has to choose which strengths one favors and buy accordingly.
For the record I headed up a BES migration that was the biggest disaster I have ever been part of. RIM was completely clueless and after 4 months of testing we were still finding bugs and they acted like we were silly for asking them to fix them. I have never before worked with a software that with every new release your required to add more servers, and the devices you bought 2 months ago won’t work unless you jump through 5 flaming hoops while praying to the technology God in ancient hebrew. RIM is a joke.