All Things Digital

After being plugged in for somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes I heard a sizzling sound. I looked down on the iPod just in time to see it explode open and start shooting sparks and spewing smoke. I managed to unhook the iPod from my computer’s USB port immediately. I noticed that a small fire had started on the table I had the laptop and the iPod sitting on, and I managed to extinguish those flames quickly before any apparent damage could be done to my laptop. Unlike in other cases, I’ve read about, my iPod continued to spew smoke and spit sparks while throwing out some kind of sooty substance from the inside of the iPod for several minutes after removing the cable from the computer.”

– A Consumerist reader recounts his experiences with Apple’s iPod Flamo

What an ugly week for Apple. Voice and data reception issues plaguing iPhone 3G, MobileMe still not up to company standards and now reports of sparking iPod Nanos. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is investigating a possible battery defect in Apple’s older iPod Nano music players after receiving reports of minor fires caused by overheating devices. “There have been multiple cases of overheating and fire damage, in particular during recharging, so please use caution,” METI said in a statement on its Web site.

METI is working with Apple Japan to diagnose the problem, which is said to affect only Nanos sold in Japan between Sept. 2005 and Sept. 2006, although there have been reports of similar incidents in the states.

Another tough break for Apple (AAPL), which just can’t seem to shake this negative news cycle.

UPDATE: Apple just issued the following statement:

Apple today responded to statements reported by Japan’s METI regarding batteries in the first-generation iPod nanos. Apple has determined that in very rare cases, batteries in first-generation iPod nanos sold between Sept. 2005 and Dec. 2006 can overheat, causing failure and deformation of the iPod nano. Apple has received very few reports of such incidents (less than 0.001 percent of first-generation iPod nano units), which have been traced back to a single battery supplier. There have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, and no reports of incidents for any other iPod nano model.

Any first-generation iPod nano customers who have experienced their battery overheating should contact AppleCare for a replacement. Any other customers who have concerns about their first-generation iPod nano battery should also contact AppleCare.

My God, the irony–it BURNS. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) on Tuesday gave Apple its highest-ever score (PDF), awarding the company a record 85 points in its 2008 survey of consumer sentiment. This, as customer satisfaction with Apple’s iPhone 3G and MobileMe service presumably plummets thanks to some much-publicized outages and failures.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before, where a company scores 10 points over its nearest rival,” said ACSI head Claes Fornell. “It’s almost an aligning of the stars. There was a question mark last year about Apple, that maybe it had taken its eye off the ball by concentrating on the iPhone, but now, the iPhone and iPod and Mac are nicely aligned.”

Of course, ACSI scores don’t yet reflect the the pair of black eyes Apple’s (AAPL) suffered in the past few months courtesy of the iPhone 3G and MobileMe. And they will undoubtedly weigh heavily on the company’s next ranking. Said Fornell, “Apple will be very difficult to catch, but I don’t think that these results, where there’s a 10-point difference, will hold.”

If, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently said, the launch of MobileMe was not Apple’s finest hour, then what can be said of the more than 800 hours that followed? Because they haven’t exactly been Apple’s finest hours either.

So, how about “here’s another free extension to your MobileMe subscription–now let’s forget this ever happened”?

In yet another attempt to make amends with dismayed MobileMe subscribers, Apple (AAPL) is granting them a free 60-day service extension. And that’s on top of the free 30-day extension it offered in July.

In an e-mail to MobileMe subscribers announcing the extension, a humbled Apple acknowledged that the Web services suite still doesn’t live up to Apple standards. “We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make,” the email reads. “… We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around.”

“Not up to Apple’s standards.” Typically those words, when they’re uttered within Apple (AAPL), refer to Microsoft (MSFT) or another of the company’s rivals. But not today. Today, they refer to Apple’s MobileMe service. In an all-hands memo clearly designed to be leaked to the media, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted what anyone who has followed MobileMe’s travesty of a launch already knows: It was a “mistake” to roll out MobileMe at the same time as the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence,” Jobs wrote. “The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”

With that in mind, Jobs has tasked Eddy Cue, formerly Apple’s vice president of iTunes, with bringing MobileMe up to Apple’s standards. Cue will now oversee not just iTunes and MobileMe, but Apple’s newly opened App Store, as well.

Speaking at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this past June, CEO Steve Jobs said of MobileMe, the suite of online services that would soon replace the company’s troubled .Mac, “I think we finally got it right.”

Mmm. Not exactly. After nearly two weeks of technical problems, it’s become clear that Apple (AAPL) has not gotten MobileMe right–not yet anyway. With tough, negative reviews piling up and outages continuing to plague the service, MobileMe is quickly turning into a rare and very public black eye for Apple, one that’s apparent in the apologies posted to the MobileMe status update page, and now the inevtiable MobileMe parody site: FailMe.

A caustic take on Apple’s sub-par cloud computing service, FailMe (failmeismorelikeit.com) sums up MobileMe’s performance to date in a single annoyed Web page: “The Simple Way to Keep Everything in Fail.”

Spread the word about FailMe.
You can tell the world how much you appreciate FailMe’s consistent underperformance and passed deadlines with a custom FailMe icon for iChat. Just drag the icon above and drop it onto iChat. So easy, even we can get it to work.”

Ouch.

After five days without comment, Apple today acknowledged that the rollout of its MobileMe suite of Internet services was, in the company’s own words, “a lot rockier than we had hoped.” In a message to MobileMe subscribers, Apple (AAPL) apologized for the service’s troubled debut and its lack of “true push” capabilities and offered them a 30-day subscription extension to allay any hard feelings.

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

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.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.”

Thank you,

The MobileMe Team

Microsoft (MSFT) kicked off its annual Tech·Ed conference in Orlando, Fla., this morning–not that anyone’s noticed. And who could blame them, really. The Steve Jobs Show is always a tough act to follow, tougher still when it features a special appearance by Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3G, OS X Snow Leopard and .mac replacement MobileMe.

So as engaging a speaker as he might be, Microsoft’s Bob Muglia had his work cut out for him today delivering a Tech·Ed keynote on the evolution of the corporate data center. “The IT industry is evolving at a rate like never before–driven by changing user needs, globalization, shifting economic pressures, increasingly faster processing speeds and more,” Muglia said. “We truly believe this change represents an opportunity for IT professionals to move the needle at their companies by employing new solutions and technologies to boost the agility and speed of their IT systems, ultimately making these systems more dynamic. We call this Dynamic IT.”

Sadly, Dynamic IT doesn’t necessarily imply dynamic keynote address. Although, to be fair, Redmond’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate and Identity Lifecycle Manager 2, beta 3, just don’t lend themselves to those “wow” moments the way the iPhone does.