.Mac Refer a Friend Bonus

[MacRumors]

Apple's .Mac service (http://www.mac.com) now allows for referral bonuses for current subscribers.

When you let friends know about the advantages of .Mac membership, you can save on your own .Mac renewal costs. If your friends sign up at least 31 days before your account comes up for renewal, you'll save 20 percent* on your next year of membership. Sign up five friends and your next year is free!


The referral program ends on October 31, 2003.

[kishba]

i was really hoping there would be an easier way to bring down the cost of another year of .mac

i still hope apple adds more functionality to .mac... $99 is a lot for me, and i already convinced my friends to get .mac!

[iJon]

thats not a bad idea. good job apple. this will be a good way for more people to take advantage of .mac, because it really is a great service.

iJon

[Archmage]

I refer you all to .Mac

You get:

IMAP/POP email (access from anywhere, webmail interface too)
iDisk (100MB of Online storage, accessible from anywhere)
website (homepage.mac.com/username)

and for those of you using a Mac (unlike me... *sobs*), you get extra features!:

iSync for:
Safari Bookmarks
Address Book Addresses

iCal publishing space

Virex from McAfee

Backup software

Now that I've convinced you of all the great features, go sign up.

I REFER YOU ALL!!!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

[DreaminDirector]

they must be hurtin' for members. When in doubt, offer cash back to the customer to get them motivated.

[arn]

please everyone DON'T post your addresses for referrals... it will just clutter the comments with tons of email addresses. :)

arn

[Archmage]

Aw, man arn!

:P

I was first... mine should get to stay :P

[MhzDoesMatter]

Originally posted by DreaminDirector
they must be hurtin' for members. When in doubt, offer cash back to the customer to get them motivated.

Maybe they're just realizing that with renewal time coming up for most of its user base they have to either up the antie (<---How the hell DO u spell it then Safari??) when it comes to features or give us a way to drop the cost. Might not have much to do with the need for new members at all compared to incentive to keep the current ones they have. I'm pretty sure .Mac is not operating at a loss.

-Hertz

Or was that sarcasm and I missed it?

[simX]

Originally posted by MhzDoesMatter
[...] they have to either up the antie (<---How the hell DO u spell it then Safari??) when [...]

It's spelled "ante". :)

[Pancake]

Is .Mac really worth it?

I've had it since last September and I love how easy to use it is, but I need more webspace. I would really like to have at least 500mb for hosting movies I make. Apple wants to charge me $180 a year for that. I'm certain I could do better other places. Am I wrong?

Also I was just checking out my account info and a little box labeled auto-renew was checked for me.

Also, I am very upset that you cannot changed your name for .Mac. You see, I signed up when it was free, I was just messing around so I just put my first and last name, now I'm stuck with it instead of something cool because they offered half price for existing customers and I didn't want to pay $50 more just to have a different name.

[MhzDoesMatter]

Originally posted by simX
It's spelled "ante". :)

LOL, thanks. And wow, that was fast.

Came back because I wanted to ponder (of course by ponder I mean post online in a public message board to get other peoples thoughts, with which I'll invariably disagree and post a 5 paragraph essay discounting, because the word pondering itself implies none of that....ahem) the possibility of Apple dropping the price for .Mac.

I mean, just the fact that the discount for referrals is done by percents, and not actual cash value. That leaves the door open for Apple to drop the price (say if some of the new features in the pipeline simply aren't ready,) and still have its discounts intact without people actually having credits for the next year's renewal as well.

Frankly, the price of .Mac doesn't bother me for what it offers. I'd really appreciate additional worthwhile and innovative features more than a price drop, but I stand to benefit either way, with nothing to lose if there's no change at all.


-Hertz

[Rob Nance]

Can you say pyramid scheme? You get 5 people, each of those get 5 people, and so on and so forth. The whole world will have .Mac for free...next year.

[dobbin]

This is a nice idea, but its too late for me (and for many others I would guess).

