Apple needs to fix MobileMe, iPhone

 Apple’s MobileMe service has thrown up yet another mess – this time creating an easily accessible database of names for spammers to abuse….because there’s an easy way for such miscreants to get hold of service member’s email addresses.

Well, that’s the latest claim to emerge from TechCrunch, which reports that MobileMe user’s public iDisk file sharing pages can easily be used to determine a member’s email address…"There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one."

"Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial," the report explains.

Pity the MobileMe team though, as they try to get the service right they have ignored this problem, claiming to have had no complaints. Though we suspect quite a few customers of the service have received a little spam with their online iLife. And when Apple’s done fixing that, perhaps the company could airlift in its crack engineering strike forces to fix the widespread iPhone bug that’s causing AppStore applications to fail to launch and causing iPhone user’s iTunes libraries to report themselves to be empty, even when they’re full.

We aren’t entirely sure the relatively small 36 per cent of satisfied iPhone users constitute the kind of market message Apple needs as competitors prepare to compete and the device goes on sale in additional countries.

Oh, and rabid fanboys…before you fire up that vitriol, remember that every news item about Apple can’t be glowingly positive. MobileMe so far has been a bust for many users. iPhone 3G has had some glitches. You are still going to be OK and people still love you. Breath deep.