.Mac Storage Increase

[MacRumors]

In addition to the Logic Pro & Logic Express releases today (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/09/20040929095418.shtml), Apple has also increased the storage space for subscribers of .mac accounts to 250 MB. The user-defineable space is combined between the .mac mail, and the user's iDisk, with the defaults set for 125 MB each. Current member benefits for .mac subscribers can be found on Apple's website (http://www.mac.com/1/memberbenefits_nm.html).

[Mudbug]

well, it's not 1 GB like gmail and others, but it's a step in the right direction for Apple as far as the 'worth' of .mac to users.

[denm316]

I am very happy about this, now if they add some new site menu themes it will be great.

[Fukui]

Nice. Now maybe some day they'll get it up to 1GB...

I'm happy. :)

[wordmunger]

If they had done this one month ago, I would still be a subscriber. Too late now, everything is already transferred to my new ISP.

[Elan0204]

It's nice that Apple increased the storage space, but I don't think they increased it enough. I didn't subscribe to .Mac before because I didn't think it was worth it, and this storage increase hasn't changed my mind.

One thing that I did think was nice about the storage increase is that you can decide how you want to divide it between your email box and your iDisk. So if you don't need much email space, but need to store more files, you can up your iDisk and have a small inbox. But, if you don't really use your iDisk, and you can devote your entire 250MB to email.

[munkle]

A step in the right direction but a case of too little, too late.

[zedwards]

This does have 1 Gig, so you can hand over those CC# to apple again :) I was going to go to gmail, but then after using it, I like mac mail better. But I still wasn't going to renew because the small amount of disk space avail.

[the_mole1314]

Tell me when they give me 2 gigs for email and storage and I'll look into .mac.

[reaper]

First post in a long time... I think it's great that Apple has finally decided to get their act together and up the storage. It's not great, but for the functionality you get with iDisk and the integration with the OS it's definitely a better combo now with more storage. I agree more storage would be better, but I'm willing to forgo a little space for the enhanced functionality.

- Reaper

[Doctor Q]

Disk space gets cheaper over time, so you'd expect storage to increase over time. For Apple and other e-mail services, they raise the amount of space you get for the same price, rather than lowering the price for the same storage. Big jumps in storage space came in response to Google's Gmail service, but every e-mail service would be expected to increase storage space now and then in any case.

[macridah]

What's the deal ... 1 GB is what the competitors are giving away, so apple should be competitive. Apple does offer a little more than just an email service, but giving 1/4 less than gmail is not right.

I would have no complains about 500MB and be super happey with 1GB.

[g4cubed]

What I like is that I can give iDisk most of the 250MB since I have several emails accounts.

Still not enough storage for the price, but a move in the right direction. :D

[nacl99]

What's the deal ... 1 GB is what the competitors are giving away, so apple should be competitive. Apple does offer a little more than just an email service, but giving 1/4 less than gmail is not right.

I would have no complains about 500MB and be super happey with 1GB.

As far as I know this argument is null. You can't compare G-Mail is .mac. Sure G-mail gives you a gig for email, but thats just it, email, the chances of you ever getting to use any substantial portion of that is nill. You can't use that gig as a HD as in .mac and you can't host your website with that gig. The point is, G-mail knows you cannot use the whole gig, its just not that doable with email. However if .mac offered 1 gig, most people would fill it, with files, and such.

Not that comparable, but at the same time you could say that by paying for .mac, you should be able to have a gig. that makes more sense.

[pgwalsh]

What Apple is chargin for .Mac they should increase the space to 5 GB with all the bells and whistles. Then people would be stoked.

[BornAgainMac]

They give you 1 GB if you pay an extra $49 bucks a year.
Wasn't it $400 dollars a year more? I won't mind paying $49 a year.

[AmigoMac]

Right, Doctor Q, (again, No Miss Q) ;) ... Storage becomes cheaper with the time, when .mac users become 1GB, Gmail will probably go to 2 GB.

IMO, a big plus of .mac is the mail at every single moment you want, no advertising, high efficient junk filter and it will become better as soon as Tiger comes... iDisk is part of the service, for me/us has worked just perfect to transfer files on the fly from work to home, share with people at the other side of the planet, now apple needs to hurry with a new iApp to edit the templates while offline ...

[gskiser]

.Mac is a pathetic joke. I cancelled when Apple started charging for it. I wouldn't have minded paying for it if it was competetive. They only gave you one email address, and charged you for additional addresses. Even with the 250MB storage now, its a joke.

Currently I have Comcast for my ISP. With them my price is $43, which includes a speed of 3000k download and 256 upload. Also they give me 7 email accounts, and 250MB online storage for each of the 7 accounts. That's 1.75 Gigs total.

What is Apple charging now anyway, $99/year? For $43, I get 7x what they offer, plus high speed internet access. Sure, I don't have the @mac.com email, or those stupid iCards, but who cares. Oh, I forgot their backup software. What can I back up on a mesely 250MB iDisk, and if I'm backing up on my external drive or DVD-R, why do I need .Mac? Its rather insulting that they think I'm that naive. Apple's .Mac program is a joke, at least thats my opinon. Feel free to disagree.

[MacPhreak]

Excellent!

I know some folks dislike .mac, but it's a blessing for me. I can make web pages for my photos in a couple of clicks, I can sync all my Macs, and I've got a reliable NON-FREE email address (very important, since it's very unprofessional-looking to send professional emails from a free Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail account, not to mention the usernames...fanboy1283183@...yech).

My 2¢.

[havok416]

A couple of Photoshop files and some high resolution photos can take care of that 250MB in one shot. It's a nice gesture, but at $139 Canadian it's just not worth it in my opinion. Even the average home user can wipe that out with a hunderd or so photos on a few HomePages. If any of you know someone that's just had a baby, hunderds of photos is nothing! :p

[MacPhreak]

Currently I have Comcast for my ISP. With them my price is $43, which includes a speed of 3000k download and 256 upload. Also they give me 7 email accounts, and 250MB online storage for each of the 7 accounts. That's 1.75 Gigs total.


But that's $43 per MONTH, right? For a grand total of $516 per year. Vs $8.25 a month with .mac.

As always, my 2¢.

[snowdog]

You can't use that gig as a HD as in .mac and you can't host your website with that gig.

If you have a linux box, you can, check out this cool hack for mounting your Gmail-space as a filesystem under linux
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-filesystem/gmail-filesystem.html

[wrldwzrd89]

I'm certainly happy about this news. It's not something that would have influenced whether or not I renew (I was going to renew anyway even if this increase did not occur). I'll be devoting the majority of the space to my iDisk.

[CrackedButter]

Anyway, i'm happy, I knew this was happening and thats why I renewed my subscription, i know there are cheaper options out there but i'm lazy to chase every deal going and the integration with iphoto for example is very nice to have.

Its worth it for me.

[psxndc]

If they had done this one month ago, I would still be a subscriber. Too late now, everything is already transferred to my new ISP.

Ditto. Just canceled this weekend. I tried .mac and it really didn't offer me anything compelling to justify the $100. Photo publishing? Wife uses snapfish. Email? got a couple of those already. Software discounts/freebies? Nothing really to get excited over. Backup? I don't really back up to CDs, I back up to two different computers. Storage? 250MB? No offense, but I can buy that in a KEYCHAIN.

Sorry Apple. I need something more.

Now if Apple could find some way to integrate it all, that could be compelling. Like a 1-stop shop for it all. As it is currently presented, .mac is a hodgepodge of different features, none of which really stand on their own.


-p-

[snahabed]

The best part to me is that .mac mail attachments can now be up to 10MB.

I had to open a bloody yahoo account just to receive email over 3MB before!

Yay :)

[brossow]

Tell me when they give me 2 gigs for email and storage and I'll look into .mac.

You can get it right now. You just have to pay for it. :p

[Ho Train]

hmmm...more space...I like.

It drives me nuts to hear people compare .mac with things like g-mail. In my opinion, you need to compare apples with apples. Sure, .Mac only provides you with 250 mb of webspace, but the functionality that I get with .Mac (posting pictures, movies, journals) and the ease of use (making webpages has never been easier in my opinion). I could find cheaper alternatives but those alternatives usually involves a little bit more elbow grease to get things running.

And honestly...what am I going to do with 1000MB of webspace that I can't do with 250 MB? OOO...I know...I'll upload a DVD rip of Nemo...

[bcsmith]

Now if Apple could find some way to integrate it all, that could be compelling. Like a 1-stop shop for it all. As it is currently presented, .mac is a hodgepodge of different features, none of which really stand on their own.


How is it not integrated? It's all at one website with a nice sidebar to pick the function you want. Also, most of the features are integrated into the appropriate app on your computer - iPhoto, Backup, Mail, Finder, etc.

Plus, Apple has said that it intends on further integrating .Mac into Tiger.

Just my $0.02

-- Ben

[DELKIN]

I use .mac and find the integration with the many apple programs nice. One thing I really wish they would increase is the size of emails allowed. They have this capped below 4meg per email and it sucks becasue you can't send a high res photo. I have inquired about increasing the amount and they don't offer any options there. I am still a subscriber and will remain so but as nice as the storage increase is I wish they would have addressed this issue.

[zim]

they have also increased the add on email only accounts to 50MB :)

[pgwalsh]

But that's $43 per MONTH, right? For a grand total of $516 per year. Vs $8.25 a month with .mac.

As always, my 2¢.Right, but it includes broadband access. So factor in how much broadband is and then redue your calculations.

[Elan0204]

It's interesting that this announcement came right after the big September renewal period. From reading through this thread, it looks like a few of you decided not to renew. Maybe Apple was losing a lot of .Mac subscribers, so they made this quick increase in storage as a way to hopefully slow the bleeding.

[nacl99]

A much better thing then a .mac account is just buying your own hosting.

This (http://www.bluehost.com) is one of many cheap hosts out there. and for a mere $6.95/mo (host) + 8.95/yr (domain) you can get all of the following


Your own Domain. lastname.com if you like
not 1 but 1000 pop3 or imap email addresses @lastname.com
2 gig of space, that you can FTP to, and even setup a folder in OSX to link and connect automaticaly


Thats just a start, you also get spam assassin, and of course a much larger number of options for your website hosting.

This seems like the answer? Sure it doesn't do everything, but most of the key features of .mac are there.

[strngwys]

It's interesting that this announcement came right after the big September renewal period. From reading through this thread, it looks like a few of you decided not to renew. Maybe Apple was losing a lot of .Mac subscribers, so they made this quick increase in storage as a way to hopefully slow the bleeding.


yeah it would have made more sense to roll this out in August.

[MattG]

Nice :)

Another good reason to renew my account again next year.

[gskiser]

But that's $43 per MONTH, right? For a grand total of $516 per year. Vs $8.25 a month with .mac.

As always, my 2¢.
True. You're right in that it is a monthly charge. However, $516 per year gets me internet access and 7x the online storage space. You've got to have internet access anyway to use .Mac. Given the features my ISP provides as part of their regular internet access, would I tack on an extra $100 (or $8.25/month) for .Mac?

Apple has to realize that we're not going to give them our money simply because they're apple. Sure we love apple, and love our macs, but Apple still has to offer me something of value and that is competetive in order for me to shell out my money. As I said before, its somewhat of an insult to their customers because it is so overpriced for what you are actually getting.

[wrldwzrd89]

I actually went ahead and upgraded my account to 1024 MB total storage. I allocated 15 MB to email and 1009 MB to iDisk. I did this because I like .Mac so much and I was waiting for the 1024 MB upgrade to become cheaper.

[MacPhreak]

Right, but it includes broadband access. So factor in how much broadband is and then redue your calculations.

He's paying $516/year for broadband & webspace & I'll give him $75/year for the .mac disk space. I'm docking the $25 because you don't get sync, backup, iApp integration, which is definately worth $25/year; probably more like $50, but I digress...

$516-75=$441/year for broadband only, or $36.75/mo.

If you must:
$516-100=$416/year, or $34.67/mo.
But as I said, I don't think this is a fair calculation, since you are giving up a bunch of .mac functionality.

Personally, I think if your broadband is more than $30-35/mo, you're paying too much. My 1mb down/256k up DSL is $25/mo. Typical cable here is 2mb down/256k up & is $26/month for the first 6 months, then to $35/mo IIRC. Faster cable is available...for a price.

[BornAgainMac]

I use .mac and find the integration with the many apple programs nice. One thing I really wish they would increase is the size of emails allowed. They have this capped below 4meg per email and it sucks becasue you can't send a high res photo. I have inquired about increasing the amount and they don't offer any options there. I am still a subscriber and will remain so but as nice as the storage increase is I wish they would have addressed this issue.

Try it now. It's 10 mb.

[Bendit]

For everyone who is saying that Apple should have 1GB of storage because everyone has it:

Google and other mails services can offer 1GB of storage because they compress everything. 1GB of email text can be compressed to a ridiculously small amount.

The iDisk is for files which cannot be practically compressed. It is 250mb of REAL storage accessible via the finder. It can not be compared to gmail storage.

The only difference I want to see with .Mac is the price cut 50% and the webmail interface improved. It is very slow and graphic heavy.

[virividox]

OOoooo maybe i will get .mac this year i never found 100 megs enough

[Bendit]

Oh and another thing: My .Mac account expires this week and I have no plans to renew it. Spotty email access, slow iDisk access and $100 a year doesn't do it for me. Owning a mac is far too expensive (yearly iLife updates, OS X updates, .Mac) for me.

[edesignuk]

If I didn't have so many people/websites with my .Mac address I'd drop it, but I think I may have to wait until next year now. I need some time to move everything over to another account (Gmail! + got loads of my own webspace)

[j_maddison]

hmmm...more space...I like.

It drives me nuts to hear people compare .mac with things like g-mail. In my opinion, you need to compare apples with apples. Sure, .Mac only provides you with 250 mb of webspace, but the functionality that I get with .Mac (posting pictures, movies, journals) and the ease of use (making webpages has never been easier in my opinion). I could find cheaper alternatives but those alternatives usually involves a little bit more elbow grease to get things running.

And honestly...what am I going to do with 1000MB of webspace that I can't do with 250 MB? OOO...I know...I'll upload a DVD rip of Nemo...

Seeing as you like to compare Apples to Apples, just thought I'd help keep you being a nut! joke :)

Spymac offer 3Gig of e mail storage and many of the sync functions of isync, you also get 250mb of online storage as standard (idisk type service),and you get blogging (personally not a fan of blogging, but some people like it). So pretty much the only thing you lose is the ability to publish a .mac website (which doesnt interest me in the slightest), and for me being a uk person, i dont get so annoyed all the USA only offers that Apple are keen to advertise on their .mac homepage :) OH and it costs an extortionate $39.99 a year! Now how do you like them Apples :p

jay

[narco]

I've been a .mac subscriber since the beginning, mostly because when it was still iTools and FREE, I made my .mac address my default one. The only reason I hadn't transfered it to a different address is for two reasons:

a) Too much hassle.
b) Having an @mac.com address flaunts my OS of choice.

250MB is good, but I need better. .Mac has been getting better with the email servers being down, but I need:

The ability to send LARGER file attachments.

I'm sure most will agree with me. What is it now, 3MB? Pshh!

Also, I'd like to be able to use my own design programs for my homepage.mac.com space. Whenever I put an index.html file in the right directory, it says "file not found". Anyone know why?

.narco

[brossow]

Storage? 250MB? No offense, but I can buy that in a KEYCHAIN.

But can your keychain share web pages and files with anyone in the world, 24/7/365? I didn't think so. :p

[Steven1621]

Nice. Now maybe some day they'll get it up to 1GB...

I'm happy. :)

gmail's GB is certainly nice, but essentially overkill in the end. most emails are 2-4k each. 250 MB is more than enough for users...

[narco]

Seeing as you like to compare Apples to Apples, just thought I'd help keep you being a nut! joke :)

Spymac offer 3Gig of e mail storage and many of the sync functions of isync, you also get 250mb of online storage as standard (idisk type service),and you get blogging (personally not a fan of blogging, but some people like it). So pretty much the only thing you lose is the ability to publish a .mac website (which doesnt interest me in the slightest), and for me being a uk person, i dont get so annoyed all the USA only offers that Apple are keen to advertise on their .mac homepage :) OH and it costs an extortionate $39.99 a year! Now how do you like them Apples :p

jay

Sounds great, when it actually WORKS. Plus, having an @spymac.com name isn't the same. The word "spy" just bugs me, and it's not a good word to throw around on the internet.

Plus, honestly, who needs 3 GIGS of email? I've saved every email since '98, and I get a lot of PDF, TIFF, JPG attachments every day from my work and I have barely broken the 3gig mark. They might as well offer a terabyte of storage because they know the average user isn't going to use all of that.

.narco

[t300]

I wish .Mac was more of a community than a service. I wish there were message boards, more specials and discounts, FREE things, Apple Store exlusives for members, etc. I really wish that there were exclusive .Mac gatherings at Apple Stores. THAT would be the coolest. Anyone else like that idea?

[snahabed]

250MB is good, but I need better. .Mac has been getting better with the email servers being down, but I need:

The ability to send LARGER file attachments.

I'm sure most will agree with me. What is it now, 3MB? Pshh!


How many more people are going to ask this same thing?

Not one did I mention above that it has been increased to 10MB, someone ELSE asked after that, someone ELSE answered again, and now you ASK AGAIN.

FILE ATTACHMENTS CAN NOW BE UP TO 10MB. :)

[j_maddison]

Sounds great, when it actually WORKS. Plus, having an @spymac.com name isn't the same. The word "spy" just bugs me, and it's not a good word to throw around on the internet.

Plus, honestly, who needs 3 GIGS of email? I've saved every email since '98, and I get a lot of PDF, TIFF, JPG attachments every day from my work and I have barely broken the 3gig mark. They might as well offer a terabyte of storage because they know the average user isn't going to use all of that.

.narco

Its called sarcasm, I ws just having a laugh because the guy was so agitated at the fact people didnt like the new storage limit apple have introduced. I guess this type of humour is a UK thing.

I agre with you, I'd find a 3 gig idisk very handy, but your right 3 gig of e mail storage is a bit much at the moment. if there was no limit on the size of atachments , then a gig of e mail storage would be quite handy.

Still .mac needs to be cheaper, its darn pricey here in the UK.

jay

[iMeowbot]

Apple do sponsor and promote docmac.info as a way of offering a community-like thing, but it is independently operated.

More free stuff would always be welcome, though :D

[nagromme]

If you're buying .Mac for just the storage GB or just the email, then you're not buying wisely. If you're buying for ALL or most of the MANY features, including easy OS X integration (iDisk, iSync, Backup, etc.) and free/discounted software, then you know why GMail in no way competes with the .Mac package.

Personally, I doubt that very many people really need the whole package that .Mac offers. So don't buy it... I didn't :D And I'm talking my parents into dropping .Mac since they only use email anyway. Yet I don't see people who TRULY use .Mac's features complaining.

It's like saying Photoshop costs too much because you can re-size photos for free with other apps. You probably shouldn't be a Photoshop customer :)

It would be great if Apple offered lower and higher versions of .Mac. But they only offer one, and if it's not for you, leave it to the folks who DO need it.

[iMeowbot]

But can your keychain share web pages and files with anyone in the world, 24/7/365? I didn't think so. :p
If a Web server can be put into a fly (http://www.conceptlab.com/fly/), why not a keychain?

A 256MB USB fly would be so cool to have.

[Stella]

Its an OK upgrade and about time too, however, I wish apple would update .Mac with other services, i.e., such as the following.

- add PHP hosting
Useful for a lot of people - yes ppl would say that 'newbies' wouldn't use it, but so what, a lot of others would. Yes, you could buy WebHosting- but if you have webhosting there isn't a lot of point having .Mac - email services, web hostings, online space all included.

- Blog, ( perhaps Apple could rip off iBlog ;-) )

.Mac hasn't changed much at all.. still much the same feature list as two years ago - but the email aliases are very useful though.

[wrldwzrd89]

If you're buying .Mac for just the storage GB or just the email, then you're not buying wisely. If you're buying for ALL or most of the MANY features, including easy OS X integration (iDisk, iSync, Backup, etc.) and free/discounted software, then you know why GMail in no way competes with the .Mac package.

Personally, I doubt that very many people really need the whole package that .Mac offers. So don't buy it... I didn't :D I don't see people who truly use .Mac's features complaining.

It's like saying Photoshop costs too much because you can re-size photos for free with other apps. You probably shouldn't be a Photoshop customer :)

It would be great if Apple offered lower and higher versions of .Mac. But they only offer one, and if it's not for you, leave it to the folks who DO need it.
I use iSync, iDisk, and email the most of all the .Mac features. I don't use Backup right now, but I might use it in the future. I'll continue to use Carbon Copy Cloner as my primary means of backing up even if I do use Backup (which is extremely easy to use). Being able to see my Safari bookmarks anywhere I can log into .Mac is one of the bigger reasons I'm staying with the service. I don't really use/need any of the discounts .Mac members are offered - in fact I basically ignore most of them.

[PrometheusG5]

I really like my .Mac service...if for no other reason than i like having a mac.com email address.

Now if there was only a way to partition the space so one could allocate more to mail, less to iDisk, or vice-versa. I already had upgraded my mail storage to 200 Mb, so Apple upgraded both my iDisk and mail storage to 512Mb each. I think I would probably only use 200 Mb of my iDisk, and I'd much prefer to allocate the rest to mail.

EDIT: Ooops, I didn't look at my .Mac account settings. I CAN partition it. Woo-hoo!

[dontmatter]

OK, storage costs me (ME! full retail prices!) about a dollar a GB. Gmail will sport 1 GB for free. But apple is getting paid many dollars, and buys everything in bulk. SO WHY SO LITTLE STORAGE!! Bump it up to 5 GB, for MAYBE $5 in expenses, given the cost of servers and bandwith, and then you could claim to be a bit better than AOL. Not to mention, look, apple! make .mac worthwhile, and all sorts of email will be coming from something@mac.com.... letting the windows world know there are mac users! Or maybe we've sunk so far we only email eachother....

[dontmatter]

If you're buying .Mac for just the storage GB or just the email, then you're not buying wisely. If you're buying for ALL or most of the MANY features, including easy OS X integration (iDisk, iSync, Backup, etc.) and free/discounted software, then you know why GMail in no way competes with the .Mac package.

Personally, I doubt that very many people really need the whole package that .Mac offers. So don't buy it... I didn't :D And I'm talking my parents into dropping .Mac since they only use email anyway. Yet I don't see people who TRULY use .Mac's features complaining.

It's like saying Photoshop costs too much because you can re-size photos for free with other apps. You probably shouldn't be a Photoshop customer :)

It would be great if Apple offered lower and higher versions of .Mac. But they only offer one, and if it's not for you, leave it to the folks who DO need it.

It's not a matter of buying it based on size, because as you say, there are many other great features. It's a matter of NOT buying it, because of lack of size, because size is pretty darned basic, and not having enough can ruin it. And, no, if you want to send and recieve pictures, maybe a video clip, etc. and you don't want to pay attention to old email that might have something you need, but is as fun to delete as spam, then 250 MB is NOT enough.

[Xtremehkr]

I have few complaints about .Mac, it has been getting steadily better. I have a gmail account, it's not as easy as .Mac. I've gotten so used to hearing the 'pop' whenever mail arrives. But the capacity was very low for a paid service.

My gmail and .Mac addresses are the same, but I use one for web stuff and the other is the one that everyone I know has. Even with a good filter, registering on the intraweb for anything is an open invitation for spam.

.Mac isn't completely free of spam, some unscrupulous fellow .Mac subscribers will send spam out occaisionally. But it is really minor compared to most email services.

What I would like to see from .Mac is much better web publishing options. Maybe even image hosting. I use the web function to host my own images occaisionally but the quality is poor, images small.

I would feel better if I could post images to the internet without having to give up ownership of my own pictures.

Maybe you can already do that, I don't know.

[Stewie]

Seeing as you like to compare Apples to Apples, just thought I'd help keep you being a nut! joke :)

Spymac offer 3Gig of e mail storage and many of the sync functions of isync, you also get 250mb of online storage as standard (idisk type service),and you get blogging (personally not a fan of blogging, but some people like it). So pretty much the only thing you lose is the ability to publish a .mac website (which doesnt interest me in the slightest), and for me being a uk person, i dont get so annoyed all the USA only offers that Apple are keen to advertise on their .mac homepage :) OH and it costs an extortionate $39.99 a year! Now how do you like them Apples :p

jay


Spymac is such a joke. It is run by amatures that don't even have a process for testing software before they release it. They have no clue how to configure their own IMAP mail server (who the hell would put sent & trash folders under the Inbox?) And don't even get me started on the amount of time that Spymac is actually working. I only had to spend $20 to upgrade to the 3GB service and I regret giving those fools that $20 everyday. Don't waste you time on money on Spymac!

[Stewie]

- Blog, ( perhaps Apple could rip off iBlog ;-) )
.

iBlog was a free download for .Mac subscribers some time ago.

[LimeiBook86]

I just changed my iDisk space to 235mb and my e-mail to 15mb.

Thank You Apple! :)

A few things, I know Apple had a free .Mac software special called "iBlog" which is perfectly fine for me so I don't know how they can improve on it. :)

screenshot!

[narco]

"I’m not bad. I’ve never been bad... I’m fairly new to mild naughtiness.”.

YES, brilliant quote. Jeff totally made that show!

I also agree about Spymac. From what I understand, the 1gig email thing was extremely last minute. They pretty much heard the news about Gmail and decided to do it first, but they obviously didn't think about the consequences. Their "community" went from 30,000 to 770,000 in just a couple months. If they were to offer all this to only the Mac community (which the site is supposed to be about in the first place) then it wouldn't be so bad.

.narco

[denm316]

.Mac is something that I like simply for the e-mail address and mostly the iPhoto integration. I know my way around web pages and can code half decently, however when I just want to sit down at home and get some pictures from a party off my camera and onto the web .Mac makes it quick, simple andeasy. I am not saying FTP'ing the files up and creating a quick web page is all that hard, but after working on a computer for 9+ hours a day, I feel like doing the easiest things when I get home. Hence why I have a Power Mac at home.

As for the backup software, it is nice and is also easy, I never backup to the web, just use it to backup to an external drive or a DVD now and then.

I think it is a good upgrade and also have a feeling we will see another increase in the near future with the fact that Tiger will integrate more with .Mac as I am sure iLife '05 will too.

Just my $0.02

[notkevin]

I am going to just let my .Mac subscription run out. 250M just isn't that much space now-a-days and they haven't added anything decent in a long time. Up the Web/Mail space to a gig and I'll subscribe again.

[iN8]

I renewed yesterday before I even knew about the upgrade. Not having to change all of my online accounts to reflect a new email address and change all my stationary is reason enough. This is just a plus.

The only thing I would ask for is for them to upgrade the email only option to around 15Mb. It is at five now and it is kinda small. Abilty to use it with iChat and Backup would be nice too. A family option would be good too, $99 for the first full account and $50 for the second full account and so on. I don't know, I just expect (want) more.

[Porchland]

What is Apple charging now anyway, $99/year? For $43, I get 7x what they offer, plus high speed internet access. Sure, I don't have the @mac.com email, or those stupid iCards, but who cares. Oh, I forgot their backup software. What can I back up on a mesely 250MB iDisk, and if I'm backing up on my external drive or DVD-R, why do I need .Mac? Its rather insulting that they think I'm that naive. Apple's .Mac program is a joke, at least thats my opinon. Feel free to disagree.

That's the real point: .mac doesn't justify its cost. I don't know that there's a killer app out there to add necessarily, but the reason I don't subscribe to .mac is definitely cost vs. features.

[coolfactor]

Apple's .Mac program is a joke, at least thats my opinon. Feel free to disagree.

.Mac is much more than email and online storage. For one purchase a year, I get a whole lot more value. With four computers, a Palm, and an iPod (basically six computers, more to come), .Mac makes life so easy:

- Address Book everywhere
- Calendar everywhere
- email everywhere
- Safari bookmarks everywhere
- Backup application
- free anti-virus (not that I need it)
- HomePage
- free and discounted software

... the fact that it is built on a model of "continously improving" shows me that I'll continue to get more value throughout my subscription.

Here in Canada, the subscription fee is ridiculous compared to the price in the US, but I bite the bullet anyway, and I'm glad I did this year. More storage has been my biggest request.

[AmigoMac]

Dear Steve,

Pls. fix a.s.a.p the message that prevents me to sync my iDisk automatically, yeah, I know you have just upgrade the iDisk storage and since then (This afternoon, CET) I get only the message that my iDisk is bigger than my iDisk in my Mac, and it displays the old capacity... nevermind, great update, now, do not forget the web publishing app., we need the templates offline.

.mac user 100/150 :)

[SiliconAddict]

OK then theoretical discussion. How much disk space is acceptable for $99?

Personally I would if Apple would up the iDisk to 650MB. A CD's worth of data for $99 a year would be acceptable but they would also have to backup the data. I read that Apple doesn't backup your iDisk. That is BS. You are paying for a service from Apple. They damn well should be backing up the files that are in their care.

[denm316]

No one has really mentioned the fact that they added the ability to create aliases, which I think is a cool feature. Not that this should break the bank, but everyone is pointing out negatice things and I think this is a positive thing.

[danlan]

I'm probably missing something obvious... but i could'nt find the place for allocating more room to my iDisk [decreasing .mac mail storage...]

thanks,
/d.

[SumoHamster]

OK, storage costs me (ME! full retail prices!) about a dollar a GB.

I hear this type of thing quite often from students at the university I work at. They wonder why their quotas are so low when disk space is so cheap. I don't know what type of servers Apple is running for .Mac, but I know we use Netapp file servers here. They aren't cheap, but they are very reliable. It is usually the case that it's much cheaper to go to CompUSA or Fry's and buy a massive hard drive, but we can't do that and maintain our uptime requirements.

[Bendit]

Not to mention that they most surely back up the data and that costs money and so do the back up systems and redundant systems.

[bryanzak]

I'm probably missing something obvious... but i could'nt find the place for allocating more room to my iDisk [decreasing .mac mail storage...]
Click the Account icon at the bottom of the sidebar on the left. Then click the Storage Settings button.

[daddy-mojo]

.Mac is a pathetic joke. I cancelled when Apple started charging for it. I wouldn't have minded paying for it if it was competetive. They only gave you one email address, and charged you for additional addresses. Even with the 250MB storage now, its a joke.

Currently I have Comcast for my ISP. With them my price is $43, which includes a speed of 3000k download and 256 upload. Also they give me 7 email accounts, and 250MB online storage for each of the 7 accounts. That's 1.75 Gigs total.

What is Apple charging now anyway, $99/year? For $43, I get 7x what they offer, plus high speed internet access. Sure, I don't have the @mac.com email, or those stupid iCards, but who cares. Oh, I forgot their backup software. What can I back up on a mesely 250MB iDisk, and if I'm backing up on my external drive or DVD-R, why do I need .Mac? Its rather insulting that they think I'm that naive. Apple's .Mac program is a joke, at least thats my opinon. Feel free to disagree.

don't be such an accountant, look at the actual functionality. yes there's room for improvement, I agree there should be at least one basic extra email address included, but for an extra $10 a year its not so bad (less then a buck a month). The integration in X makes it well worth it (its only 9 bucks a month afterall). But its not going to be an ideal solution for everyone, obviously. Its not a pathetic joke though, its keeps getting better. Look beyond the dollar signs and see the amount of time & effort it saves because of the integration. Bigger better picture.
:rolleyes:

[dejo]

I'm probably missing something obvious... but i could'nt find the place for allocating more room to my iDisk [decreasing .mac mail storage...]

thanks,
/d.

Go to the Account Settings page of your .Mac account and then click on the Storage Settings button.

[daddy-mojo]

But that's $43 per MONTH, right? For a grand total of $516 per year. Vs $8.25 a month with .mac.

As always, my 2¢.

I agree!!! $51.25 per month. not to shabby and you get it all.

[daddy-mojo]

I wish .Mac was more of a community than a service. I wish there were message boards, more specials and discounts, FREE things, Apple Store exlusives for members, etc. I really wish that there were exclusive .Mac gatherings at Apple Stores. THAT would be the coolest. Anyone else like that idea?

yah, I agree, something to bring the community together. Anyone remember E-World? I used to get so involved with various art & photo forums with people who are mac users not looking for rumors or news but and exchange of ideas. Exclusives deals would be a cool thing.

[yippy]

Yea, you buy .mac for the integration with Apple apps. I have been thinking of getting it for the backup app. It is exactly what I have been trying to wright on my own. I mean I can write it myself, but it isn't very good, realiable or flexable. (the best i have been able to do is basicly have it run a bunch of ditto comands) Granted, I am no proggrammer and am using Applescript and Xcode. And 250 mb is plenty for me online.

[gskiser]

don't be such an accountant, look at the actual functionality. yes there's room for improvement, I agree there should be at least one basic extra email address included, but for an extra $10 a year its not so bad (less then a buck a month). The integration in X makes it well worth it (its only 9 bucks a month afterall). But its not going to be an ideal solution for everyone, obviously. Its not a pathetic joke though, its keeps getting better. Look beyond the dollar signs and see the amount of time & effort it saves because of the integration. Bigger better picture.
:rolleyes:

Yes, an extra email is just $10/year, but thats on top of the $100 your already spending. As far as the integration with X, I'm sure they integrate just fine. My contention was that the features are pretty useless (virus protection, iCards, etc... Who cares how well something integrates if those programs integrating don't provide much of a value or purpose.

I don't think I'm being much of an accountant. If I feel something has a unique value or purpose, I'll spend money on it. Sure it might be getting better, but that doesn't mean its good yet. I'm not going to pay for it currently just because its gotten slightly 'better' over the past 2 years. I'll wait until its actually gotten 'good'.

I do agree with you though that its not for everyone and each person has to make their own decision on it. I'm just stating that for me personally, it is currently very overpriced for the amount of use or time saved it would provide.

[SumoHamster]

This (http://www.bluehost.com) is one of many cheap hosts out there. and for a mere $6.95/mo (host) + 8.95/yr (domain) you can get all of the following

<snip>


Thanks for pointing this out! This looks better than the host I'm currently using. It also appears that if you buy a 12 or 24-month membership, you get the domain free.

:D

[gskiser]

.Mac is much more than email and online storage. For one purchase a year, I get a whole lot more value. With four computers, a Palm, and an iPod (basically six computers, more to come), .Mac makes life so easy:

- Address Book everywhere
- Calendar everywhere
- email everywhere
- Safari bookmarks everywhere
- Backup application
- free anti-virus (not that I need it)
- HomePage
- free and discounted software

... the fact that it is built on a model of "continously improving" shows me that I'll continue to get more value throughout my subscription.

Here in Canada, the subscription fee is ridiculous compared to the price in the US, but I bite the bullet anyway, and I'm glad I did this year. More storage has been my biggest request.

With 4+ computers, then maybe it is a value for you. I only have two macs, and really only use one of them reguarly (laptop). I could see maybe it being more convenient for you. For me personally though, with only two computers, here are my thoughts:

- Address Book everywhere- I have a SonyEricsson P900 PDA/phone, so I have my address book everywhere, even away from my computer. It works great with iSync, so I sync it through bluetooth with both computers. Both computers as well as the PDA in turn end up having the same information.

- Calendar everywhere- Same as above.
- email everywhere - I have email everywhere with my ISP. I can access my email at any computer with an internet connection.

- Safari bookmarks everywhere - I don't use bookmarks that often. I know the sights I like. I guess if you had hundreds of bookmarks this would be nice, but worth paying for? Maybe, maybe not. Besides, unless you have numerous computers, whats the point?

- Backup application - I use Retrospect, which was free. I wouldn't even back up to iDisk if I had it (too small, too slow). I back up to an external hard drive. Retrospect does it automatically for me.

- free anti-virus (not that I need it)- Agree. My point exactly, I don't need it either.

- HomePage - I get a free homepage from my ISP. 7 of them actually (1 homepage for each of the 7 email accounts my ISP gives me, all with 250MB of storage each). Again, not a feature that most ISP offer you free with their internet service.

- free and discounted software - Haven't seen a software offered through .Mac that I'm really interested in. Plus, it just motivates you to spend more money. If you would have bought the software anyway, then maybe its a value, but if it 'motivates' you to buy it, you're spending even more.

[ddbean]

.They only gave you one email address, and charged you for additional addresses. .

Maybe I missed something but isn't this what the FREE email alias is for? If you're given free alias, why would you need more addresses?

[aswitcher]

.Mac is much more than email and online storage. For one purchase a year, I get a whole lot more value. With four computers, a Palm, and an iPod (basically six computers, more to come), .Mac makes life so easy:

- Address Book everywhere
- Calendar everywhere
- email everywhere
- Safari bookmarks everywhere
- Backup application
- free anti-virus (not that I need it)
- HomePage
- free and discounted software

... the fact that it is built on a model of "continously improving" shows me that I'll continue to get more value throughout my subscription.

Here in Canada, the subscription fee is ridiculous compared to the price in the US, but I bite the bullet anyway, and I'm glad I did this year. More storage has been my biggest request.

I have .Mac but even with all these features I primarily have it because I have high hopes that Apple will more closely intergrate it with the OS with Tiger (as per WWDC 2004) and will keep giving us new stuff every few months.

[Savage Henry]

This may seem like one of those empty pointless remarks, but I don't think the improvements are that bad. I thought they were going to have to upgrade the package, so overall I'm glad I kept the subscription going.

[James Craner]

I use just about all of the features of .mac, and for me I think that it worth the price. I find really useful and easy to post photo's directly from iPhoto and Video clips direct from iMovie straight into our family webpage. I can't be bothered to create my own webpages from scratch and don't have the time.

[edesignuk]

http://upload.yo-momma.net/uploads/forums/dotmacgiveusyamoney.jpg

[iN8]

Maybe I missed something but isn't this what the FREE email alias is for? If you're given free alias, why would you need more addresses?

If someone else in your home needs an address they can get one of their own. All mail sent to the aliases come to the original address.

[wrldwzrd89]

Dear Steve,

Pls. fix a.s.a.p the message that prevents me to sync my iDisk automatically, yeah, I know you have just upgrade the iDisk storage and since then (This afternoon, CET) I get only the message that my iDisk is bigger than my iDisk in my Mac, and it displays the old capacity... nevermind, great update, now, do not forget the web publishing app., we need the templates offline.

.mac user 100/150 :)
You have to disable the local iDisk and enable it again for it to sync properly.

[aswitcher]

You have to disable the local iDisk and enable it again for it to sync properly.

Ok, I have stuffed around with iDisk utility etc and can't seem to fix this problem. Could you please walk me through what I need to do to get my iDisk working again...would have been nice if that email from Apple announcing the changes had mentioned this...

[ASP272]

I must agree with many others and say "too little, too late". I once had a .mac account and it didn't impress me too much. But I also must agree that the 250mb is a step in the right direction. But let's face it, most Mac users are handling lots of photos, videos, audio files or other space consuming data that makes 250mb seem obsurd!

Come on Apple, step up to the plate and offer some REAL space to .mac consumers, then you'll have a viable product.

[jcshas]

About frickin' time! I'm sure that I'll make good use of the additional iDisk storage space, but additional e-mail space isn’t something I really need (Just how many messages does one really need to keep?). My current ISP already matches the 125 MB of e-mail storage Apple had finally offered up. My .Mac subscription is up for renewal in November, and I'm really debating whether or not I'm going to renew it. About the only thing I would miss is the seamless integration with iPhoto, just not sure its really worth the $100.

[idkew]

guess they listened to me, and i am sure others, as my membership went UNrenewed 4 days ago.

do not feel like i am missing out.




250mb for backup? HA! GBs sounds better to me, not MBs.

[iN8]

Ok, I have stuffed around with iDisk utility etc and can't seem to fix this problem. Could you please walk me through what I need to do to get my iDisk working again...would have been nice if that email from Apple announcing the changes had mentioned this...

Go to the .Mac control panel under the iDisk tab. Uncheck "Create a local copy of your iDisk" and close the control panel. Reopen the control panel and reselect same checkbox. It will place all contents of your previous iDosk in a disk image on your desktop and create a new iDisk from the one online. This may take a while.

[PrometheusG5]

I would assume it does, but you know what they say about assuming... :-)

Can anyone verify this? Thanks.

[Counterfit]

]Currently I have Comcast for my ISP. With them my price is $43, which includes a speed of 3000k download and 256 upload. Haha, you're getting ripped off! :D

Oh, and I just set mine to 20MB email/230MB iDisk, now to find about 200MB of useless crap to fill that space.

[MoparShaha]

I agree with others here. There are other options that are either free or are priced comparably with .Mac that offer significantly more storage space. I wouldn't subscribe to .Mac with anything less than 1 GB offered.

[tech4all]

Hmmm that's weird, its "supposed" to be at 250MB yet I only got 125MB? What gives? :confused: At least that's what it says in the Finder and System Prefrences.

[BWhaler]

I am a .Mac subscriber, and really could care less about the fact that are cheaper options out there. The fact that they seamless tie to OSX is very valuable to me. To have all of my contacts, bookmarks, etc, in sync is well worth the 100 bucks a year.

Plus, people ignore that with Google, Yahoo, etc., you get a low price because they pump ads to you, and in many cases, sell your information. No thanks.

In the information age, what is your privacy worth? It amazes me people don't factor this into the cost of doing business with companies.

WITH THAT SAID, I may cancel .Mac because of quality issues. iDisk is unbearably slow. Mail problems left and right. I have critical data on my iDisk, and it concerns me that this is not Apple's finest work. (maybe Microsoft's but not Apple's. :-)

Apple better get their act together on .Mac to keep it's customers. Hopefully Tiger will help, but Apple needs to put some great engineering minds on this and spend some $ on a few more xserves to get the speed and quality up.

[asphalt-proof]

He's paying $516/year for broadband & webspace & I'll give him $75/year for the .mac disk space. I'm docking the $25 because you don't get sync, backup, iApp integration, which is definately worth $25/year; probably more like $50, but I digress...

$516-75=$441/year for broadband only, or $36.75/mo.

If you must:
$516-100=$416/year, or $34.67/mo.
But as I said, I don't think this is a fair calculation, since you are giving up a bunch of .mac functionality.

Personally, I think if your broadband is more than $30-35/mo, you're paying too much. My 1mb down/256k up DSL is $25/mo. Typical cable here is 2mb down/256k up & is $26/month for the first 6 months, then to $35/mo IIRC. Faster cable is available...for a price.


Who is your provider and where do you live?? Here in a small town in NC its pretty much $40 amonth for 512/256. Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs. Never really did anyt checking to confirm it though. even so, they are also $40 a month. I would throw down $30 in a heartbeat for bradband. Actually my wife would let me. :p

[notkevin]

Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs.

I am using RR right now here in San Diego. I just put a Linksys router between the cable modem and the airport basestation and it works great.

[flyfish29]

What's the deal ... 1 GB is what the competitors are giving away, so apple should be competitive. Apple does offer a little more than just an email service, but giving 1/4 less than gmail is not right.

I would have no complains about 500MB and be super happey with 1GB.

I really don't want to see "relavant text ads in my email, etc. like Gmail is supposed to have. I think this is a positive thing and they are not trying to be a hard drive for everyone...they are trying to sell something to those mac users that are wanting things all in one place which takes money to create and maintain. There are many things in .Mac that you can't get other places or if you can it takes much more time on the users part to either find it or learn how to do it and it is not worth it. I like the ease of use and time it gives me to do other things. I don't like clipping coupons much because the time it takes is not worth the savings...same here. I use dvd's and other methods to back up and store info...not my .Mac.

[zim]

Hmmm that's weird, its "supposed" to be at 250MB yet I only got 125MB? What gives? :confused: At least that's what it says in the Finder and System Prefrences.

You need to log in to the .mac website and then in your settings you can set how you want to use the 250MB.

[MacFly]

Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs. :p

Macs work just fine with Roadrunner.

[asphalt-proof]

Macs work just fine with Roadrunner.

So is the guy clueless or is there some special trick involved. notkevin's approach seems cludgy but I'm having a hard time focusing rt. now so maybe I'm not thinking it through correctly. Thanks for the info though. I may give them a call tomorrow.

[deral]

YEY. I'm so excited, that I'm going to pee in my pants and die from hypothermia. I got seven more days left on my .mac membership, and there is no chance that I wasn't going to renew, but goodness, is this the Strawberry of the Whip Cream, eh? No more exceeding space emails for a while!!! YEY YEY.

(I'm simmering down now)

[tex210]

something that came to me on the mac thread, but applies here. A trunk, four legs and a tail. Some people are not seeing the whole.


1 at home one at the office. My partner, who would never be using a computer if it weren't for Mac, can handle opening his iDisk and dropping a proposal in to work on it at home. He syncs the calendar and address book! I could want to use all sorts of things to save a buck (I'm like that), but I can see how he accepts it. He uses it! I find that very valuable. I don't normally use the e-mail, but I must admit it has saved my hide once or twice. I'm ready to give homepage templates another go soon, but am currently using the site folder with something whipped up with go live 4.
Cheaper alternatives? I'll put my eggs in this basket.

edit: I use road runner here in San Antonio TX. Ethernet Cable modem directly into imac g3. Tech was so suprised I had it up and running with no drivers. He was used to installing software on the pc_s before the modems were recognized. Ipay Earthlink who uses roadrunner. Road runner collects the check, but I'm an Earthlink customer. At the time it was the better deal(see told you I was like that :D ).

[Gimzotoy]

So is the guy clueless or is there some special trick involved. notkevin's approach seems cludgy but I'm having a hard time focusing rt. now so maybe I'm not thinking it through correctly. Thanks for the info though. I may give them a call tomorrow.

The guy's definately clueless. I currently have 2 macs using my RoadRunner cable connection right now. No tricks, just plug it in.

Maybe he was just saying Time-Warner doesn't support Macs? Although even that makes no sense. They gave me an OS X setup disc I never even looked at when they brought the modem.

[scorpion]

The 15 MB was not enough for me, so recently I bought the next level (think it was 30 MB?) and here's what Apple did for me today:

We're excited to announce that every full .Mac membership now comes with 250 MB of combined .Mac Mail and iDisk storage. We want to say thank you for your past purchase of additional storage by immediately increasing your total storage to 1.2 GB for the duration of your current membership.

Pretty nice of them. And anybody who doubts .mac's value should do what I do for a living, where I literally have to exchange 40-60 meg files weekly with people. My designer was just working on a PDF which grew to 23MB. Too big for email, and having that iDisk meant the entire revision process was speeded up by weeks. My client (also a Mac user) just opened my iDisk and downloaded the PDF. Otherwise I'd need to FedEx CDs or deal with FTP which is just not as user-friendly for many people. Today I needed to get him a high res and he emailed me and said, "put it on the iDisk". I did so, emailed him back, and said "there it is". Bam (to quote Emeril)!. No muss, no fuss.

It's all about how you use the technology that matters. And the iDisk's desktop integration is a phenomenal part of the user experience.

[broken_keyboard]

What I want from .mac is the ability to turn off the spam filter. Until that can be disabled it can't be trusted.

Also they should clear out no longer used email addresses to give current subscibers the option to grab them. As it is there are hardly any good addresses left.

[tech4all]

You need to log in to the .mac website and then in your settings you can set how you want to use the 250MB.

Thanks! :p :D :)

[MacPhreak]

Who is your provider and where do you live?? Here in a small town in NC its pretty much $40 amonth for 512/256. Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs. Never really did anyt checking to confirm it though. even so, they are also $40 a month. I would throw down $30 in a heartbeat for bradband. Actually my wife would let me. :p

I'm in the Lexington, KY area. We have a different cable service here than Lexington, though (we have Adelphia, poor excuse for cable IMHO, LEX has Insight).

The cable deal is open to the public. My DSL ($25/mo) is an employee discount from my wife's job ;-), and it's $35 for everyone else (which I was paying up until recently). I've actually been thinking about jumping ship to cable for the faster downloads, but I'm not sure exactly how much faster they'd be, since it's a shared connection, and not a dedicated one like DSL. Then there's the security risks with the shared cable....

When my wife was living way out in the boonies before we got married, the only option for broadband was through Pegasus satellite (they provide DirectTV to rural areas), for $45/mo IIRC, and it was quite slow (256/56, I think). Don't know how the "up" part works with a satellite receiver, though.

[SeaFox]

If someone else in your home needs an address they can get one of their own. All mail sent to the aliases come to the original address.

Yes, but all the email is addressed to a different email address, making it a snap to set up a mail filter to move the messages into another folder when they come in. You can name the folder "(person's) Inbox".

I kinda laugh when I talk to people who set up universal POP email addresses for the whole family (ie smithfamily@isp.com). I know the idea is to keep track of who the kids are talking to and such. But the parents eventually realize what a stupid idea it is. The kids get loads of email the parents don't like sorting through, the parents don't want their kids accidently deleting their email.

Mail aliases would allow email to be easily separated into separate folders without having to maintain lists of sender's email addresses in filters or set up separate account (or identities for all those Windows/OE users).

[SeaFox]

What I want from .mac is the ability to turn off the spam filter. Until that can be disabled it can't be trusted.



I second that. Give us more control. But I think they have backed off the spam filter a little lately, just two weeks ago I began recieving spam on my .Mac account on a regular basis, when before it was one or two emails every nine months. But I'm also getting topic reply notifications from some forums a hardly ever seemed to get any from (Macworld and Macrumors always came through).

[broken_keyboard]

I second that. Give us more control. But I think they have backed off the spam filter a little lately, just two weeks ago I began recieving spam on my .Mac account on a regular basis, when before it was one or two emails every nine months. But I'm also getting topic reply notifications from some forums a hardly ever seemed to get any from (Macworld and Macrumors always came through).

I asked them if they could disable the spam filter and they said it could not be done on a per user basis. That sounds like a lack of imagination to me. If it is a rule-based filter they can simply add a rule not to filter when the To: field is my email address.

[aswitcher]

Go to the .Mac control panel under the iDisk tab. Uncheck "Create a local copy of your iDisk" and close the control panel. Reopen the control panel and reselect same checkbox. It will place all contents of your previous iDosk in a disk image on your desktop and create a new iDisk from the one online. This may take a while.

Ok, thanks. Worked on the second attempt.

Shame "backup" files are not listed in the iDisk for easier recognition of space use.

Now I wonder what the easiest way is to have my key word folders synched to iDisk and thus synched offline...do I have to move them to iDisk...?

[Natron]

I still can't figure out what anyone needs with 1GB of e-mail space...

Commence with pointless reasons that apply to 0.001% of people.

[iMeowbot]

I would assume it does, but you know what they say about assuming... :-)
Sure. POP3 is only for retrieving mail. Sending is still done with SMTP whether you use POP3 or IMAP.

[daddy-mojo]

Yes, an extra email is just $10/year, but thats on top of the $100 your already spending. As far as the integration with X, I'm sure they integrate just fine. My contention was that the features are pretty useless (virus protection, iCards, etc... Who cares how well something integrates if those programs integrating don't provide much of a value or purpose.

I don't think I'm being much of an accountant. If I feel something has a unique value or purpose, I'll spend money on it. Sure it might be getting better, but that doesn't mean its good yet. I'm not going to pay for it currently just because its gotten slightly 'better' over the past 2 years. I'll wait until its actually gotten 'good'.

I do agree with you though that its not for everyone and each person has to make their own decision on it. I'm just stating that for me personally, it is currently very overpriced for the amount of use or time saved it would provide.

well stated, that makes more sense then simply stating that its a joke. I always try to find the balance between cost/features. I pay for my dsl, which is $30 plus the .mac. And it all serves my needs just right. I use the email addresses provided with my dsl for my junk mail, online purchases crap as well as secondary for sending larger attachments (not going to need it as much now :) ) and I don't care about the icards or virex stuff either. Its the iphoto, isync, address book, book marks that I appreciate and use the most. After a long day in an edit bay, when I get home, I want it to be easy to upload stuff. To fried to think. :D

[trisquel]

[...]
Currently I have Comcast for my ISP. With them my price is $43, which includes a speed of 3000k download and 256 upload. Also they give me 7 email accounts, and 250MB online storage for each of the 7 accounts. That's 1.75 Gigs total.
What is Apple charging now anyway, $99/year? For $43, I get 7x what they offer, plus high speed internet access. Sure, I don't have the @mac.com email, or those stupid iCards, but who cares. Oh, I forgot their backup software. What can I back up on a mesely 250MB iDisk, and if I'm backing up on my external drive or DVD-R, why do I need .Mac? Its rather insulting that they think I'm that naive. Apple's .Mac program is a joke, at least thats my opinon. Feel free to disagree.

Apples to apples please...$99/year vs $516/year, or, $8.80/month vs $43/month.

While .mac is definitely a luxury and not a necessity, it is not overpriced if you use all of the features and you consider ease of use.

When it was iTools, it *was* a joke. As it is, I have used it and find it not so bad for the price of two DVD video rentals each month.

Just my 2cents...:)

[trisquel]

So is the guy clueless or is there some special trick involved. notkevin's approach seems cludgy but I'm having a hard time focusing rt. now so maybe I'm not thinking it through correctly. Thanks for the info though. I may give them a call tomorrow.

I'm connected right now through roadrunner...it's probably because they want to sell you setup or special software or something like that. It's really just plug and play...as long as they turn on the connection.

[macidiot]

No one has really mentioned the fact that they added the ability to create aliases, which I think is a cool feature. Not that this should break the bank, but everyone is pointing out negatice things and I think this is a positive thing.

Aliases are pretty nice. But for $99 one should get multiple email accounts. Its insulting that they charge for additional email accounts on top of an already high price. The rest of .mac isn't so bad if you actually use it, except that they haven't actually done any development for it in a long time. Adding a shareware program every now and then doesn't seem like much value added.

The disk space increase is nice and needed. Still, 250MB is tiny. Its the equivalent of a floppy in todays storage world. In hard drive pricing, 250MB costs about $.50. Granted, a few good sized NetApp filers would cost more than that, but still.

They should drop the price to $49. Apple doesn't seem to understand or get that volume would make up for any decrease in margins. They never have. And why do I see another eWorld in the making? :rolleyes:

[iMeowbot]

...and no one could possibly want an iPod mini because you can get a Karma for the same money :rolleyes:

[macidiot]

I'm in the Lexington, KY area. We have a different cable service here than Lexington, though (we have Adelphia, poor excuse for cable IMHO, LEX has Insight).

The cable deal is open to the public. My DSL ($25/mo) is an employee discount from my wife's job ;-), and it's $35 for everyone else (which I was paying up until recently). I've actually been thinking about jumping ship to cable for the faster downloads, but I'm not sure exactly how much faster they'd be, since it's a shared connection, and not a dedicated one like DSL. Then there's the security risks with the shared cable....

When my wife was living way out in the boonies before we got married, the only option for broadband was through Pegasus satellite (they provide DirectTV to rural areas), for $45/mo IIRC, and it was quite slow (256/56, I think). Don't know how the "up" part works with a satellite receiver, though.

That whole shared connection argument is misleading. While its true that cable is sort of a "party line" set up, there is no real performance hit. In reality, the whole internet is a "party line" set up at some point. Cable just moves the sharing closer to the wall. But as long as the pipes are big enough, it shouldn't be an issue.

The typical downstream performance of cable blows the doors off of dsl. Most cable users see 2.5-4 Mbps down and usually 256kbps up. Compare that to an average of 768kbps for dsl. Cable is basically 3-5 times faster than dsl downstream. There's a reason cable modems are hugely more popular than dsl.

I suppose security is somewhat of an issue, but its basically the same if you have a router and firewall set up. I guess someone could sniff packets locally, but most of your important internet traffic(credit cards, passwords) are (hopefully) encrypted anyway. Besides, if you have a mac, your already protected against a lot of things.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to get dsl is if cable is unavailable or if you need the higher upstream of dsl. Even so, most cable companies will uncap the upstream for additional cost.

[macidiot]

Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs.

umm, unless they are using something other than tcp/ip and connecting to a different internet than the rest of the world, they are full of it. The only possibility it is that a long time ago(like 4+ years ago), macs had problems with dhcp. This is a non-issue now.

Probably they think that because the crap software they give you isn't mac compatible (setup wizard, customized browser) the service isn't mac compatible. Of course, if you have a mac you don't need that crap anyway.

[macidiot]

I am using RR right now here in San Diego. I just put a Linksys router between the cable modem and the airport basestation and it works great.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you need 2 routers to connect? In fact, I'm thinking you could get by with just a cable modem and an ethernet cable.

[JFreak]

this doesn't change the fact that dotmac still costs too much. $20/year would be about right for it.

[Diatribe]

Do I think this is nice? Yep. Will I stay with my .mac membership? Yes. Do I think this is awesome? NO.

I think it's just funny that free services offer so much more space, even to upload files, not just for email. Ok you do not have the integration but still.

These are the things Apple would need to do to I think almost be able to double their customers.

- 1GB of dividable space
- 3 real POP email adresses + the available 5 aliases
- faster access for idisk
- faster website, webmail
- localize .mac to other languages
- integrate imixes, blogs, garageband songs, etc. into .mac
- password protection for ical calenders
- be able publish more calenders
- integrate the calenders into the .mac interface

This for below 99$ and a 30$ discount when you buy it together with another Apple software like Tiger for example and you'd have yourself a winner.

But Apple sometimes only seems to listen half-way. Do it right, please. I know you can.

[johnnyjibbs]

Thankyou G-Mail! Competition is good! Now, I might actually consider .Mac again.. :cool:

[wrldwzrd89]

Do I think this is nice? Yep. Will I stay with my .mac membership? Yes. Do I think this is awesome? NO.

I think it's just funny that free services offer so much more space, even to upload files, not just for email. Ok you do not have the integration but still.

These are the things Apple would need to do to I think almost be able to double their customers.

- 1GB of dividable space
- 3 real POP email adresses + the available 5 aliases
- faster access for idisk
- faster website, webmail
- localize .mac to other languages
- integrate imixes, blogs, garageband songs, etc. into .mac
- password protection for ical calenders
- be able publish more calenders
- integrate the calenders into the .mac interface

This for below 99$ and a 30$ discount when you buy it together with another Apple software like Tiger for example and you'd have yourself a winner.

But Apple sometimes only seems to listen half-way. Do it right, please. I know you can.
Apple will probably fix the iDisk performance issues with the release of Tiger (along with other .Mac enhancements available exclusively to Tiger users). Localizing the .Mac service should be fairly simple to do, but the other things you mentioned probably won't be implemented anytime soon. I don't see any technical barriers in the existing system for publishing multiple calendars if you have more than one - you just have to tell iCal which calendar(s) you want published, and iCal puts copies of them on your iDisk - simple as that, or at least that's the way it should be right now.

[CTerry]

.Mac has nice features, but what Id really like is if Apple provided some kind of server app that you could stick on the paid hosting of your choice to use their back up software. Id personally be very happy paying maybe $40 a year for that.

[deral]

Yey for Aliases.

I got the different spelling variations of my name (since my name deral is misspelt so much times) in addition to my main (deral@Mac.com)

i got an alias of my hometown (kahuku@mac.com--it's in hawaii)

and a chocolatecovered@mac.com

email me, i'm bored.

[Diatribe]

Does anyone know if you can make an add-on email account into a full .mac account and if they give you the aliases for that one too?

[cgmpowers]

Yeah don't remind me, for the first couple of years of my .Mac, I went from 300 megs to 500 megs and renewed in July for 1 GB because I really needed it!!! It was, I think $300 over the $100 price... Ugh, happy but not happy...go figure.

Christopher

They give you 1 GB if you pay an extra $49 bucks a year.
Wasn't it $400 dollars a year more? I won't mind paying $49 a year.

[carta]

I was excited that storage increased to 250 MB yesterday. I've been using it as a customer-friendly FTP directory for the past two years. I have many map jobs where the Illustrator file is several MB and the linked Photoshop terrain image is anywhere between 20 and 100 MB.

My FedEx cost savings pays for .Mac. And with the increased storage, I'll be able to throw more up there instead of onto a CD.

The other aspect of storage that works for me is that it's offsite storage. I used to run CD backups to a safe deposit box a couple miles from my home-office. Now I use .Mac for backups of critical files (current working map files, business accounting and finance files, etc.).

My hope is that Apple finds it profitable enough to keep around.

