Stan's List

MobileMe seems to be up and running, after what many think was a poor implementation, with the launch of both MobileMe and the iPhone. There were early reports of loss data on the iPhone and presumably their Mac.

This update will only appear in Software Update if you have a MobileMe account. The slightly less cryptic description:

The Mac OS X Update For MobileMe is recommended for users running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 and includes general system fixes that enhance your Mac for MobileMe.

Update: Mac OS X 10.5.4 does not enjoy the same automatic instant push service that the iPhone or MobileMe does. At present only iSync’s 15 minute intervals or manual push is available, as reported by AppleInsider.

The reader comments point out that subscribed calendars do not get pushed. Hardly enterprise ready.

Apple is sending out email notices to subscribers that .Mac will go off line at 6:00 P.M (WST) Wednesday. MobileMe will be alive with in 9 hours. Email will continue uninterrupted

John Gruber of Darling Fireball, found some interesting information while DNS fishing:

“me.com” is currently a placeholder page hosted by MarkMonitor, a company that specializes in brand-related DNS management. Apple uses MarkMonitor for most of its domains, including “apple.com”, and it’s where they’ve parked domains for future use previously. “mobileme.com” is parked at MarkMonitor, too, but “me.com” is a bit punchier, no?

Also, see the “additional tidbits”.

Macworld blog rummer has tuned up more substantial evidence that Apple is changing the name of .Mac to Apple’s online service. Is that evidence Apple intends to make.Mac cross platform? No word of any new features

Today’s MacInTouch DotMac reader report has a discussion about unwanted renewals, describing some very interesting credit card processes today and explains how activation codes enable renewals.

Roughly Drafted has a story about tracking down a thief using .Mac’s “Back to My Mac”. The thief did not reformat the MacBook and thus an admin account that connects to .Mac was still available. This made it easy to see the IP address and even take a picture of the thief sitting in front the MacBook. If you need a reason to subscribe to .Mac this is certainly it. Especially if you have an Apple laptop

If you are running a previous version of Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), you may receive the message ‘.Mac Sync Client is out of date.’ More …

Some .Mac improvements will cause reduced functionality for prior versions of Mac OS X. For example, Mac Sync will no longer support syncing calendars between a Mac OS X 10.3.x-based Mac and a Mac OS X 10.4.x-based Mac. More …

Due to scheduled maintenance of the .Mac Sync service beginning on October 19, 2007, members are unable to sync Safari Bookmarks or Mac OS X Address Book contacts to the www.mac.com website. We apologize for any inconvenience. Normal service will be restored ASAP. Read more for interim solutions.

Due to scheduled maintenance of the .Mac Sync service beginning on October 19, 2007, you may receive a dialogue asking “What would you like to do for this first sync?

You will receive this dialogue if your MAC has not been registered for syncing with .Mac or have not recently reset your data on .Mac, you can select Merge data on your computer and .Mac.

This KB article is a reminder that while important files (i.e.. Home directory) can be and should be backed up, Apple’s Backup is not intended to back up one’s hard drive. More …

Suppose you wanted to create a backup of part or all of your Mall.app email. You can simply drag email to your desktop, or you could create an “offline mailbox, to which you can copy email to right within Mail.app. This KB article tells you how to set this up. More …