Come on, we paid USD 49.95 so that Apple could pull .Mac offline for whatever reason at this time of the day?<br><br>

It's my guess they would have a darn good reason to be offline. Sh!t happens at anytime. Be patient. <br><br><br><br>

Sh!t may happen at any time, but for 100 bucks it better not happen on Monday mornings. For a service that's trying to get membership, this is unacceptable. And to think, I tried to log on in order to actually sign up for it this morning. I guess it's time to rethink my decision once again.<br><br>

Send them a message when it comes back up that they should arrange a more convenient time to be offline. <br><br><br><br>

I remember when I used my mac.com email, that iTools was down at least twice this year for at least 24 hours consecutively. Anyone can check the complaints on the apple.com forums archives.<br><br>http://raszl.net

I use Webmail to retrieve my messages. It's back up now and wow is it ever fast. My one complaint was that it was so slow to load. They sure have done something since early this morning to speed up the load time.<br><br><br><br>

Wow... you are right... it's much faster for me too! And, checking mail in Mail.app is faster as well. I wonder what they did.<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

I do agree that .Mac being down (by my count it has been down 3 times since September 1st) is BAD! It's one thing to be running slow for an hour or two, but to be completely down is just crazy. Apple needs to address the problems they are having with .Mac or they will start to lose what few people have signed up so far. They can't afford any bad "word of mouth" at a time when people are still whining about the $$$.<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

Apple installed a turbo-gyration-inhibitor-stack on the server.<br><br>Alec

This issue proves that one shouldn't rely on only one company completely. Although it's nice to have Apple do everything for you and make everything work together, but it has drawbacks as well. If something goes wrong you loose your whole system. For e-mail and web address, register your own domain!<br><br>http://raszl.net

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Apple installed a turbo-gyration-inhibitor-stack on the server.<p><hr></blockquote><p>So it was the dancing girls slowing things down? <br><br><br><br>

Looks like they posted an explanation after all. Whether that makes you feel better about the down time or not, I don't know, but nothing makes me more mad than being in the dark.<br><br>

From Apple:<br><br><br><br>Dear .Mac Member,<br><br>We hope you haven't been greatly inconvenienced by the two .Mac network outages we've experienced in the past two weeks (including this morning) and we sincerely apologize for any problems you've experienced. The outages were the result of equipment failures, and since the equipment vendor has not been able to persuade us that the problem will not occur again, we've already begun installing new equipment from a different vendor.<br><br>We're completely back up and running now, and no data or mail was lost. We expect the equipment change over to be complete within the next several weeks, and we'll be working hard to ensure that there are no further issues during that time. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience while we make this transition, and if you do experience any difficulties, please go to www.apple.com/support for up-to-the-minute information and status. <br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

I didn't get an email like that.<br><br>What's this about replacing hardware? Don't they use XServe? Hmmm..you would think that they would...<br><br>

I just got my email from Apple (at least, I just read it) and my first reaction was the same as yours, OSXaddict--why don't they use Xserve? I'm sure there must be a good reason, but I don't know what it might be.<br><br>Great wits are sure to madness near allied.--John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel"

They probably are using Xserves, but there's a lot of stuff between the Xserves and our computers too, routers and such. Considering that they haven't lost any data, the servers themselves are probably fine.<br><br>I just got the e-mail tonight, after reading about it on their support page this afternoon. I imagine that the rest of us will get it in a short time.<br><br>Well, regardless, this is obviously something they have to improve upon. I get the feeling from this and other little SNAFUs that they're still coming to grips with the whole thing.<br><br>

exactly... I'm guessing switches, routers, PowerBackups... whatever else. It would have been nice to get some notice from them if they knew they would be doing this.<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

You want notice when their equipment fails unexpectedly forcing them to upgrade? Okaaayyy... ;)<br><br>Something broke, they fixed it. No big deal. .Mac is more reliable than most ISPs, but you don't see their outages in the headlines.<br><br>Besides, don't forget that the free iTools users are still there for another week. Once they're gone, you'll see things get a whole lot better.<br><br>

Well, lets see... first of all, .Mac is NOT an ISP. Second, .Mac is NOT more reliable than ANY ISP I have ever seen, nor is it more reliable than any web host I have ever seen. My web server hasn't gone down in over 5 years. Third, I find it hard to believe that they have every account on one server, behind one firewall and on one switch/router with only one connection to the internet. Most web hosts have redundant backups spread out across the country so that if one does go down, the URL gets forwarded to the backup servers immediately without the end-user even noticing.<br><br>I suspect they were switching the equipment around and they had to take the system offline and it just took longer than they thought.<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

I'm not sure if he was saying it was an ISP or if he was just comparing it to ISP's.<br><br>

That's right. I was comparing it to an ISP's email service. Not connectivity itself. It's a perfectly valid comparison. I'm glad MacGizmo has an ISP with 100% uptime for its services, I've never seen or heard of one.<br><br>Second, so what if the accounts are among several servers? The requests still have to go through a single point of entry before being distributed amongst the various .Mac servers. Perhaps something failed there. It could have been multiple failures, such as a corrupt routing table being distributed to all of the routers. We don't know the specifics so it's hard to determine what it was.<br><br>In summary, there was a problem, it was fixed, and they apologized and took steps to ensure it won't happen again. That's really all you can ask for.<br><br>

Sorry... but I gotta ask for more. Virtually every web host on the planet offers 99.9% Uptime. I have websites with over 20 different hosting companies (not my websites, they are clients sites) and none of them has ever been unreachable... EVER! The reason is redundant backups. We're talking about large websites driven by databases, e-commerce, ftp sections with large amounts of activity.<br><br>I agree that Apple did the right thing in sending out the e-mail and apologizing, but it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. They offer maybe 10% of what other hosting services do, plus they put a strict traffic cap on each member's site. There is no reason for downtime. (unless of course, they are using Windows to serve the pages )<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

I agree with MG. My web server was not down even once in 2 years. Not even for a second.<br><br>http://raszl.net

Frankly, I'm surprised Apple offered an explanation for the downtime. Most companies would have just said that they were "resolving technical issues."<br><br>

That's what makes me think what they said is BS!<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>

So what do you think was the real problem then?<br><br>

Don't mind MacGizmo--he sees spies in the shrubs all the time <br><br>Great wits are sure to madness near allied.--John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel"

Yeah... they pulled up in a black Chevy Tahoe, they're wearing all black suits... but I can still see them! I just wish they would stop whispering in my ear and putting stuff in the water!<br><br><br>[color:red]What? I don't understand. What?</font color=red>