Dot Mac's Down

It's around midnight on Thursday night here on the East Coast. Sometime on Wednesday night, more than 24 hours ago, Apple's dot mac service went down for "temporary maintenance" so they could set up the new Mobile Me service in advance of the introduction of the new 3G iPhone. (And doesn't "Mobile Me" sound like some 70s era program for "special" children? But I digress.)

You'd have thought Apple would have updated the page you see above with some sort of "having more trouble than we thought, please be patient" type message. Rather than the vague "normal service will be restored soon."

For people who rely on dot mac, today has been extremely frustrating and what's foolish is that Apple could have solved the problem and made their customers feel better with about 30 minutes worth of work.

I'm not even talking about going on Twitter and responding to people who were complaining. Just update the "we're down" page guys.

Please.

NB: I've been able to send and receive email sporadically all day via my Apple mail account, but the online version has been showing the screen you see above.

UPDATE: 9:00 AM EDT and Mobile Me is up and running. Loading slow but looking very cool. Could well have been worth waiting for, he says, his eyes glazing over with the familiar stare of the Mac devotee.

UPDATE 2: 9:05 AM EDT and Mobile Me is down. At least we get a new, MoblileMe error window:


UPDATE 3: 10:15 AM EDT - Still down, but at least the message screen acknowledges that there are issues. Apple listened?