I recommended my brother to buy a mac. He bought a FP imac 800, a printer, an ipod, MS office, extra Ram, all from the Apple store. He also signed up to .mac on my recommendation.

I don't know anyone else with a mac so I can't refer them to .mac
I guess I'll have to try and persuade someone else to switch and then refer them. I doubt if that can happen in time for my renewal though.

I had forgotten that it would be $99 this year. Thats quite a lot but I will probably renew.

I just wish there was a company that could compete with Apple for quality, because then they would have to compete on price and customer service.

[martijnvandijk]

.Mac referral program OK, but manually typing email addresses?

Why hasn't Apple integrated the .Mac AddressBook in this program? Then it would have just been select a friend and send.

Anyway, I'll refer it to many friends!

[Jerry Spoon]

I'm glad this was posted, b/c I've got to start giving some preliminary thought on whether I should renew my .mac membership or not. I can't say that I use it a hell of a lot, but this August, I'll have osx running on my machine at work as well as home, so maybe some of the features that I don't use now might come in handy in the following year. Really, coming up with the hundred isn't the problem, but sometimes I think I'd much rather spend that hundred on something else. If only I had some friends.....who used macs.

[info_javier]

Parece que los numeros no están dando del todo bien en .Mac
Para mi debiera seguir siendo gratis para todos los que usamos Mac
Es un excelente valor agregado que de esa manera atraeria más gente

[weave]

Damn it, I had just "referred" my wife too...

btw, I love .mac but the extra cost for additional disk is way too steep. Ouch.

Now as a site admin, I know SAN disk (storage area network, not the company SAN) and other highly available disk systems are not cheap at all, but I also know Apple's little x-raid is far cheaper than offerings from people like EMC and I bet Apple gets a decent discount from Apple for it as well! :)

[phgreer]

Originally posted by Rob Nance
Can you say pyramid scheme? You get 5 people, each of those get 5 people, and so on and so forth. The whole world will have .Mac for free...next year.


Scary... A pyramid scheme, then add the cult like atmosphere of the Mac community

If they ask me to start selling Soap or inviting unsuspecting low wage earning retail workers to hotel meetings then I'm outa here!

:D

[Freg3000]

I really don't want to pay $99 around the same time I will pay $129 for panther, but I need my iDisk. I love my iDisk. :) I wish I could get more space, but it's just too expensive. I hope they lower the prices, as disk space is cheap now.

Too bad all of my friends are die hard PC addicts.

[Windowlicker]

some reasons for me not getting a membership:

I get something like 50mb of space for my website from my ISP and I have a mail account from them. It's nothing extra to the monthly fee I pay for the connection (and 25€ (?$25 a month for ISDN is pretty much I think).

But what would definitely make me a .mac member would be:

Apple made some kind of a deal with ISPs over the world (ain't gonna happen) where people could buy a .mac service from their local service provider and when you would do this, you'd get a 1mb adsl or something.. and the price would be something like 300-500€ a year.

I really would like all the syncing features .mac has, but just getting an extra mail address and 100mb space isn't enough for $100 a year :P

[phgreer]

The one thing I like about .Mac is the homepage feature. not because of the space of the templates or anything. I do have and manage other website with better deals of course but I like to use it to display my photos. That way I don't have to worry about bandwidth or anything like that. The way it intergrates with iPhoto is great. Sure, I can create a photo album with a script in dreamweaver but for quickly sharing an album of a recent event with friends or realatives all I have to do is plug in my camera and adjust things in iPhoto (I love how you can rearrange things on the fly with iPhoto)

I have used PC for a long time and have been one of those who could design a site with notepad or another text editor but recently we have had weddings, funerals and other family events.


I like to share my "artistic" photos on message boards too and I don't want to use the bandwidth or space on my home business site for these personal and hobby endeavors. It's so much less of a headache.


That plus the backup feature makes for a fairly inexpensive insurance if you ask me and the way it will work in Panther sounds even better. Sure I would like it to be less. If Apple is going to promote this then I would love to have a form on my .Mac webpage photo albums people could click through and I could automatically get credit.

