Just nine more free months, and MobileMe is a bargain

As we reported last night, Apple has given Mobile Me users another credit, this time for 60 days. This brings the total credited days to 90, or three months.

First, kudos again to Apple for doing the right thing. They know the experience has been less than perfect, and they've been surprisingly pro-active in addressing the situation. Let's hope this signals a new direction for the company in dealing with issues.

It also makes you wonder just how important the revenue stream from MobileMe is to Apple. Apple probably makes more on the iTunes store in a day/week than a year of MobileMe subscriptions. So you've already made it 90 days, why not make it a free service, and be done with it? True, many more people will sign up and further tax the system if it's free, but it becomes (like the original iTools) a unique selling point to the Mac/iPod/iPhone.

It's a drop in the bucket revenue-wise, that could push hardware sales even higher.

Breaking: MobileMe offers 60-days free

Check your email .mac/MobileMe users. Just minutes ago, (and ironically in the junk folder) we just received an email from Apple indicating MobileMe users will receive 60-days free.

From the email:
We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around

Kudos to Apple for doing the right thing, and recognizing the inconvenience to its customers.

MobileMe Still NOT Fixed

Apple's new MobileMe service (sorry for the image, just seems more fitting than the pretty logo Apple has supplied) has had it's issues; so much so that Apple big dog Steve Jobs has openly admitted the service launched too early and could have been postponed until a later date. MobileMe leadership has changed recently into the hands of Eddie Cue, the Vice President of iTunes.

If you take a look at the MobileMe System Status History you will see that the last REPORTED outage was on 8/11, and was restored on 8/11. Interestingly enough I experienced an issue on 8/12 and it wasn't resolved until today, 8/15 when I received an email that was sent on 8/12.

I'm pretty sure that I could have received the same message through the US Postal Service earlier. For all you MobileMe users, you might want to pick up a book of stamps...

What a big boy/girl you are, iMac!

Aww! Someone had a tenth birthday today! Happy Birthday, iMac! Look at you! You lost all that G3 baby fat! You went through your skinny/awkward G4 phase (although a lot of people thought you were adorable then.) Then you got in shape as the G5 iMac.

What precious child! I'm just a little worried about this new, dark look you've taken on with Intel inside. I hope you're not growing up to fast. Some people have reported you've been acting up, and you've been a little hot-headed as of late.

Well at any rate, Happy Birthday, and we can't wait to see what the next few years hold. I worry about your teen years, but you've made it this far, outliving many of your siblings (R.I.P., G4 Cube) so here's to a bright future!

TDL Live This week: (8/11-8/18)

We know it's tough to make a live broadcast on a Monday night at say, 9PM ET/ 6PM PT. Hey, we've all got Olympic fever! Here's what you missed on this week's TDL Live: