Apple Offers Additional 60-day Extension to MobileMe Subscribers

Apple’s cloud-based MobileMe service has had a hard time from its conception. First, it experienced downtime at launch, then the company offered a 30-day extension for users who experienced problems. If that wasn’t enough, Steve Jobs sent out an internal email essentially admitting that they had “a lot to learn” about their online services. Most recently, Apple experienced problems with email on Monday mirroring the Gmail outage that occurred (though the two were unrelated), which came and went with barely any admittance from the company.

Today, in an email to the service’s users, Apple announced that they would provide an additional 60-day extension for everyone who owns an account while they “continue to improve the service.” Although the extra time is a nice gesture, and 100% up time is not guaranteed by any web service provider, the extension may not satisfy users who experienced unrecoverable productivity, especially since they are paying for the subscription.

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped.  While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards. We are extending subscriptions 60-days free of charge to express appreciation for our members’ patience as we continue to improve the service.