Is .Mac a Good Buy?

[LaMerVipere]

For those of you who have a .mac subscription, is it a good buy do you think?

I like the homepage feature, but the palty 15MB email storage and 100MB iDisk storage space are the big drawbacks I see with it.

How many of you who have it regret getting it, is it worth the cash?

[BrianKonarsMac]

i got it for half price when it first came out, i never used it. it was an utter waste of money imo, but other's love it. you can get more for free.

[jsw]

I use iDisk all the time for sharing files, and since my family has mostly Macs or XP systems, it works well.

Worth $100 a year? Hard to say. Backup is pretty worthwhile, Virex is, to date, unnecessary. The free stuff that comes along about twice a year isn't worth much.

My opinion is that iDisk and Backup are the big selling points, and, if they aren't worth the price to you, the rest of it isn't either. A so-and-so@mac.com email address is cool, but... not $100 cool.

[blackpeter]

Ex Apple employee here.

Now that I'm allowed to post here (we are contractually banned from posting on rumor sites), let me give you my opinion about this service.

We all get a free .Mac account when we are hired, so until then I never thought it was worth the cash. But since using it for about 2 years, I've changed my mind.

Here are the things I like:

-Email (+ webmail w/ local address book synchronization*)
-iCal publishing
-iDisk
-iPhoto and iMovie integration with your homepage
-Backup

...all this for $8 a month! And it's only going to get better.

What was the last thing you spent $8 on? Was it as valuable as what you get with .Mac, or was it something you got with pepperoni and extra cheese?

P.S. If you go to your local Apple Store and ask them to sell you .Mac at the reduced rate of $69 (usually reserved for those who are buying a computer) see if they turn you down. They won't (but don't tell 'em I said so).

[jaw04005]

The first "pay" year it was only $60 and worth it. We got some nice "freebies" including like 100 free prints. This last year it has not been worth it to me. I have till October to decide if I'm renewing, as of right now.. I'm not. Here is MY breakdown:

.Mac Email: 15MB of storage

I like their email service. I would have to say this has to be the main reason people still use .Mac, there is something about having that @mac.com email addy.

HomePage

Works very nicely. They have just made it PC compatible, so you can make changes on a PC. This feature went awhile without an update, and they should update the templates monthly, instead of yearly.

.Mac Address Book & Bookmark Syncing

Nice. However, I think Bookmark syncing should not require .Mac to operate.

iCards

They are fun on occasion, but most are available for free (not the customized ones). Not really a useful feature.

Backup

Should not require an internet connection. I’ve had problems with it estimating the wrong amount of DVDs and CDs. It creates an unusual file hierarchy that makes it difficult to manually restore items. I’ve had problems with it crashing in the middle of a backup, and had to start the process over again.

Virex

I don’t need it yet. Maybe useful in the future. Right now it’s just in the way.

.Mac Benefits/Discounts/Gifts

The 100 free prints were nice. I wish they would offer that again. It would be nice to see discounts with iPhoto books. They sometimes offer $10 discounts on shareware games like Collapse, etc. These are more like little perks, and rarely are anything valuable.

Learning Center

Great for newbies or switchers. I don’t find it useful.

iDisk

2nd most popular feature of .Mac. 100MB of storage and is upgradeable for a “nice” fee. I use it quite a bit. It performs slow, and I have a 3MB DSL connection. It is usually reliable, but there are outages. The outages can last for several hours. I have problems connecting when using a PC when using the iDisk Utility for Windows. Local vs. Network iDisk can cause sync issues.

.Mac Support

When it was first announced, it was not made clear that the message boards were for .Mac issues only. The .Mac admins spent months telling people they couldn't post non-.Mac issues on the .Mac forum, and finally ended up creating a non-.Mac issues thread. I and evidentally many other mac users believed the $100/year got us access to a message board moderated by Apple employees that would answer any mac question, whether .Mac related or other. Not the case. Recently, they decided to scrap the message boards and now only offer email based support.

At the end of the day, sign up for the free trial. If you find its features useful---buy it, if not don't. I find .Mac useful, just not $100 useful.

[jaw04005]

...all this for $8 a month! And it's only going to get better..


$8 a month, but you pay $100/year annually. Just making that clear because I've had several people ask me if you could pay monthly.

