News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs conceded in an e-mail to Apple employees that the company had made numerous mistakes during the launch of its MobileMe internet service, saying that the service “was simply not up to Apple's standards” and that it "clearly needed more time and testing." The memo also indicates that Jobs has now transferred responsibility for the service to a different Apple executive.
The memo, first reported by Ars Technica and also obtained by US Macworld, says that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who has led the iTunes team for the past several years. In fact, Cue will now head up all of Apple’s internet services including iTunes, the App Store and MobileMe. Reporting directly to Jobs, Cue’s new title is Vice President, Internet Services.
MobileMe's launch was fraught with problems, including large initial downtime, an extended e-mail outage including lost messages, the inability to contact the service to sync, corruption of data, time delays in syncing the computer to MobileMe, and more. In the aftermath, Apple set up a status page on the MobileMe web site.
The “launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour,” reads Jobs' e-mail.
Jobs also suggested that Apple could have staggered the release over a couple of months. Doing so would have allowed the company to locate problems with any specific app and fix them before the next app rolled out to customers.
“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Jobs wrote. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”
“The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about internet services. And learn we will,” the memo continues. "The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”
Apple may have had high hopes for its first generation Apple TV, but analyst sales estimates indicate the product is not as successful as once thought.
Jim Dalrymple | Dec 10, 2007
Apple sold 2.3 million Macs and 22.1 million iPods during the holiday shopping season, helping the company turn a $US1.58-billion profit during its fiscal first quarter. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. For the quarter ended December 31, Apple reported a profit of $US1.76 a share on revenue of $US9.6 billion.
Jim Dalrymple,Philips Michaels and Peter Cohen | Jan 23, 2008
This morning Apple announced a strong push to help companies incorporate the iPhone into their enterprise environment, putting RIM's popular BlackBerry handheld devices squarely in its sights. The changes will come in a forthcoming release of iPhone software. During an event held at the company's Cupertino headquarters, Apple senior vice president of product marketing Phil Schiller announced the company's plans. "We've been hard at work trying to understand what it takes to bring the iPhone out across the enterprise," he told guests. The list of features that Apple describes as important to enterprise end users includes "push-based" e-mail, calendar info and contact management; additional support for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) including Cisco IPsec; and two-factor authentication, certificates and identities.
Peter Cohen | Mar 7, 2008
Apple has acquired a fabless semiconductor company, PA Semi, according to a report at Forbes.com. PA Semi designs energy efficient processors based on the Power architecture that Apple used in its Macintosh computers for many years before adopting Intel's x86 chips.
Mikael Ricknas | Apr 23, 2008
