MobileMe users seethe over four-day e-mail outage

Apple's MobileMe online service continued to tick off customers Monday as users blasted the service for outages that have kept them from accessing e-mail for several days.

"I could not receive any e-mail (sending seemed to work OK though) on my MobileMe Mail account between Friday morning CDT and midday on Monday," reported one of the calmer users, identified only as "M&C," on an Apple support forum today. "I still can't believe Apple [hasn't] posted explanatory information about this on the MobileMe site."

The support site does include a notice from Apple. "1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for any inconvenience," the notice under the "System Status" section reads. The message has been unchanged since Saturday, according to user accounts.

That notice has been taken to heart by customers unable to access their .Mac or MobileMe service: Some subscribers have taken to calling themselves "1%ers."

"I'm a 1%er (which is bull)," said "joemac1960" on another support thread. "I think a lot of folks who are in the same boat as I am (no e-mail for 3-1/2 days) don't come to this forum anymore because they know that until the server is fixed its just 'standby to standby'."
Other users were irate, or worse. "This is ******* ridiculous!! 5 days without mail, and I'm even on the shorter side of the delay from others," said a user tagged as "smellslikecinnamon" on another forum. "Is anyone out there ******* awake!! Can't you at least reach those of us with alternate e-mail addresses outside of Apple, just so we know what the **** is going on?!?!?!"

Apple has had problems migrating subscribers from its original online service, .Mac, to the new MobileMe while cranking up the latter to accommodate existing users and new customers who signed up to take advantage of the iPhone's new "push" syncing capabilities.
The day before the July 11 iPhone 3G launch, .Mac customers complained about a longer-than-expected outage as Apple shifted to MobileMe. The process was to take just a few hours, but stretched through most of a day.

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