[SillyKary]

I'm still hanging on to my .mac account, but basically only because I signed up early when it was "iTools" and free and got a nice, short email address that I don't wanna miss. I felt really cheated when they made it for-pay only and I don't really need all that other stuff. I do use the web page hosting and iDisk a bit, but only because I paid for it, so I thought I might as well... I was lucky and got the same nick with Spymac as with .mac, so my email address is now only three letters longer (@spymac.com vs @mac.com). I can live with that and in Oct, Apple has one customer less...

My opinion: sign up with Spymac.
http://www.spymac.com/network.php?p=tour

You get most of what .mac has to offer for free, best of all: 1GB email, yes just like Google! And if you need professional web hosting, with all the tools that .Mac doesn't let you use (cgi scripts, perl, mySQL, several email boxes, own domain), you can get that there too and STILL cheaper than .Mac ($7/mth).

[Squire]

I like it. Homepage is great for letting my parents see their grandkids, the Mail service works flawlessly, and the Learning Center is a great way to learn more about the machine and iApps.

However, I really wish they offered an enhanced version of Homepage- even for an additional fee. I'd like a more advanced website builder. (I once used a service called Homestead that was pretty good. Sort of a "Websites for Dummies" kind of thing.)

Squire

[broken_keyboard]

Mail: Only 15M = not competitive
Homepage: too family oriented
Learning Centre: too retard oriented
iDisk: slow to the point of unusability
Virux: no viruses
iSync, iCal: who in their right mind would upload their private contact details and calendar appointments to the Internet?

Giveaways: giveaways! unbelievable. get the core service right first

[caveman_uk]

This is one of those perenial subjects that seems to come up on a monthly basis. There's been plenty of discussion about it in the past. For the record

a) Some people think it's worth it
b) Some don't
c) Some of (b) who point out they can get a lot more from somewhere else

It's your choice. Take the demo trial and then when it's over pay for it if you find it worthwhile. Ditch it if you think it's not.

[Squire]

Mail: Only 15M = not competitive
Homepage: too family oriented
Learning Centre: too retard oriented
iDisk: slow to the point of unusability
Virux: no viruses
iSync, iCal: who in their right mind would upload their private contact details and calendar appointments to the Internet?

Giveaways: giveaways! unbelievable. get the core service right first

Despite my dislike for being called a retard, you have good points. ;) (I'm fairly new to the OS so I find the learning center more useful than the average Mac aficionado.)

Squire

[mccaffreye]

You could just get a domain name and hosting for less then a .Mac account.

You can have however much e-mail space you need; as well as much more web and storage space.

You can backup via FTP and easily choose to make something available for others to see or not. And a resourceful person could even use Applescript to automate this, I bet.

[LaMerVipere]

I'm still hanging on to my .mac account, but basically only because I signed up early when it was "iTools" and free and got a nice, short email address that I don't wanna miss. I felt really cheated when they made it for-pay only and I don't really need all that other stuff. I do use the web page hosting and iDisk a bit, but only because I paid for it, so I thought I might as well... I was lucky and got the same nick with Spymac as with .mac, so my email address is now only three letters longer (@spymac.com vs @mac.com). I can live with that and in Oct, Apple has one customer less...

My opinion: sign up with Spymac.
http://www.spymac.com/network.php?p=tour

You get most of what .mac has to offer for free, best of all: 1GB email, yes just like Google! And if you need professional web hosting, with all the tools that .Mac doesn't let you use (cgi scripts, perl, mySQL, several email boxes, own domain), you can get that there too and STILL cheaper than .Mac ($7/mth).

Err but I hate Spymac!

I had over 5,000 posts back before spymac became the bloated piece of crap that it now is. I remember the good 'ol Spymac 2.0, which wasn't what it is now and it only had like 30,000 members as opposed to half a million, most of which are only there for the freebies. I'd rather pay $200 a year than ever go back to Spymac. Now its just immature kids and people from like asia trying to ask for technical help in chinese about how to get the free e-mail to work. How sad! They had to ruin a good thing

I vowed I'd never go back to that hell hole! And now I'm a MacRumors man :cool:

Sorry to veer off topic but I'm rather passionate about the anti-Spymac biz

[Savage Henry]

Man, this is one of them satellite questions that keeps coming round again and again.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=61133

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=68532

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=71892

Failing them, it's like most things some find of value and others don't. At the moment I still think it's okay. Mail and Backup do it for me.