I think they should at least have a panther promotional with this.

[Jerry Spoon]

Originally posted by phgreer
The one thing I like about .Mac is the homepage feature. ... but I like to use it to display my photos. That way I don't have to worry about bandwidth or anything like that. The way it intergrates with iPhoto is great. .
I have used PC for a long time and have been one of those who could design a site with notepad or another text editor but recently we have had weddings, funerals and other family events.
funerals
Anybody else putting funeral pictures up on their .mac page? If so, I'd love to see them :eek:

[asim]

it seems to me that since everyone will start having their .mac memberships come up for renewal in the next few months (at least that's when the early adopters will come up for renewal), now is the time that they will start announcing new services.

presumably some of these services will be tweaked for jaguar, but my guess is there will be multiple new things to get us to come back.

i'm not sure what these new services will be, but two that i'm hoping for include ability to use my own domain name with my .mac account and integration of virex into mail.app. the latter seems a no-brainer...

afc

[goofbutt]

I am surprised no one mentioned the free items that apple is giving if you renew you .mac accout. I received an email from Apple saying I could get one of the following.

The Sims Game
EverQuest Game
$20 off apple store purchase of $20 or more.

Sadly this is not enough incentive for me as I just do see the value of .mac.

[johnpaul191]

Originally posted by Windowlicker
some reasons for me not getting a membership:

I get something like 50mb of space for my website from my ISP and I have a mail account from them. It's nothing extra to the monthly fee I pay for the connection (and 25€ (?$25 a month for ISDN is pretty much I think).

But what would definitely make me a .mac member would be:

Apple made some kind of a deal with ISPs over the world (ain't gonna happen) where people could buy a .mac service from their local service provider and when you would do this, you'd get a 1mb adsl or something.. and the price would be something like 300-500€ a year.

I really would like all the syncing features .mac has, but just getting an extra mail address and 100mb space isn't enough for $100 a year :P

the nice thing about having the .Mac account is for when you switch ISPs. Due to prices and quality of service, I am on my 3rd DSL provider in the last few years. I never really use their email anyway, and i like having an email not attached to my domain. .Mac saved me when Verizon took away smtp access and all of my other email addresses could not send outgoing mail for 6 months (till our contracts was up and we switched). My webhosting at the time did not provide SMTP, but i didn't need it and i had cheapo web hosting. anyway, i am rambling. If i could just use the email and maybe iDisk iw ould love it, but if i have the buy the whole package, i will renew.

[zaphoyd]

Someone was asking about the value of iDisk compared to other places. iDisk is a very very very bad value.

The Web hosting place I subscribe to now has a MINIMUM disk of 300MB. that is $23.50, and includes all the extras, tons of emails(infinite email addresses with the $40 a year 400MB plan), domain hosting, subdomains, cgi, mysql, cron jobs, pop/imap/webmail.

for $100 a year you get 2GB

So the value in .Mac certainly lies nowhere near its disk/hosting services.

You are paying for integration with mac os x, and thats about it.

[Codemonkey]

I know it sounds like an oxymoron (it sounded good to me when I was taking a leak thinking about it!), but it'd be much easier to sign friends/family up on the .Mac service if there was a version available for PeeCee users. Obviously it'd hinge on a few apps being ported to Wintel, and maybe a slightly lower price for the stuff that would invariable stay on the Mac (otherwise, what would be the incentive??), but I think it's doable.

And much easier for us to hit our quota!!

"Hey man, you need .Mac.... ya, I know you need a Mac first... but really..."

[MhzDoesMatter]

But why do people feel its appropriate or intelligent to compare web hosting space with .Mac's idisk? I mean, most space access offered by web hosting services is done through FTP, not WebDav, which I believe is what allows the iDisk to behave as a regular drive on your system now, and more so when Panther arrives.

Your iDisk is way more easily shared with others, with is drop box function actually being something functional. I've been using my iDisk on both WinTels and Macs for ages, before the WinXP utility. So it's not just integration with the MacOS.

