Hi Carlo You have a deeper understanding than me of the underlying technologies involved, and thanks again for taking the time to explain extensively, it's appreciated. It's interesting, though pushes the limits of my technical capacity.
Without wanting to be argumentative, I still think that regardless of technical considerations and limitations, a move like this by Apple has failed to do the right thing by that subset of customers who use MobileMe by virtue of its failure to inform, basic Change Management 101 stuff. The ramifications are quite tangible. Fortunately in my case I generated only one calendar invitation, to four invitees, before I figiured what was happening, but even then the flow on effects have wasted at least an hour of my time, as well as creating confusion and wasted the time of others. Multiply that a few million times, that's a potentially far reaching impact. Whether or not the transition is justified overall, the implementation has been botched by limiting the ability for layman consumers to make an informed decision, or plan for any impact it may have. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple finds itself on the receiving end of a legal action or two for failure to warn against a foreseeable consequence. Maybe the effect was buried in the fine print somewhere, but even if it was, this should have been a warning in BIG CAPS. Anyway, hoping for that future iteration soon! Surely there'll be plenty of call for it. Personally I've gotta put calendar invitations on hold, and no doubt it means I've gotta stop accepting invitations as well since the acknowledgment will no doubt issue from me.com. Lots of manual input :-( Cheers, Steven On 25/03/2011, at 10:15 PM, cm wrote: > Hi Steven, > > I harbour no hard feelings at all for holding a rational debate. I know that > it is annoying when an application or service does not meet our needs, > particularly when it is a paid service and in your position I may feel the > way you do. I do, however, want to put forward the case for a third motive > (other than sneaky or stupid) for the design choices made in Mobile Me. It is > the technical reason that the new Mobile Me service operates the way it does. > > Mobile Me is Apple's attempt to provide, for personal use, a low cost > functional equivalent to Microsoft's Exchange Server. The features in > particular that they wish to replicate are the sharing of calendars and of > appointments -- no mean feat. Microsoft's solution is to charge a small > business a large sum of money for a dedicated Exchange Server and computer > (one small 100 person company that I worked for, paid $25,000 for their > Exchange Server hardware and license). Running an Exchange Server is quite an > experience and seems to use a good portion of the system admin's time. > > Mobile Me cannot match the experience provided by a personal dedicated > Exchange Server but aims to deliver a subset of the features that Apple > thinks users will find most useful. > > In the previous version of Mobile Me the calendar was local to your computer. > Any invites were sent from your local computer and accepted back to your > local computer. This made it easy to send the email from your local account. > > The new version of Mobile Me (previously in beta) allows one to share > calendars with friends or to publish a calendar to a group. It also allows > one to send invitations that require RSVPs. If you put an event on a shared > calendar the event becomes visible to all those who are subscribing to your > shared calendar. The shared event will also display the list of invitees and > those who have accepted. > > The architecture Apple chose to solve this problem is to host all the shared > calendars on a (presumable huge) Mobile Me server. Thus invites are sent from > the shared server via the only SMTP service that the shared server is > guaranteed to have access to -- namely Apple's own Mobile Me SMTP server. > > With extra work, Apple could associate an originating email address with each > calendar, but this would have to be one email address per subscriber of each > shared calendar, since if I subscribe to a calendar I want my invitation to > come from me, whereas if you subscribe to a calendar you want the invitation > to come from you. Note that this not even a feature of Exchange Server. > > So all the above is the third rationale that I mentioned. Namely that Apple > has rolled out a fairly amazing service, but it will take a future iteration > to add a feature that allows invitations to appear to come from a non Mobile > Me registered email address. > > Cheers, > Carlo > > On 2011-03-25, at 19:10, Steven Knowles wrote: > >> Thanks Carlo. I appreciate you taking the time to take a look at the >> problem, it's a good suggestion. It won't work for me due to the sync issue, >> but may work for others. >> >> Yes, my response may be negative, but no apology there. Apple's move is >> negative. I don't consider it negative on the basis of my personal >> objectives not being aligned with Apple's wider objectives. My ego falls >> short of me thinking I'm the most important Mac user and therefore all users >> should think and use their Apple equipment like me. However Apple has: >> >> Encouraged paying MobileMe users to "upgrade" to the new Calendar without >> giving prior warning of this important issue. What about business users who, >> for privacy reasons, don't want his or her personal email address divulged >> to all? By the time it's discovered, it's too late. I can think of plenty of >> scenarios in which this could prove embarrassing for those who prefer to, or >> even need to, have clear demarcation between personal and business >> communications. Unintended disclosure of a personal email address can lead >> to the uncovering of all kinds of additional details of an individual. >> >> Removed choice in terms of how a user's calendar works, again with no >> advanced notice. >> >> >> knee-jerk - adjective. "automatic and unthinking" (Apple dictionary). >> >> My reaction is neither automatic nor unthinking. I've been an advocate for >> Apple since 1994, and I remain so, but after thinking about it, albeit it >> didn't take me long to decide, I stand by my view that the move is either >> sneaky or stupid, mainly because of the wider ramifications it will have for >> quite a few, and the nature of those ramifications, ie. potential breach of >> privacy. I don't need to align my view with those who don't think the move >> is neither sneaky nor stupid. We're not living in a police state. >> >> As terrific as most members of this group, including me, think Apple and its >> products generally are, Apple shouldn't be protected from the critical voice >> of its users, minority or otherwise, when an arguably dud decision is made. >> Any organisation which takes that view has a short life expectancy. Sure, >> some users will think the "me.com only" is a fine decision, others won't, >> and others won't give a hoot either way. But I'd be prepared to bet a large >> sum of money that I'm not a tiny minority of iCal /MobileMe users who don't >> want calendar invitations to come from an email address which invitees have >> never heard of. Especially when the user, a paying user mind you, finds out >> only after the event. >> >> No hard feelings Carlo, just healthy debate and me getting my back up >> momentarily about what may be .... well .... a knee-jerk comment from your >> side. >> >> Cheers, Steven -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au>
