I am a long-time MM user. I have had an account from back in the .mac days. Ran into an unbelievable design problem this morning.
I tried to log-in to www.me.com this morning and the system said my user name or password was invalid. They were not. Long story short, chatted with MM support and they indicated that new password requirements were put into effect this morning – including that passwords must be at least 8 characters long – and that people with passwords less than 8 characters would not be able top log in until they changed their password to meet the requirement! [I assume what the rep said is true] But there was no way I could tell that was the case! A general standard is you let someone log-in and then require them to enter a new password before proceeding. Or Apple could have put something on the log-in screen, sent out an email to Mobile Me users. I imagine they will get hammered with support calls about this, as well they should.
Apple desperately needs to get its act together with Mobile Me.
While this is ridiculous it is not surprising. Steve claims MobileMe will get a whole lot better next year. Didn’t he make that claim last year during a conference call? Like the Verizon iPhone I will believe it when I see it.
I think the Verizon iPhone is a done deal. It is absolutely in Apple’s best interest to do this. As for Mobile Me and it getting better, I don’t know what he was supposed to say – maybe nothing – but I do think there will be major additions to MM in 2011. But the real problem is that for Apple under Steve Jobs I don’t think they define “get a whole” better as not doing this to their customers. And they should.