MobileMe (aka former .Mac) subscribers received an overdue email from the MobileMe team today, apologizing for the rocky roll-out of the new service and extending a free month of service to all subscribers.
The email contained the following interesting paragraph:
Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.
What a welcome breath of fresh air: unambiguous retraction of unjustified marketing hype!
As a product manager, it strikes me that the team managing the rollout did an excellent job of damage control: fix the operational problems, apologize to the customers, change the marketing message where it’s out of line with the new reality, extend credit and move on. And they’ve done a good job. I even have to retract my characterization of MobileMe as the Lindsey Lohan of webmail services (last paragraph).