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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1071
Opinion: Dear '.Mac member, we're sorry'
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
October 7th 2002
Apple (finally) circulates a letter apologizing for and explaining recent service
outages
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?
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