After working over the weekend to restore functionality to MobileMe, Apple said on Sunday night that nearly half of the users affected by the ongoing woes plaguing the newly launched online service have e-mail access once more.
About 1 percent of MobileMe’s subscribers had been affected by an e-mail outage, Apple confirmed on Friday. The problem was caused when one of Apple’s mail servers blocked access to users’ MobileMe mail accounts.
By Sunday, Apple said in a post at its MobileMe status page that 40 percent of the affected users now have e-mail access again along with most of their e-mail history restored.
“We turned on web access to [affected subscribers’] current email yesterday and the feedback has been cautiously positive,” the post reads. “Since then, we’ve restored full email history (minus the approximately 10% of mail received between July 18 and July 22 which may have been lost) and the ability to access email from a Mac, PC and iPhone, to over 40% of these users, and expect the remainder to be restored in the next few days.”
Apple adds that e-mail received by users affected by the outage between July 18 and July 22 was placed on its new server with a July 23 date stamp. “If you need the actual date for particular messages you can take advantage of the ability to view long headers in MobileMe Mail (via Preferences) to peer into the log and find the actual mailing time and date,” the post adds.
MobileMe, the replacement for Apple’s .Mac service, officially launched July 11. The service is aimed at giving users the ability to simultaneously sync mail, contact, and calendar information between computers, iPhones, and other mobile devices.
However, the service has been plagued by problems since launch, a fact Apple acknowledged on July 16 when it apologized for the rocky transition and extended MobileMe subscriptions by 30 days. However, problems have continued for some users, with Apple vowing to have “people… working 24-7 to improve matters.”
In Sunday’s update on MobileMe service restoration, Apple vowed to post another status report early this week.