Apple gives MobileMe subscribers more free time

Subscribers who have remained with MobileMe through its continued growing pains will be rewarded with another 60 days free, bringing the total free time to 90 days.

To be eligible for the new extension, customers must be enrolled members by midnight Tuesday. Those who have already enrolled will see their free trial periods extended another 60 days.

Apple will begin issuing the extensions Tuesday, which will be applied to all accounts within the next few days.

For those who signed up with MobileMe on its launch date, trials that should have ended in September will now end in December, giving these users a total of five free months of service.

"The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was rockier than we had hoped," the company said in a notice to users this morning. "While we are making a lot of improvements, the MobileMe service is still not up to our standards."

It appears as if Apple intends to be aggressive in ensuring MobileMe's success isn't scuttled by these problems so early in its life cycle, even going as far as to take a financial hit to appease its customers.

Steve Jobs has also spoken to the subject, going as far as to send out an internal e-mail acknowledging the service's issues, and making changes to the management structure to make Apple more responsive to problems.