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I just received this email from Apple:

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

Thank you,

The MobileMe Team

Foremost, I appreciate the fact that they took the time to write an apology, specifically naming MobileMe’s downtime and their use of “push” to describe Mac to MobileMe syncing. And the 30-day extension is a nice touch, as it makes concrete their stated desire for people to experience and enjoy the service.

I’m also encouraged by their assertion that they’re “going to stop using the word ‘push’ until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too” (emphasis mine). While this may mean that they never use the word again, I hope (and think it’s more likely) that we’ll see it return with the arrival of Snow Leopard, whose Exchange support will presumably require a framework for quickly pushing updates.

So, while it’s a bummer that they, indeed, had a rocky start, I feel like things have been set right by this email.

Thanks, MobileMe Team.

I was really excited about MobileMe, because, in its promotional material, Apple claimed that a change made on your Mac, iPhone, or PC would be pushed “within a matter of seconds” to any other computers hooked up to the MobileMe cloud (see about 40 seconds into the MobileMe guided tour).

For another source, here’s an excerpt from an Apple’s MobileMe features page:

MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone and syncing manually — to stay up to date.

The reason that I was so excited about this is because there’s a lot of safety in having your changes quickly pushed to your other devices. For example, if I find out that one of my friends has changed their phone number right before I leave work, it would be great to just update their entry in Address Book, close my MacBook Pro, and feel secure in the knowledge that the change has been pushed to my iPhone, in case I need to call them on the way home.

In this situation, the best part is that I didn’t have to wait some amount of time for OS X to sync with MobileMe, or force a sync by myself. The update is pushed seamlessly, and I don’t even have to think about it. That is one of the main pillars on which Apple promotes MobileMe.

Once it went live, however, I (and many others) found that changes made on our computers were not being pushed “immediately” to our other devices; it was taking several minutes for the updates to show up. But because the MobileMe launch was less than smooth, I chalked up the delay to temporary deployment problems.

Unfortunately, it’s now clear that Apple doesn’t intend for MobileMe to work the way they promise. MobileMe Push: About automatic syncing, a document on Apple’s support site, “resolves” the problem in which “changes made on your computer may not immediately sync to MobileMe” as follows:

Changes made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe “cloud” once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11).

Is it just me, or is there a cognitive disconnect here? Apple sells MobileMe as a solution in which “push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously,” but, of those three things, apparently “instantly” and “continuously” really mean “once every 15 minutes.”

I’ve purchased MobileMe for myself and for others based on Apple’s claims, only to find out that those assertions are blatantly false. That doesn’t just disappoint me; it makes me angry. Apple’s not just spinning the truth.

They’re lying about it.

Update (2008-07-14): The MobileMe Features page’s description of push now says,

MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and keeps them in sync across your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change in one place, MobileMe pushes the new information up to the cloud, then pushes the change down to your other devices. Choose a sync interval for your Mac or PC. On your iPhone and the web, sync happens continuously.

I’m glad that they changed the text to be accurate. I still wish that they had implemented MobileMe push as they originally described it, however, because that would have been very cool.

Update (2008-07-16): Apple has apologized and extended MobileMe subscriptions by 30 days.