MobileMe was Apple's first cloud disaster — and Steve Jobs' most humiliating launch

On July 9, 2008, Apple launched MobileMe as a paid subscription service ($99/year) offering push email, calendar and contact syncing, iDisk cloud storage, and Find My iPhone. It was meant to replace the aging .Mac service and compete with Microsoft's Exchange. The launch was timed to coincide with the iPhone 3G and the App Store — the most important product launch in Apple's history.

MobileMe was a disaster from day one. The service was plagued by outages, slow syncing, and data loss. Some users experienced email outages lasting four days. The free trial incorrectly charged customers. The service was so unreliable that Steve Jobs reportedly yelled at the MobileMe team in an internal meeting: 'Why did it not do what it was supposed to do?' He later admitted the launch was 'a mistake' — the service was rushed to ship alongside the iPhone 3G.

Apple extended MobileMe subscriptions by 60 days as compensation and eventually replaced the service entirely with iCloud in October 2011. MobileMe was shut down on June 30, 2012. MobileMe became Apple's most embarrassing launch and a lesson the company took seriously: Jobs later said the service needed to be 'reliable and easy to use,' and iCloud was built as a free service deeply integrated into the OS.