Apple anonymized “blogger” David G. is back with the 3rd in Steve Jobs’ promised regular MobileMe status updates, and this time it’s all good news… at least from their perspective.
We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members. Thank you all for your extreme patience during this trying time. If you have been affected by this issue and are still having problems we have established a dedicated chat line to reach a MobileMe Mail specialist for help.
For some users this caused their contact and calendar data to disappear from their devices, but not from their computers or the MobileMe cloud. When we fixed the bug in the late afternoon, the problem resolved itself for most users: their data simply reappeared on their iPhone or iPod Touch. If you are one of those affected users and your data has not automatically reappeared, follow the steps at this link to restore your data.
David G. hopes that with this, Apple’s MobileMe woes will largely become a thing of the past, and they can concentrate their resources on improving the service overall (and restoring the faith of their user-base, right Apple?).
Another update is promised for later in the week.
So, how about it? Anyone still suffering MobileMe mail meltdown? Stuck in sucktastic sync-loops? Has Apple been able to help? Please let us know.
Tired of waiting for a cut, copy, and paste on the iPhone? MagicPad — a Note App replacement that also features Rich Text editing (buh-bye Marker Felt!) — sure was. Witness the above proof-of-concept video. Ladies and gentlemen, the holy grail of iPhone feature.
Curious as to how they implemented their solution, and what challenges they faced? So were we, so we asked them. Read on for their answer!
Are you a frequent international traveler? Are you always confused by international electrical outlets? Have you realized that there are a gazillion different electrical outlets requiring a gazillion different plugs? Well, the Mobi Products World Wall Adapter for S&C Cables for iPhone 3G, iPhone ($34.95) tries to simplify the tangled messy world of cables by giving you almost every solution in a simple adaptor. How does it perform?
Pop quiz: Moms gets home, busts out her shiny new iPhone 3G, sets it up, makes ready to snazzify it another notch with some custom art, and — Boom! — she finds three snapshots lurking in the Camera App. Two are blurry. One’s golden: A spy shot dead in the heart of the iPhone factory.
What do you do?
Post them on the intertubes, of course! (And thanks for that!)
Folks who’ve transitioned over from Windows Mobile (or BlackBerry) to the iPhone (or folks who, like me, are dual-wielding) take heed: one of our favorite IM apps from those other platforms has finally made its way into the App Store. It’s Palringo (iTunes Link) and it’s free. Palringo is an instant messenger app that’s able to talk to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, etc. It will also let you send media files (like photos). There is one downside — you do need to set up a Palringo account to get it all going, but for now at least, if you want multi-client IM, Palringo’s your best option.
That’s good stuff, but the better stuff is coming: Palringo’s custom ‘Vocal IM,’ which is somewhere between sending audio files and VOIP chat. We’re also hoping that Palringo will be able to add background notifications when the iPhone supports it.
“Another day, another MobileMe problem” is rapidly becoming a — very tired — cliche. This time around its with contacts and calendars. Or more accurately — without them. Yesterday TUAW covered how some users’ data would disappear from their iPhone after syncing from MobileMe (to be clear, it would disappear from the iPhone but remain in MobileMe).
Some MobileMe members may be unable to sync new, edited, or deleted contacts, calendars, and bookmarks over the air between computers and mobile devices (iPhone and iPod Touch). Service will be restored ASAP. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Apple identified and resolved an issue with MobileMe Sync on iPhone and iPod touch. Although no action is required for most members, some may need to reset their data from MobileMe to sync normally again.
Is it safe yet to call MobileMe the “rockiest” launch in Apple’s history? Read on to find out why it just might be…
(cjvitek is back with a review of Units ($.99 at the iTunes Store), a straightforward unit conversion app. It’s currently sitting pretty at #4 on the bestseller list, but does it belong? Read on to find out!)
On my old Treo, I had a great conversion program which I used frequently. When I switched to the iPhone 3G, I was hoping to find a similar program. The best I have found so far is “Units”.
Units is a conversion program that allows you to convert currencies, length, area, temperature, energy units, volume, time, speed, and weight. It has a simple, straightforward interface. First you select the mode you want to convert (say, currency), then the “from” units, then the “to” units. You select these options be repeatedly tapping on the “mode”, “from”, and “to” buttons until you get the selection you want. Then, using the calculator style interface, you type in the number you want converted. While I haven’t used the currency converter yet, the currency values are updated daily (automatically) or you can update them yourself manually.
iPhone users sure love them some Facebook. In just two weeks following the launch of Apple’s App Store, Facebook’s Director of Mobile, Jed Stremel announced that the Facebook App for iPhone has been downloaded over 1,000,000 times. Whether those are unique downloads, and whether all downloaders are now using it consistently aren’t known, but Facebook remains in the top-ten list for free apps and doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon.
In fact, last week at Facebook’s f8 conference they announced Facebook Connect, a new framework that would grant other iPhone apps (and their developers) the ability to log onto and use your Facebook account data. Depending on your views about convenience vs. security/privacy, this means you will either enjoy a single and consistent presence across a wider range of apps (one account to rule them all), or be even more paranoid about your personal information getting out of your control (one point of failure to leak it all).
Personally, I have a Facebook account but only visit it when I get an alert or need some info. I have the iPhone app, but like the WebApp before it, find MobileSafari a good enough browser I’ll most often to just go straight to “just the internet” version. And while I’m all for “open social”-esque removal of walled gardens, I think it’s promoting a cavalier attitude towards privacy, and try to remind myself that you can never un-release information.
What about you? Do you use Facebook? Do you use the Facebook iPhone app? What do you think about the idea of Connect?
Thus far making good on their promise of consistent updates, Apple has once again posted as to the status of their beleaguered MobileMe service. David G. — who may be the poster formerly known as “me” ? — chimed back in last night:
As you know, restoring full email access to the remaining 1% of MobileMe users is our first priority. We turned on web access to their current email yesterday and the feedback has been cautiously positive. Since then, we’ve restored full email history (minus the approximately 10% of mail received between July 18 and July 22 which may have been lost) and the ability to access email from a Mac, PC and iPhone, to over 40% of these users, and expect the remainder to be restored in the next few days.
G. goes on to clarify how some email is now time-stamped by server transfer rather than send time, and explains how to view long headers to extract actual send time info, and promises another update soon.
Kudos to Apple for stepping up the transparency. Given their corporate culture is so immersed in secrecy, its likely a painful, but hopefully transformative lesson for them to learn. Sympathies, however, for the some 60% of the 1%ers still waiting for their 90%…
Pre-iPhone 2.0 (remember those days), we managed to snag an early leak of the iPhone 2.0 firmware and install it on our original iPhone. We found it to be buggy, but chalked that up to the distinct possibility that the firmware wasn’t technically designed for the iPhone 2G. Now that we all have official 2.0 ROMs, is the picture any better? TUAW and Engadget Mobile and Ars aren’t so sure — and to be frank neither are we. Take a perusal through our iPhone 3G forums and you’ll find all sorts of examples of bugs and hassles. Heck, it even has our Twitter followers (find us on Twitter, here) checking out the competition!
I myself have noticed significant instability in the few minutes immediately following either installing or deleting an App from the on-board App Store. I’m also still pretty darn unhappy with the various lags and slowdowns in certain apps — the most egregious of which is Contact/Phone. I timed myself trying to make a call to somebody not on my favorites list yesterday. Out of 900 contacts, it took me around 25 seconds to get the call placed. Anything more than, say, 5 is pretty much unacceptable to me.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
