Jobs On MobileMe: Not Our Finest Hour

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on August 05

In an internal email distributed to Apple employees, CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged problems that users have experienced with Apple’s revamped Web-based service called MobileMe, previously called “.Mac” was “simply not up to Apple’s standards.” The email was first disclosed by Ars Technica.(The full text of the email is after the jump.)

Details of precisely what led to the problems have yet to emerge, but in a managerial shakeup, Jobs has placed Eddy Cue Apple’s VP in charge of iTunes, in charge of the product. His new title will be VP, Internet Sevices and he will report directly to Jobs.

Responsibility for MobileMe had previously rested with Rob Schoeben, Apple’s VP of applications marketing who reports to Apple’s Senior Vice President for Applications Sina Tamaddon. The other products in Schoeben’s portfolio include Aperture, a professional photography application, iLife, a suite of consumer photography and video-editing apps, iWork, Apple’s office suite, as well as the Final Cut family and Logic.

MobileMe was plagued from the beginning by numerous problems, ranging from lost email messages and email service outages that lasted several days for some 20,000 customers. Other problems reported included lost address book contacts, and problems syncing calendars. The foulup prompted Apple, which charges $99 annually for the service, to extend subscriptions for 30 days. David Pogue of The New York Times dubbed the whole thing “MobileMess.”

In the email Jobs admits that Apple still has a lot to learn when it comes to offering Internet services. Clearly something didn’t work. Om Malik writes today on GigaOm that Apple’s deployment appears to be suffering from choices made that caused performance problems. For instance, Web servers and application servers have been installed on the same machines. Apple’s going to have to brush up on the latest advances in network infrastructure, Malik argues, then he takes it a step further: “MobileMe isn’t that big a portion of their revenues right now, but what happens when the problems hit the iTunes store? Imagine the uproar when your 3G connections slow to a crawl because AT&T’s wireless backhaul can’t handle the traffic surge.”

MobileMe has turned into the one true black eye that Apple has suffered in recent memory. With the exception of supply issues caused by demand that is always hard to forecast accurately, MobileMe constituted one-third of what was arguable the most high-profile product launch in Apple’s history. The new iPhone launched successfully, as did the iTunes App Store. The combination of the iPhone and the App Store are nothing short of extraordinary, and have won enormous praise from many quarters. MobileMe’s shaky start is the first real miss that Apple has suffered in a very long time and has cast a real pall over Apple’s larger mobile efforts.

It’s pretty clear that the size of the launch was overwhelming, and Jobs suggests in the email that it might have made more sense to stagger the launches of various aspects of the MobileMe service over the course of a few months. Perhaps. But it might also have made sense to bring in some outside help. I suggested as much in a column that ran two years ago this month. Apple, I said then , should consider farming out the back end of its .Mac service offerings to Google, and that having Eric Schmidt on the board of directors presented an opportunity for just such a collaboration. Google could provide the pipes and the infrastructure, something it knows how to do very well, and Apple would design the look and feel to make sure it projected that sparkly Apple sheen.

For now Apple seems to have gotten the situation under control, but damage to MobileMe’s reputation is going to be hard to repair. New iPhone owners will likely be duly warned not to trust it. A serious revamp and relaunch of the service should be considered sooner, rather than later. Add that to the potential agenda for Jobs’ next major product launch opportunity: MacWorld Expo 2009, now only five months away.

Here’s the full text of Jobs’ email:

Team,

The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better:

– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.

– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.

– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love. One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe. Eddy's new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will. 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.

Steve

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/