The MobileMe Web Client Couldn't be Worse

I've been using MobileMe now since the iPhone came out, so I guess that would set me at around July? I had .mac before that, and the webmail tool was awful. You had to log back in after 5 minutes of inactivity. I like keeping my webmail open in a tab at all times while at work and .mac never let me do this. I paid for the service because of the IMAP feature which wasn't available via google at the time.

MobileMe came along and has a much nicer looking interface, and doesn't have the same problem that .mac had, where I can keep it open all day. But it's the worst product I've ever used. I used to have frequent times where I would be composing an e-mail and then when I hit send, the message window would refresh to show the mail client, and the mail client window would display an error message and the email is lost forever. This was especially aggravating when writing a long important email.

This problem seems to have been fixed. Now the error is displayed in the message window, and the message is still there. but it still can't be sent, or saved to drafts. You need to copy it out of the client into notepad for example, go back to the browser and refresh the mail client which sometimes comes back, other times gives you an error, and then re copy the text back into the message window, and cross your fingers this time that it sends. While I'm able to at least work around this now, which is better than the initial problems, it's still awful implementation. gMail will auto-save emails as you type them, so this is NEVER a problem with that client, however, and more importantly, I shouldn't receive errors when sending mail frequently enough that it warrants a blog post.

On top of all this, it's slow. Painfully slow. Whenever I click the tab that mail resides in, I have to wait for it to refresh (unacceptable). clicking a new mail message often times forces the entire tab to refresh again. For all this touting that Apple has been doing for this Sproutcore framework, I can't say that I'm impressed. Considering the money Apple has to throw around, and considering I'm paying for the product, I expect things to work a bit better than all the free alternatives.

I can honestly say, my problem is ONLY with the web client. Mail.app on the mac works as advertised, though it's a bit slower than my phone at getting new emails. I love the application on my phone. I also love the push-ness of it, in that whether I'm at work, home, or out, I can see how many unread emails I have and everything. The wireless contact and calendar sync is also nice. That to me is what justifies the price. If they could just fix the awful web mail tool this product would be amazing. I can't be the only person who can't stand this web tool. I'm unable to bring my phone into work, so for 8 hours a day, this is the only way I'm able to get to my email.