Team Rubber BlogTeam Rubber talks on the Internet in a blog

Apple are usually pretty tight-lipped when things go wrong, so this email (copied below) I received from them is interesting for two reaons:

1. It’s refreshing to see Apple admit failings – historically Apple have a habit of asking Mac users to believe the Mac experience is seamlessly and endlessly shiny even when it’s not.An example of Apple getting it wrong is their toxic policy of deleting messages from their own support forums when they indicate problems with Apple products (I don’t mean to imply that Apple should allow posts of absolutely any type however negative, rather there are better ways to moderate these things in a community than blanket deletion).
2. The message is almost a perfect model of how to admit something went wrong and say sorry. It’s easy to be afraid of both.

– Update –
Apple have followed up the mail with a ‘Status’ blog, another obvious move which shouldn’t scare businesses but often does.

Amazon have a similar status service for their Web Services; arguably Amazon do it better (although their audience appreciate and require this level of detail more than some Apple customers might).

– Apple’s email –

“An important message from the MobileMe team. 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.”