MobileMe's Mea Culpa: A 60-Day Subscription Extension
On its MobileMe site, Apple acknowledged problems from the transition from .Mac to MobileMe, and admitted that it 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."
MobileMe members are eligible for the extension if their account was active as of August 19, and users in the free trial period on August 19 will also receive the 60-day extension. Members who have already been granted a recent extension are also entitled to the 60-day add-on.
For members whose accounts are set to expire in the next few days, they will get the two-month extension.
"A 60-day extension will be applied and your account will not expire until you have reached your new expiration date," Apple said. "If you recently received an e-mail stating your account will expire soon (or you saw similar messaging while using MobileMe), please ignore it."
MobileMe users who purchase upgrades such as additional storage or a Family Pack upgrade will also get the extension. Any upgrades purchased before an extension period begins will be extended to a new contract date. However, users will not be able to purchase upgrades during an extension period.
Members in a trial period who have an activation key will lose the remainder of their trial period--including any extensions--as soon as they apply their activation key. Apple said that if users already have a paid subscription, they can enter their key at any time and Apple will automatically apply the key to renew their subscription after the extension period expires.
In an e-mail to employees earlier this month obtained by Ars Technica, Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs admitted that "the launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards, and it clearly needed more time and testing. There are several things we could have done better." "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store," said Jobs. "We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence."