Teething troubles bite Apple's MobileMe

Californian kit maker Apple has been forced to address teething issues with it MobileMe service by establishing a status blog to keep disgruntled users updated.

The MobileMe service launched alongside the iPhone 3G earlier this month and immediately encountered problems.

Heralded as “Exchange for the rest of us,” MobileMe is an internet-based service that enables iPhone 3G users to access their email, contacts, calendars and photo albums via their iPod, Mac or PC as well. A foray into the world of ‘cloud computing’, MobileMe will eventually replace its precursor, the .Mac service.

But capacity issues dogged the service at launch, preventing many users from accessing their information, then disaster struck as a number of users were locked out of their accounts and a significant amount of email was lost.

“In the 14 days since we launched, it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering,” the company said.

Presently, Apple is still working to restore full email access to the remaining 1 per cent of MobileMe users that do not have it, but also admitted that approximately 10 per cent of mail received between July 16 and July 18 “may have been lost”.

While most users will probably be on a 60-day free trial, which started in July, the stinger is that Apple will charge users to the tune of $99 a year for access to MobileMe, including 20GB of online storage.