MobileMe is live – more or less.
UPDATE: Apologies. I jumped the gun here. The article should have been headlined “MobileMe shows random signs of life”. It sputtered into life from time to time last night, but only long enough for me to grab some of the screenshots below.
MobileMe is live. Check it out for yourself at me.com 
UPDATED UPDATE: Nope, gone again. This is too much for my nerves!
UPDATE: All good again! Go for it.
Well, it was live for a moment, long enough for me to grab the screenshot from my MobileMe Account page above. Now it’s gone, and the URL redirects to Apple’s MobileMe Promo page again.
In order to use it you will need to fire up Software Update first and download the MobileMe update that’s waiting there.
The update changes the icon in System Preferences to the new MobileMe one. And probably does more important things too. For example, it requires you to quit Mail.app before continuing, so it’s making some changes there as well.
More details if and when it revives itself again.
Hopefully, it was launched a little early, and is not quite ready. It didn’t look like the MobileMe Calendar knew about my CalDAV calendars.
UPDATE: Still doesn’t know about my CalDAV calendars.
And there’s bad news in the MobileMe Address Book Preferences for people who don’t live in the USA, France, Germany or Japan:
In answer to Harry’s question in the comments, it looks like the personal domain option in the Account Preferences only relates to web hosting, not to email:
But I can’t test that.
Tags: Address Book, Apple, Apple Mail, dotmac, frustrating!, iCal, mac, mail.app, mobilemeRelated posts
July 10th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I should “quite Mail.app”?
I’ve installed the update, but now I can no longer log in to .Mac, er, I mean MobileMe. I think they did indeed jump the gun on this release.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Sorry about that.
I was a little excited (despite myself) and not giving spelling the usual rigorous attention.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I think you might have a timezone-related advantage. I’m in Italy and I have nothing in Software Update and still no website.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
But you have the Colosseum. And great coffee. And Tuscany.
I think I would still be up for a trade.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Haha. Tuscany is overrated ;-)
July 10th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
What’s that “Personal domain” option in the sidebar?!
Please, please tell me I can finally use my own domain name for .mac/me.com email!
July 10th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I don’t think that anyone has the timezone advantage at the moment.
The whole thing has crapped out again. I can’t even authenticate my account in System Preferences now :-(
July 10th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Same here. I downloaded the update via a link I found on TUAW, it installed nicely but I can’t authenticate. I guess we are just too eager to see it work, but we’ll have to be patient.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Every now and then it sputters into life. Managed to grab a screenshot of the Address Book Preferences this time before it went down again.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Were you able to authenticate in System Preferences?
July 10th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Nope. But the web interface remembered me from the first time I logged in.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:38 am
@Harry–looks to me like the personal domain option only relates to web hosting.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Sorry for the totally unrelated comment, but I didn’t find a general “contact” link…
Wondering if there’s a way to customize the toolbar icons of Mail in Leopard like you could in 10.4 with MailStamps… I seriously can’t take those nasty gelcap icons…
I googled for like 5 mn but couldn’t uncover anything… But the original guy who made it doesn’t seem to even have a site anymore…
I’m thinking, if someone knows the answer, it’s gotta be you! ;)
Thanks!
July 14th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
@Harry: I’ve tested the personal domain option, but this is only for iWeb. You have to add an alias for your “www.*yourdomain*” which points to the me.com servers.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:46 am
(sigh) Unfortunately MobileMe *still* does not allow any personal domain capabilities whatsoever on the e-mail side. While I can understand their reluctance to try and implement a fully MX-redirect-based hosting service, simply offering the ability to reply from alternate verified addresses a la GMail would have been a HUGE step in the right direction.
About the only slight improvement at this point is that you can now set up a “MobileMe” type of account in Mail.app and specify your own FROM address, but of course you’ll have to use an alternate SMTP server for it, since the smtp.me.com servers won’t accept anything that doesn’t end in me.com or mac.com. Frankly, I’m not sure it matters, since I don’t really know what the advantage is of using a MobileMe account type in Mail.app versus a normal IMAP account, but there it is.
On the iPhone, however, you pretty much have to set up using MobileMe as the account type if you want any OTA features for Calendar/Contacts/Bookmarks, not to mention things like web gallery submission from the Photos app. The iPhone definitely does NOT allow a non-me/mac address to be specified as the FROM either, so you’ll have to set up a secondary account if you want to do that.
Mind you, if you’re willing to live without e-mail push, you can set up the MobileMe account for the other types of content, and just turn off the MAIL portion, and then use a separate IMAP account for your e-mail. You’ll get 15-minute polling like before, but at least you’ll be able to very easily use your own FROM address without having to resort to tap-tap gymnastics every time you want to send an e-mail.