[netytan]

Quick answer, its a pile of crap! Its a travilsty that Apple is even charging for it when you can get so much more for free! If you have broad band you can set up your own server and totaly blow anything offered by Apple to hell!

Possibly the only good things about it is that its integrated with Mac OS X which makes it easier to get started with than the other options available.

Idisk being probably the one savilg feature - get a pile of CDs, external HD or an Ethernet cable (if you have access to a desktop/network) and back up your whole machine in a millions of the time it would take to upload a few reasonably sized files to Idisk, baring in mind that a lot of users ares till on dial-up :eek:.

Mark.

[flyfish29]

Mail: Only 15M = not competitive
Homepage: too family oriented
Learning Centre: too retard oriented
iDisk: slow to the point of unusability
Virux: no viruses
iSync, iCal: who in their right mind would upload their private contact details and calendar appointments to the Internet?

Giveaways: giveaways! unbelievable. get the core service right first

Lets get real. .Mac is not for everyone, but for the masses *(which is what apple needs to market almost everything to to make money and stay competitive these days) .Mac is really nice and a decent deal.

Homepage: meant to be family oriented- I constantly am using it for family photos to inlaws, parents and other family and friends. You can use your own web designs I guess, but I have not looked into it more myself yet.

Mail, 15M is not competitive if you keep everything, but since you can store your important emails on your local computer and since most users delete most of their email at some point in time it is plenty of space.

iDisk is a bit s l o w, but getting better and is great for backing up my basic files, etc in case of a crash.

I must not be in my right mind...my private calendar is up and i could always use a password if I wanted to but I don't exactly put up my credit card numbers and such on a calendar.

Bookmarks: I love having my bookmarks everywhere I go be in sync with my home computer as well as my address book and calendar so I don't have to carry a PDA.

[Applexilef]

Quick question about the homepage hosting on .Mac:
Can I post a Macromedia flash webpage on a .Mac account?

[zim]

Quick question about the homepage hosting on .Mac:
Can I post a Macromedia flash webpage on a .Mac account?

Yes you can :)

[noel4r]

Look into spymac first, they have this new program called "Wheel".

[flyfish29]

You could just get a domain name and hosting for less then a .Mac account.

You can have however much e-mail space you need; as well as much more web and storage space.

You can backup via FTP and easily choose to make something available for others to see or not. And a resourceful person could even use Applescript to automate this, I bet.

And this is a whole bunch of work for a few bucks. .Mac is for the average user, not the FTP, web domain name hoster person. Those people (many of the most active here) do save money doing it this way maybe, but for ease of use, benefits,etc. .Mac works for most.

I even use it as my main email account and find it very reliable.

[SillyKary]

Err but I hate Spymac!

I had over 5,000 posts back before spymac became the bloated piece of crap that it now is. I remember the good 'ol Spymac 2.0, which wasn't what it is now and it only had like 30,000 members as opposed to half a million, most of which are only there for the freebies. I'd rather pay $200 a year than ever go back to Spymac. Now its just immature kids and people from like asia trying to ask for technical help in chinese about how to get the free e-mail to work. How sad! They had to ruin a good thing

Well, the .Mac online forums aren't worth mentioning either. Hidden deep inside the .Mac site and only accessible through the Support area, they deal almost only with ppl who can't get their stuff working right.

So what I'm saying is, you could still use Spymac's online tools like, 1GB email, their version of iDisk, webspace, iCal hosting etc. and never have to deal with those "immature kids and people from like asia".

... and come to MacRumors for the community! :-)

[flyfish29]

the .Mac site and only accessible through the Support area, they deal almost only with ppl who can't get their stuff working right.


Isn't this the point of support...helping people who are not getting their stuff to work exactly right?!?!? :rolleyes:

[SillyKary]

Isn't this the point of support...helping people who are not getting their stuff to work exactly right?!?!? :rolleyes:

Sure is, but we were not talking about support. The reason why LaMerVipere abandoned Spymac was the loss of the community - a place where you can discuss with like-minded people everything Mac related, news, products, rumors etc. .Mac doesn't have any such thing to begin with; their support forum has a different purpose and is no substitute.

[flyfish29]

Sure is, but we were not talking about support. The reason why LaMerVipere abandoned Spymac was the loss of the community - a place where you can discuss with like-minded people everything Mac related, news, products, rumors etc. .Mac doesn't have any such thing to begin with; their support forum has a different purpose and is no substitute.

Yup...sorry for the misunderstanding...didn't get that from the earlier posts, but now I sort of do.

