"Apple's MobileMe is far too flawed to be reliable," the Sage of Potomac pronounced yesterday. It's a rare swipe from Walt Mossberg, the guy better known for writing Steve Jobs's marketing slogans ("the most elegant desktop computer I've ever used.") What's important is that Mossberg isn't complaining about MobileMe's launch glitches — even when it works, he says, it's not solid. Here's the bullet list of Walt's gripes:

Apple's .Mac email — relaunched as MobileMe in conjunction with the iPhone 3G two Fridays ago — is still flying as crooked as Drinky Crow on payday. MacRumors has aggregated customer gripes. Apple's hard-to-swallow response: Only 1 percent of customers are having problems after Apple's server migration. MobileMe mail works for stationary old me, but see these screenshots from readers:

Buried in a report from the New York Times on Apple CEO Steve Jobs's health scare is this revelation:

After giving a lower forecast for its September quarter than Wall Street expected, Apple saw its shares drop 3 percent today. TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says not to blame the numbers, but the numbskull PR move Apple made in refusing to discuss plans for Jobs's successor. "Look," Cramer says in the clip embedded below, "I thought the forecast was great. This is all about [Apple saying] Jobs's health is a 'personal matter."

South of the City and hard by the shores of San Francisco Bay, Genentech rarely attracts the attention of the founders of flashy Internet startups as they drive past its offices on the way to the airport. But the biotech company's longtime CEO, Art Levinson, is an integral part of the Silicon Valley scene, serving on the boards of both Google and Apple. That's why Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche's move to buy the 44 percent of Genentech it doesn't already own for a price north of $38 billion could have reverbations well beyond the world of automated pipetting systems.

Email from yet another thwarted iPhone buyer, this one in New York:

Apple beat Wall Street estimates for its latest quarter's revenues and profits yesterday, but worried shareholders with unimpressive guidance for the next quarter. During the conference call, Apple executives refused to answer an analyst's question about CEO Steve Jobs's health, replying: ""Steve's health is a private matter." Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget disagrees:

• An Abu Dhabi investment fund says it has agreed to an $8 billion commercial-finance partnership with General Electric. [WSJ]

From a would-be iPhone 3G buyer in San Francisco:

Apple reported numbers for its third fiscal quarter today: Based on the sales of 2,496,000 Macs and 11,011,000 iPods, Apple generated revenues of $7.46 billion and a net profit of $1.07 billion. In the same time period last year, Apple's revenue was $5.41 billion, with a profit of $818 million. Apple didn't release numbers for iPhone sales — those come next quarter. Steve Jobs, skipping over talk of his health, also hinted at more new product releases in the coming months. New products from Apple? Yes, we're not shocked, either.

Motorola has sued Mike Fenger, the former head of Motorola's mobile gadgets for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Fenger allegedly broke a two-year noncompete agreement by jumping to Apple to run global sales for the's iPhone in March. “He cannot perform his duties for Apple without inevitably disclosing Motorola’s trade secrets,” says the lawsuit, which aims to keep Fenger away from Apple and other mobile makers for two years. Trade secrets? Here's a more honest appraisal: If Fenger did so well selling the Moto Q, imagine what he'll do given an iPhone.

Quarterly earnings reports are supposed to be about a public company's financial health, but during today's call, Apple's institutional investors want a checkup on CEO Steve Jobs. They haven't gotten over Jobs's overly thin appearance at WWDC in June. "Apple's hedge-fund investors are very worried," a Wall Street source tells the New York Post. In the weeks following WWDC, Apple told reporters Jobs looked so ill because of antibiotic treatments for a cold.

This morning's Times brings the story of Arnold Kim, the blogger behind MacRumors.com. Kim just quit his job as a freshly-minted physician to blog full time. Wait, what? Well, see, MacRumors has been estimated to be worth $85 million — more valuable than the Huffington Post. So, for Kim, going full-time was "on paper... an easy decision." Also he has a 14-month-old daughter (awww) who he'd like to spend more time with. Even his dad approves! "When he told his father, also a doctor, about the decision, Dr. Kim was pleased that 'he was very supportive of it, which was sort of surprising to me,'" the Times said. Only an hour after publication, the Times story has already reached number two on the Technology section most-emailed list — no doubt thanks to platoons of vindicated bloggers forwarding the piece to their parents. I think I'll join them! [Times] (Photo via blakespot on Flickr)

Was our favorite Segway polo-playing, D-list celebrity-dumping, kitten-saving,iPhone 3G line-cutting Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak a recent audience member at a taping of gameshow The Price is Right? A poster to the MacRumors forum uploaded this screen capture that suggests so.

The image you see on top is a standard ad for Mad Men, AMC's series about hard-paryting admen in the good old days that conveniently advertises itself everywhere. The image on the bottom is what you see when you visit iTunes to purchase the full season of Mad Men. The difference? On iTunes, the man has had his cigarette taken away. Steve Jobs does not understand the point of this show at all. Click to enlarge the Apple-approved scrubbing of our culture.

A tipster snapped this late-night shot of Apple's Union Square store being overhauled. You — yes, you waiting in line with your old iPhone — send us photos of the results when the store opens at 10, willya? Separately, we've been told that Apple Store employees at the San Francisco flagship cut off would-be buyers who arrived after 5:30 p.m. Shoppers timed the morning line at 2.5 hours yesterday. That's even more time than I spend watching my BlackBerry reboot.

Apple profited some $330 million from 3G iPhone sales over its first weekend, Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt estimates that . His back-of-the-envelope formula factored in iSuppli's estimate of the manufacturing costs of each iPhone 3G, Apple's numbers on how many iPhones it sold over the weekend, analyst estimates on how much AT&T and other carriers subsidize each phone, and what a survey says about the sales split between the iPhone's $199 and $299 iPhones models. All that, a little bit slower now, in Elmer-DeWitt's bullet points below.

Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal dropped by the Today Show this morning to shill a movie, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Eckhart earnestly related to host Matt Lauer a story about their deceased costar Heath Ledger which he'd told Ledger's mother — namely, that friends were passing around Ledger's iPod as a form of remembrance:

"BlackBerry is the only way to go ... the rest are for kids," says one of the 400 comments to Web Worker Daily's thorough comparison of iPhone 3G's pros and cons versus a BlackBerry for use on the job. iPhone crazies are everywhere, so in response I've summarized Web Worker's pro-BlackBerry argument for those of us who pay the mortgage with a road-battered 8703e.

eMusic CEO David Pakman estimates that Amazon.com's MP3 store may have sold 27 million tracks since opening 6 months ago — which sounds good until you consider that Apple's iTunes moves 2 billion songs a year. Pakman also estimates that Amazon's store is adding $7 million, after the labels' take and expenses. At least people are looking forward to a new Kindle, right? [Silicon Alley Insider]