Apple extends complimentary iCloud storage for MobileMe users until September 30th 2013

Seth Weintraub

9to5Mac readers who migrated from MobileMe are reporting that their complimentary extra storage has been extended an extra year. Apple’s support doc is here.

From: iCloud <noreply@icloud.com>
Date: October 5, 2012, 3:38:18 PM PDT
To: 9to5mac
Subject:Your complimentary iCloud storage upgrade has been extended at no charge
Reply-To:no-reply@apple.com

When you moved your MobileMe account to iCloud, we provided you with a complimentary storage upgrade beyond the standard 5GB that comes with an iCloud account to help you with the transition. Originally, this storage upgrade was set to expire on September 30, 2012.

As a thank you to our former MobileMe members, we will continue to provide you with this complimentary storage upgrade at no charge, for an additional year, until September 30, 2013. No action is required on your part. For complete details, please read this article.

iCloud Team

All of the details from Apple’s Support Doc:

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Apple’s iCloud outage finally ends but some of those users left with malformed emails

Seth Weintraub

The iCloud outage, which began Tuesday and affected roughly 2 percent of Apple’s 200 Million iCloud users, now appears to be over. However, some iCloud users wrote to tell us that Apple just dumped all of their email into the Inbox with 12/31/69 dates and jumbled Subject lines. One reader’s email now looks like this:

.

An excerpt from his frustrated email is below. I hate to say this about a company that makes the best hardware and OS software in the world, but it would be hard to trust my junkmail to iCloud at this point.

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Small number of users report total iCloud email loss, Apple working on the problem (Update: Apple acknowledges)

E. Betters

A discussion thread on Apple’s support forum appeared last night from a user who claimed all of his iCloud content disappeared without warning. A further glimpse at the following comments revealed the same situation occurred for a number of iCloud users.

One commenter, npascual, said an Apple support representative “acknowledged last night’s outage,” and then suggested the user “turn off all iCloud-related services on my iPad (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, etc.), wait a bit then turn them back on.”  The representative apparently indicated “everything would return after a short period of re-synching.” However, npascual noted it had been a few hours since the call without any repair.

Check out the full thread here.

9to5Mac reached out to Apple on this matter, and we will update when more is known.

UPDATE: Well, Apple is owning up to the problem, according to its System Status page, but the company is neglecting to give an explanation as to what is happening.

More thread comments are below.

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Apple disables iCloud and MobileMe push email in Germany due to patent fight with Motorola

9to5 Staff

Apple informed customers in Germany that push email on both MobileMe and iCloud services were disabled due to the company’s patent fight with handset maker Motorola Mobility. According to a support document Apple quietly published today, “Due to recent patent litigation by Motorola Mobility, iCloud and MobileMe users are currently unable to have iCloud and MobileMe email pushed to their iOS devices while located within the borders of Germany.”

Push still works for Contacts, Calendars and other items and it is unaffected on OS X. Moreover, the affected users can still access the iCloud/MobileMe email service by manually checking for messages or using the Fetch setting. Apple also wrote the following line in the support document:

Apple believes Motorola’s patent is invalid and is appealing the decision.

As you will recall, Motorola filed an iCloud-related lawsuit on April Fools’ Day. It recently won an injunction and provided a €100 million bond to enforce it. Apple detailed how the patent suit affects the iCloud/MobileMe email service:

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Emails from RoadRunner and Comcast not playing nice with Apple’s servers

Jordan Kahn

The Apple discussion boards are starting to heat up with an issue related to users not receiving emails from particular domains sent to their me.com/ .mac accounts. The problem appears to specifically related to RoadRunner and Comcast domains, and is affecting users across the U.S.

The issue is related to me.com accounts being unable to receive emails from rr.com and comcast.com domains. One user reports being unable to receive emails from “hawaii.rr.com”, while others report the same for “tampabay.rr.com”, and “rochester.rr.com”. It appears Apple’s servers aren’t playing nice with the domain, although some users report receiving emails up to 24 hours late, which would indicate the domain isn’t being blocked entirely. Emails forwarded from one account, such as an rr.com account, to a .me account are apparently not affected.  There are a few mentions of the same issue for emails sent from Comcast.net as well.

Just today my boss’s emails stopped showing up in my inbox – online, in Mail, or on my phone.  I am able to send files to him.  He is sending and receiving emails.  The problem seems to be entirely between hawaii.rr.com (his email, time warner/roadrunner) and my .me/.mac mail account (neither work).  I am able to use my gmail account and my .me/.mac account just fine together.

At this point the problem seems to be inconsistent, but impacting a lot of users across the country nonetheless. Users in the Apple Support Communities report that Comcast claims it’s a “a .mac problem”, while one poster says rr.com has forwarded the issue to their engineering team. Most seem to believe it’s an issue on Apple’s end. We’ll keep you posted when Apple addresses the problem.
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