Apple updates Leopard, speeds up MobileMe sync

Apple Inc. boosted the sync performance of its MobileMe online service today, months after it rolled out the service to so much criticism that it felt obligated to extend users' subscription.

As part of the Mac OS X 10.5.6 upgrade released today, Apple included fixes to MobileMe, the company's online synchronization, storage and Web application service. "Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com," Apple said in the update description it posted online Monday morning.

MobileMe -- the successor to Apple's earlier.Mac service -- was plagued by problems and knocked by users from the start. Almost immediately, users griped that information they entered on their Mac and PC calendars and address books wasn't pushed instantly to the MobileMe servers, even though Apple had marketed the $99-per-year service as synchronizing "automatically, instantly and continuously."

In July, Apple confirmed that upstream synchronization from Macs to MobileMe was done only once every 15 minutes in Leopard and only once per hour in Tiger, aka Mac OS X 10.4. Several days later, Apple apologized for the trouble-prone launch and added 30 days of service to all MobileMe users' accounts.

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