Apple fanbois were shocked to the core today at the news that not only does Steve Jobs swear but that the sainted one actually declared that a Mac product was a pile of steaming crap.

Jobs' alleged tendency to rant and rage at his cowering VPs was revealed in a piece by Fortune magazine.

The piece itself is subscription only, but according to macstories.net, Jobs was reduced to foul-mouthed fury by the vendor's MobileMe service when it launched in 2008.

After reports of crashing servers, laggardly logons, and general crappiness, Jobs tongue-lashed the MobileMe team, asking them "Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" When one foolhardy exec explained the aim of the service, Jobs shot back: "So why the [LIFTED] doesn't it do that."

Yes, if Steve Jobs was an app, he'd ban himself from the App store.

Saint Steve told team members that they had tarnished the firm's reputation and "should hate each other for having let each other down".

He then summarily fired a few employees, pour encourager les autres.

MobileMe has become a true red-headed stepchild at Apple. When the firm launches its full-fat cloud offering later this year, it will operate under the iCloud banner.

Not that Jobs is a complete tyrant. He will apparently, accept excuses and reasons for screwups from low-level employees. But if you're a VP, you no longer have that luxury.

Thankfully, Fortune has taken it upon itself to cheer Jobs up. The article is only available to the mag's subscribers, or by buying the iPad version of maagazine through the iTunes store, for a Steve satisfying $4.99.

So far, there's no suggestion that Steve Jobs tear up furniture, or sweats profusely, meaning that Steve Ballmer is still ahead by a nose in the crazed CEO stakes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/09/jobs_swear/

Jobs is a meglomaniac nutball (cough) allegedly but you have to say it works - you only have to compare the state of Apple now vs the state of Apple when he rejoined it. Then look at where MS were when Ballmer took over....

Jon

I thought he was dead or something. Clearly he’s getting better.

It sounds like he’s running Apple like a Roman army. A good bit of decimation always helped motivate the troops.

But he’s right - MobileMe is pretty poor in places. The worst for me is the iDisk, which is slow and painful. To get decent file transfer speeds out of it, you need to use Transmit - a third party application. That’s one reason why I’m using DropBox so much more. It’s just so much faster in comparison.

If MobileMe was free, I'd still want my money back.

I think Gruber tells a story that illustrates this well. He's giving a presentation of how to do web services or some such and he says

'OK, who here uses iDisk?'

A few hands go up (this is in a room full of Apple fans..)

'Right. and who uses DropBox?'

Virtually every hand goes up......


It was.


Jon

I have to admit that I use drop box. It is very handy for syncing. MobileMe could be better. Price is one place to start. Though maybe they could treat as types. So if you use it simply to sync then it could be free, add in there services and pay for what you need.

I use Mobile me to sync calendar appointments & contacts & etc to my iPhone 'over the air' but iDisk? Bugger off.


Jon

iDisk does need a radical overhaul.

Someone please tell me what MobileMe does and why should I pay/not pay for it.

DropBox is my defacto iOS filing system. I can shift stuff to and from iPad/iPhone to Macs without plugging it in. I’ve got the official DropBox app as well as another called GoodReader. Even my RiscPC can communicate with DropBox via a Mac. It does the job that the iDisc should do.

cloaked_wolf - MobileMe is a service from Apple which comprises mail, calendar, cloud storage and a few other services. When it works, it’s not too bad, but it’sd weaknesses are greater than its strengths.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/

If you have multiple macs it is very handy for syncing them all together, particularly address books and bookmarks etc. If you only have one mac you can probably get away without it. Dropbox is free and lots of programs use it to sync data with mobile devices and desktops or laptops. It is also very handy for sending large files to someone. You can either dump it in your drop box public section and allow them to access it or drop it in their public dropbox.