I don't know. I think I could go on forever about the differences. But simple space:cost comparisons aren't just inappropriate. They're pretty simple minded.

-Hertz

Why do people insist on believing that 19.95 a month is cheaper than $100 a year?

[jayscheuerle]

Friends don't let friends join .Mac.

[bcsimac]

The program is nice, but it is too late for me. I have to renew by August 27th. I won't have the time to evangelize and all that to get the discount since I am getting married July 19th and having a week long honeymoon. I am so busy with wedding stuff now too. I wouldn't be able to do something until at least the very last week of July and even then it might be hard to get anything done. It is too bad too because I need .Mac real bad. I have 50 MB of data on my idisk, and I don't have the connection anymore to download that much data back to my iMac.....I did the upload to idisk when I was working for a tech shop and they had a fast 100mbit ethernet network.....man this sucks! I also have all my stuff tied into .Mac.....like mailing lists......job sites logins and mails......ADC login, tech support login.....and if I get rehired by a dealer....all my apple stuff would be tied into .Mac since the merger of AppleID and .Mac. I just hope I can pony up the $99 bucks for .Mac in time!

[smurphur]

So... I was reading this thread and there are lots of mixed opinions on .mac service. I was thinking about getting .mac service mainly for the website and email services. I guess the iDisk would be nice, but I will only have 1 computer that is a mac so not sure how useful the iDisk will be. Since I currently am on a x86 Windows PC, I don't even have a mac yet. But once I buy a powerbook (waiting on funds) then I was seriously considering .mac. Is the webhosting pretty good? My webpage will basically be a bunch of pictures from my digital camera... and maybe a few blogs about what I've been up to lately for people I don't see all that often. $99 a year doesn't seem super steep to me, as thats just around $8 a month... Once I get a powerbook and if I decide on .mac serive, I'll be sure to hook someone up on the forums with my referal so at least I'm saving someone money.

[jayscheuerle]

Originally posted by smurphur
So... I was reading this thread and there are lots of mixed opinions on .mac service. I was thinking about getting .mac service mainly for the website and email services. I guess the iDisk would be nice, but I will only have 1 computer that is a mac so not sure how useful the iDisk will be.

Don't you have email and website space through your ISP? There are some easy shareware programs for creating an online slideshow if you look around. The iDisk is nice if you have broadband in 2 locations, but it's faster to toss files on a Zip or USB storage device if you're stuck with a dial-up.

[Archmage]

Originally posted by Codemonkey
I know it sounds like an oxymoron (it sounded good to me when I was taking a leak thinking about it!), but it'd be much easier to sign friends/family up on the .Mac service if there was a version available for PeeCee users. Obviously it'd hinge on a few apps being ported to Wintel, and maybe a slightly lower price for the stuff that would invariable stay on the Mac (otherwise, what would be the incentive??), but I think it's doable.

And much easier for us to hit our quota!!

"Hey man, you need .Mac.... ya, I know you need a Mac first... but really..."

I'm a PeeCee owner (hopefully not for much longer). I don't own a Mac (yet).

The iDisk, IMAP mail and webspace are great. I also have my own website w/ 200MB and 6GB of bandwidth... so I don't use the HomePage much (I can't use the online web tool...)

I think it's worth it on a PC, even more worth it if you're on a Mac.

[asim]

Originally posted by Archmage
so I don't use the HomePage much (I can't use the online web tool...)


while the disk space/bandwidth limitations may require you to look elsewhere for hosting, .mac does not require one to use their online web-building tools.

just modify the pages directly in the "sites" folder

afc

[cliffardo2001]

Personally, I think that .mac members should get a discount for renewal without the trouble of refering people to get a .mac account. I have enough trouble convincing my friends who live in the dark world of Windows (puke!) OS's that Mac is superior. I just want a break, considering I will also be buying Panther....and iSight.....

[Skandranon]

Originally posted by Jerry Spoon
funerals
Anybody else putting funeral pictures up on their .mac page? If so, I'd love to see them :eek:

That's the funniest thing I've read today. :cool: