.Mac to MobileMe cutover causes angst as servers go down

Stephen Withers
Friday, 11 July 2008 10:50

Opinion and Analysis

iDisk seems to have been available throughout the week, either from the Finder or via the web. Yet using the .Mac system preference to log in to .Mac (usually necessary for iDisk to appear in the Finder) yields the message "Unknown validation error. Your .Mac member name or password may be invalid. Please enter a different name or password."

This issue also makes it impossible to upload a Web Gallery from iPhoto, or a web page from iWeb.

A software update that replaces the .Mac system preference with a MobileMe equivalent has been provided to Apple's developer community, but has yet to show up in Software Update for normal users.

Apple charges $A119/$US99 for a MobileMe subscription, and apart from the level of integration with Mac OS X and various applications a similar bundle of services can be put together at much lower cost. For example, free email from Google or Yahoo!, low-cost web hosting from any number of providers, and free large-file transfer services such as YouSendIt.

Consequently, customers regard .Mac/MobileMe as a premium service, and expect corresponding service levels.

iTWire approached Apple Australia for a comment on the situation, but so far there has been no response. Since they were probably up most of the night with the iPhone launch, we won't hold that against them.