Mobile My Lily-White Ass!

I do not like change. I scored poorly on it as an elementary school student and I continue to score poorly on it as a middle-aged student of life. I am especially not good with technological change. I keep my cell phones and my computers well past their properly upgradable time limits and I resist the addition of new operating systems not because I don't think the improvements would be useful but because I LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS FOR CRIPES SAKE SO WHY ARE YOU FRIGGING MOVING ALL THE FURNITURE AGAIN!

Today, as some of you may know, Apple has forced a change for all its .Mac customers to a system called MobileMe. The main advantage to MobileMe, from what I can tell, is that it provides "push" information on your iPhone. Push is good. If I had an iPhone I would want the info to be pushed into it. I heartily approve of this as an upgrade to the iPhone world. (I don't have an iPhone, change whatever you want!) However, it's not just iPhone users who have to change it's me too!

Has there ever in the history of tech "improvements" been a smooth roll out? I suspect not. When you're rolling out something over the entire globe there are bound to be a few...hiccups. No matter how small the roll out a customer or two will always be inconvenienced. I always seem to be in that subset. Some might say, "The universe is trying to teach you to accept change and learn from it and until you do you will always have trouble with it." Some might also say "Ouch!" because my foot is large and will fit snugly in their ass. MobileMe is no exception. The system has been hiccuping since this morning and I am CUT OFF FROM MY E-MAIL!

I am bitter. Also agitated, frustrated and nearing the boiling point. Don't FORCE me to change something and then have it not work FOR MANY HOURS. Also don't force me to change, not have it work, and not have a back up plan in place or a message that says, "Whoopsie, working on it." Like Flickr, Flickr always tells you that it has the hiccups when it has the hiccups and that they're trying to fix it or drinking a glass of water upside down or something. They acknowledge the problem, and they tell you they're sorry and they promise to fix it. It's like a trifecta of good customer service! When blogger hiccuped once in a while half you people moved to Wordpress. Where do I move because Mac is fucked up?

I got part way logged on when I first came across the forced change this morning. My info just loaded and loaded and loaded and loaded but it never actually, you know, loaded. So I poked around the happy, shiny, pretty MobileMe info. That made me nervous because it looked like I wasn't going to be able to sync info from my boss's computers and get my own e-mail via web on the same computer. So, starting to vibrate slightly with anger, I called up the iChat function in the support section of the Apple web site. I had a long discussion with a lovely young woman (or so she said) and she alleviated my fears and let me know that the loading problem was an unanticipated issue with the roll out and people were working on it but didn't have an estimated time of fix up so I should just keep trying. Sounds easy enough, I log off and fill in the post-chat survey with mostly glowing praise. Then I go back to try to log in again. The log in option is GONE. (I know I'm yelling a lot. Sorry if it's bugging you but if it's any consolation I'm yelling a lot less than I feel like yelling.) When I go to where I found it before I am sent to the happy, shiny, pretty MobileMe info page. From that page I can be told how awesome MobileMe is in several different ways but I cannot go to a log in page. WHO THINKS THIS SHIT UP?! DO YOU THINK THAT IF THE INFORMATION IS NOT THERE I WILL JUST WAIT QUIETLY ASSUMING ALL IS WELL? NO! I WILL WAIT AND GET MORE PISSED! Which is what I did. I finally poked around the internet for a long time (not like I should be working or anything) and found a way to try to log in again and did get logged in to MobileMe for a brief time at the iDisk section. I could even see in the handy upper left hand summary that I had 11 new messages. I just can't get to them. When I logged off and logged on again the logging in option was gone. Again.

Recently I had all my Juno e-mail forwarded to the Mac account, too, so it's not like I can log in there either, it's just all gone. Well, not gone, it's there, Mac knows it's there, I know it's there, now you know it's there but none of us can fucking well read it. I am livid, the kind of livid where only throwing something is going to make you really feel better but you can't throw something because that will only make the problem worse. Just under my skin my whole body is trembling with the frustration and anger at not only the hiccups but at how badly they are being handled. I shouldn't be this pissed at being cut off from e-mail but there are a couple of things happening today that are being negotiated by e-mail and I'd really like to be part of the discussion. I also don't want the other participants to think I don't give a shit. I do! I just won't know what I give a shit about until Mac either fixes this clusterfuck or I get home and download to my central machine. I know a lot of people who use Macs are then out to convert the world. I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those people because, frankly, they're just a service & product company just like everybody else and they're assholes just like everybody else. Maybe a little less often than other top brands but not much less often. I feel the same way about Obama, but that is certainly a subject for another post.

All of this would be solved if I had an iPhone. My iPhone would, I assume, still be receiving all my mail and I could answer it there. After all the iPhone is the reason for this "improvement" to the system. I was actually thinking of indulging my love of the little leash, I mean device, and getting one when my current contract is up next month. However, with the sale of the new 3G iPhone, AT&T (the exclusive service partner of Apple in the iPhone venture) has raised its rates and lowered its services. So now customers can pay $300 for a phone and then pay extra for the privilege of turning it on. I wanted a cool, new phone not a serving of crystal meth. Those sorts of tactics were made popular by drug dealers and I'm not playing. I want to play but more than that, especially after this MobileMe fiasco, I want someone at Apple to fucking stand up for the people who are consuming their products and say "NO!" Or perhaps, "I'm sorry. Let me make it all better. This is (recently single) Justin and he will be your server today."

Ain't gonna happen.

You know what else ain't gonna happen? I'm not going to reply to any personal e-mail until late tonight so if you wrote to my supersecret Batsignal Mac address you have my apologies.

But not Apple's. They don't apologize to anyone, for anything.