[DJ Forge]

honestly, you could hit up www.spymac.com and get what .mac gives you and then some

and it's free

[Coolvirus007]

Mail: Only 15M = not competitive
Homepage: too family oriented
Learning Centre: too retard oriented
iDisk: slow to the point of unusability
Virux: no viruses
iSync, iCal: who in their right mind would upload their private contact details and calendar appointments to the Internet?


lol, i agree with most of the points. NOT worth $100.

[garyuk]

A lot of what .mac offers you, you could setup with a simple Pentium PC and a Copy of FreeBSD/Linux, but heres where its got me:

I have a bluetooth mobile phone, it syncs with my mac every night, if I take my phone out and the battery is dead, simple I logon to the nearest pc and pull up my address book (which is sync'd to my mobile phone) so i have my sim card online! its fantastic!!

Mail is a little shabby for such an expensive item, but they should have a online calendar with mail and addressbook... that links to your ical

If im out and want to upload a file to my iDisk so i can pick it up at home, i can do.

Heres what apple REALLY need to improve to keep users paying:
* Up the mail storage to at least 500mb or 1gb,
* Give users 10 free mail accounts for the family, this can be shared across the 500mb or 1gb.
* Make iDisk work with windows, idea here is portability, if im at work i can upload to my idisk. hey saves money on those horrible little usb pen things
* Please upgrade your servers, they are painfully slow compared to other services when it comes to homepages.

my oppinion anyway, personally never used the free stuff in the idisk because it always hangs the finder.

[Squire]

Actually, iDisk is supposed to work with Windows- at least with XP.

From Apple's site:

The cross-platform advantage
In addition to the Mac platform, you can also open your iDisk using Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 98. As a result you can use the Documents folder in your iDisk, for instance, for files you need to touch at both work and home or when you don't have access to a Mac. For added convenience there's even a downloadable iDisk Utility for Windows XP that makes opening your iDisk on a Windows XP machine especially quick and easy.

However, I had trouble with that program in XP and ended up giving up.

Squire

<edit> By the way, I totally agree with your suggestions, especially the additional email addresses.

[zim]

Actually, iDisk is supposed to work with Windows- at least with XP.

From Apple's site:

The cross-platform advantage
In addition to the Mac platform, you can also open your iDisk using Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 98. As a result you can use the Documents folder in your iDisk, for instance, for files you need to touch at both work and home or when you don't have access to a Mac. For added convenience there's even a downloadable iDisk Utility for Windows XP that makes opening your iDisk on a Windows XP machine especially quick and easy.

However, I had trouble with that program in XP and ended up giving up.

Squire

<edit> By the way, I totally agree with your suggestions, especially the additional email addresses.

Never tried on XP but I do use my iDisk on windows 98 just about once every week and my wife has used it on windows 2000 at work.

[Squire]

Never tried on XP but I do use my iDisk on windows 98 just about once every week and my wife has used it on windows 2000 at work.

Yeah, I guess I should have read my own post more carefully. ;) Just because iDisk Utility is available for XP, I thought that meant iDisk was only compatible with that version of Windows.

Squire

[zim]

Yeah, I guess I should have read my own post more carefully. ;) Just because iDisk Utility is available for XP, I thought that meant iDisk was only compatible with that version of Windows.

Squire

They emphasize XP on the site. I don't even thing that they mention win98 or 2000 until you get inside, even then it is small and not emphasized... easy to overlook. Odd thing is that you don't need any additional software for win98 or 2000, wonder what changed in XP.

[flyfish29]

Maybe what they should do is offer the current for around $60 to $75 and then make a bigger bundle of things including more space, more email addresses, more iDisk space, etc. for $100+. They should stop nickel and diming us for a few more MB of space and email addresses. I do pay an extra $10 or so for my wife's email address because we liked the reliability so far with .Mac email as well as the address book and web access online. Just was simpler for us to do it that way than deal with multiple email address suffixes, systems, etc.

I too would like to see iCal on a clickable link in my mail system online...I guess I could put the bookmarks in my bookmarks online, but would be nice to just click the iCal link and get my own icalendars to view and edit, then sync with my home ones. Editing them from the web would be big...of course would be password protected.

