Apple's MobileMe service has proven to be a horror It's been a curious thing to watch: Apple makes mistakes all the time, but they are usually small mistakes, easily swept aside in the tide of their own user's enthusiasm. But MobileMe wasn't just a cool service with some flaws: it ripped itself out of Apple's usually fertile loins like some Belial-esque monstrosity and immediately went for the throat of those who had expected to love it most.

The good news is that Steve Jobs is pissed. In an internal email to Apple employees yesterday evening, Jobs admitted that MobileMe was "not up to Apple's standards" and should have been rolled out in small chunks rather than as a "monolithic service."

"It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store," Jobs said. "We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence." No kidding.

The bad news: Apple still doesn't think MobileMe is up to snuff. Jobs says that Apple will "press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year." Pessimistically, that means beleaguered MobileMe users could have four months of teeth gritting ahead of them.

It also looks like the MobileMe team has been reorganized. The group will now report to iTunes honcho Eddy Cue, who also heads up the Apple Store. Cue will report directly to Jobs. There's no word on what happened to MobileMe's previous department head: fired out of a cannon into an industrial shredder is my bet.

Steve Jobs: MobileMe "not up to Apple standards" [Ars Technica]