[Machead III]

Apple seems to have chucked .mac a baseball cap and some new sneakers and just told it to stand there and look as cool as possible while everyone works on the iPod celeb. I think Apple are just letting it stand as it is for a while before they jam it full of new features, make it an integral part of the OS (so you don't open it through Safari but the Finder and what not) and then Steve will work his reality distoriton field and before you know it, 90% of everyone on MacRumors will be subscirbed.

[javabear90]

well I don't need it becuase:
I know my brothers password to .mac so I get all of the free stuff
I have my own mail server with several gigs of free space
I host my website through my school's T3 with as much space as their RAID array can hold ~3500 gigs
I have an iPod, server, laptop, website, DVD's etc for backup
I don't use iCal.....

the list goes on and on

[flyfish29]

Apple seems to have chucked .mac a baseball cap and some new sneakers and just told it to stand there and look as cool as possible while everyone works on the iPod celeb. I think Apple are just letting it stand as it is for a while before they jam it full of new features, make it an integral part of the OS (so you don't open it through Safari but the Finder and what not) and then Steve will work his reality distoriton field and before you know it, 90% of everyone on MacRumors will be subscirbed.

I don't think Apple is trying to sell this to Macrumors typical user...maybe the non-power users, but not the others. maybe eventually they will have a service for consumer and power users with different stuff for each. that would make sense. I would also think the more .Mac email addresses there are the more advertising it is for apple.

Javabear90, sorry to hear you don't need any of the .Mac stuff...oh wait...I guess you do, you just don't want to pay for it. (see post...says he gets all the free stuff) Note to Javabear90....this stuff is only free to .mac subscribers. It is people like you that make companies not want to sign marketing deals with .Mac and other companies. they fear their marketing deal with be abused. the purpose of the .Mac free stuff is advertising...advertising a game company, advertising a photo printing web site, advertising Norton, etc. I am sure some of the companies would not mind you using the stuff as they get more exposure, but there are probably just as many that don't want people taking it that are not paying for the .mac service.

[Dale Sorel]

honestly, you could hit up www.spymac.com and get what .mac gives you and then some

and it's free

And be as integrated with the OS as .Mac... I don't think so :rolleyes:

[trudd]

Just go with doteasy (http://www.doteasy.com).

Less than $100/year, 1gb online storage, domain name, 100 e-mail addresses, has photo publishing software (coppermine i think?), moveable type support, etc.

It's .Mac minus the crap, plus a .com name. I've used them for a short period of time and have known long-term users who love them. Only problem - no IMAP support for e-mail, which is only a problem if you use more than one computer :(

[SillyKary]

well I don't need it becuase:
I know my brothers password to .mac so I get all of the free stuff
I have my own mail server with several gigs of free space
I host my website through my school's T3 with as much space as their RAID array can hold ~3500 gigs
I have an iPod, server, laptop, website, DVD's etc for backup
I don't use iCal.....

the list goes on and on

Wow, you're soooo cool!!
Everyone should just follow your example!

[flyfish29]

Only problem - no IMAP support for e-mail, which is only a problem if you use more than one computer :(

If I only knew what IMAP or POP stood for I might think of going to all that work to save a couple of bucks...ummm...on second thought....that would be a NO. :D

Just like everything in life, one thing can't work great for everyone. It seems like Apple is doing well with it, but hopefully they are not just sitting still on it and worrying only about iTunes, music and such. Hopefully this summer we will see major updates to .Mac in time for back to school or at the very least the holidays. Until then I will still keep working on getting .Mac for free by getting referrals which give me 20% off per referral. Right now .Mac is only gonna cost me $40 for my second year as I have three referrals that have given me $60 off the annual price. :D

[Whyren]

Actually, iDisk is supposed to work with Windows- at least with XP.

From Apple's site:

The cross-platform advantage
In addition to the Mac platform, you can also open your iDisk using Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 98. As a result you can use the Documents folder in your iDisk, for instance, for files you need to touch at both work and home or when you don't have access to a Mac. For added convenience there's even a downloadable iDisk Utility for Windows XP that makes opening your iDisk on a Windows XP machine especially quick and easy.

However, I had trouble with that program in XP and ended up giving up.

Squire

<edit> By the way, I totally agree with your suggestions, especially the additional email addresses.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I've never had ANY trouble using iDisk on either XP or 98...in fact, that's one of the few reasons I'm hanging on to .Mac, for the use of iDisk as a crossplatform transferring device. I don't, however, use iDisk utility; I just use the "Connect to Network Folder" command or whatever it is in Windows.