[johnnyjibbs]

I'm now on my second 60 day trial of .Mac and I'm still not particularly impressed. The whole interface (homepage, etc) stinks of 10.1 - they need to upgrade and make it more like Panther or Tiger. In fact, I'm currently using the trial of Macromedia Contribute and I think something a little easier to use and more powerful than that would make a brilliant addition to the iLife suite (it fits because it is a medium to share you iLife content). Stick that with .Mac (which Contribute already supports) and you're there. I want to be able to subscribe to .Mac where I have a proper little app that I can create decent webpages on but without the crap that is Homepage. I don't want to learn HTML or anything, I just want to be able to create a half decent looking webpage to showcase my creations and personal opinions, etc. .Mac just seems a little bit half-arsed.

Oh and the iDisk is sluggish I think, but that's due to my slowish connection (256k) - still at least its useable now (unlike on a modem).

[Little Endian]

My .mac membership is set to renew on October 2nd. I am still debating whether I should renew or not. $49.99 a year for 250MB or $99 a year for 1Gig would be a better pricing strategy. That way Apple could keep the customers who like .mac for email, integration and feautures plus they could please those who care more about storage space. $100 a year is to much to pay for only 250MB for most people. Actually right now I'm thinking about just letting my membership lapse. I can move my website over to my ISP in a snap the only thing keeping me stuck right now is the fact that I am rather dependent on my .mac email adress as I have been using it as my primary email adress for almost 3 years now, but I can always make the move to some 10 other email accounts I have from my ISP and school.

[iN8]

Does anyone know if you can make an add-on email account into a full .mac account and if they give you the aliases for that one too?

No on both accounts. You can probably cancel your add-on email address and reopen it as a full account because apple reserves your previous email addresses for you. In that case you will be able to use aliases.

[zim]

Does anyone know if you can make an add-on email account into a full .mac account and if they give you the aliases for that one too?

I am pretty sure that you can upgrade an email only into a full account. My wife has the email only account on our set up. When she logs into the .mac homepage, she is greeted by saying if she upgrades to a full member... So I am sure it is possible.

If you do upgrade, I would assume that the account then becomes a full user account, not an addition to your original account.

[Diatribe]

I am pretty sure that you can upgrade an email only into a full account. My wife has the email only account on our set up. When she logs into the .mac homepage, she is greeted by saying if she upgrades to a full member... So I am sure it is possible.

If you do upgrade, I would assume that the account then becomes a full user account, not an addition to your original account.

That sounds good. But I assume that iN8 is correct and you cannot have aliases for the email only account, right?

[corywoolf]

how do you divide your idisk, so you have like 50 mb for email and 200 for idisk? i looked in preferences under .mac and got nothing.

[Diatribe]

how do you divide your idisk, so you have like 50 mb for email and 200 for idisk? i looked in preferences under .mac and got nothing.

Click on your name to change the settings on the .mac webpage on the right hand side and then on idisk settings I believe.

[zim]

That sounds good. But I assume that iN8 is correct and you cannot have aliases for the email only account, right?

I am also assuming that once you transfer an email only account to a full account, it becomes another account, not an addition to the primary account. You may want to post on the .mac help board, just to be sure.

[Diatribe]

I am also assuming that once you transfer an email only account to a full account, it becomes another account, not an addition to the primary account. You may want to post on the .mac help board, just to be sure.

Ah, k. Thanks. And could you just confirm whether there are no aliases for the email-only version, plz.

[zim]

Ah, k. Thanks. And could you just confirm whether there are no aliases for the email-only version, plz.

The only account that can have additional accounts, email only, is the main full account. You can not buy additional email only accounts under an email only account only under the full account... not sure if that answers your question.

[Diatribe]

On another note... in Germany, Austria and Switzerland there is a service that offers 1GB storage for email AND files, two email adresses and 20MB attachments FOR FREE.
And if you get the ultra super duper :D email option (which costs 5€/month by the way) you get 10GB of storage, 50MB attachments, 15 adresses, no ads, etc.
Now if that only had the integration of .mac it would rule my world.
Just to advertise what CAN be done.

Apple is just making a ****load of money with .mac. Half a million users for 99$ each is about 50 million Dollars if I can count correctly. Now, the server structure, storage, webdesign costs maybe 1/10 of that. Shame on Apple, but I guess people are used to paying premium. I in a way am too now I guess, since I pay for .mac too. :rolleyes:

[iN8]

Ah, k. Thanks. And could you just confirm whether there are no aliases for the email-only version, plz.

Confirmed. There are no email aliases for email-only addresses. I logged into my wifes email and she has none.

[Diatribe]

The only account that can have additional accounts, email only, is the main full account. You can not buy additional email only accounts under an email only account only under the full account... not sure if that answers your question.

Not quite. :D
I was wondering whether you can have email aliases under the email only account, not other email only accounts. You do know that .mac lets you set up email aliases(email adresses that get sent to your main email adress when adressed) right? That's what I was asking for in the email only account.

[swissmann]

I actually submitted this story before it was posted (Happy feeling inside)... anyway I use my .Mac account everyday and am thrilled about the increase in space. I just hope that the competition keeps upping their offerings so that Apple is driven to give us more.

[Diatribe]

Confirmed. There are no email aliases for email-only addresses. I logged into my wifes email and she has none.

Thanks a lot for checking that. :)

[mullmann]

That whole shared connection argument is misleading. While its true that cable is sort of a "party line" set up, there is no real performance hit. In reality, the whole internet is a "party line" set up at some point. Cable just moves the sharing closer to the wall. But as long as the pipes are big enough, it shouldn't be an issue.

The typical downstream performance of cable blows the doors off of dsl. Most cable users see 2.5-4 Mbps down and usually 256kbps up. Compare that to an average of 768kbps for dsl. Cable is basically 3-5 times faster than dsl downstream. There's a reason cable modems are hugely more popular than dsl.

I suppose security is somewhat of an issue, but its basically the same if you have a router and firewall set up. I guess someone could sniff packets locally, but most of your important internet traffic(credit cards, passwords) are (hopefully) encrypted anyway. Besides, if you have a mac, your already protected against a lot of things.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to get dsl is if cable is unavailable or if you need the higher upstream of dsl. Even so, most cable companies will uncap the upstream for additional cost.

There are plenty of reasons for having DSL, for example if your local cable provider (TW in my case) lost you as a customer forever due to rampant abysmal (i.e. monopoly) service when they were the only alternative to rabbit ears. I have been a happy DirecTV customer for years and will never go back to cable. That said, TW would be happy to run me a data-only line for $50-$60 per month. Yes, the theoretical throughput of cable is greater than DSL, but not worth it at that cost. I pay $34/mo. for 3Mb/384Kb DSL service from SBC. That's my story; many people seem to have their own. Growth rates for DSL have exceeded that for broadband cable for quite some time.

[må¥å]

I used to like .Mac when it was free. However knowing that its expensive to offer everything these days, I still seem ripped off. Why can't apple offer a simple email service something basic like hotmail or yahoo for mac only people for example buy a new mac or buy the latest OS and get 5 basic .mac email accounts free none of the bells etc. If you are a internet junky and want the option of MORE storage and email space and attachments then I can see the need to charge for all the EXTRAs. I honestly dislike this, they give you a free service and BOOM one day its going to cost you.

If the basic .mac account email service has ads to generate money for the company so be it as long as its from companies like "canon, epson, etc" saying we have a new product you might be interested in taking a look at.

Seems all Apple has done is overcharge, the current .Mac solution is great for a newbie, however most of us have back-up HDD, DVD solutions etc. This seems like a nonsensical solution for all Mac users. :(

By getting someone to buy a new Mac or a new version of the OS and give them a Mac account would be great with 5 invites for family and friends who use the service. This is another way windows users will see how goo it is on the Mac side. Have some law that says that spamming from a .Mac account will result in legal action and keep the moochers away by only allowing them INVITES from a .Mac account holder.

Anyhow I just feel that is a better road than the one they have now.

[MacinDoc]

Well, I decided to try .Mac since it's offered at a reduced price with new Macs, and I just bought an iMac. I'll give it a year and see if I think it's worth the price...

[maveness]

I just re-upped on .Mac, but I bought the "retail" box from Amazon for $79, instead of using the .Mac renewal button at $99.

Honestly, I think they should make renewal cheaper for multi-year users. A loyalty bonus would be good.

The increased storage was part of the reason I renewed. But mostly, I have big expectations about increased integration with iLife and Tiger, and I'm curious to see how that plays out over the next year.

Ah, the high price of early adoption.

[MacPhreak]

That whole shared connection argument is misleading. While its true that cable is sort of a "party line" set up, there is no real performance hit. In reality, the whole internet is a "party line" set up at some point. Cable just moves the sharing closer to the wall. But as long as the pipes are big enough, it shouldn't be an issue.

The typical downstream performance of cable blows the doors off of dsl. Most cable users see 2.5-4 Mbps down and usually 256kbps up. Compare that to an average of 768kbps for dsl. Cable is basically 3-5 times faster than dsl downstream. There's a reason cable modems are hugely more popular than dsl.

I suppose security is somewhat of an issue, but its basically the same if you have a router and firewall set up. I guess someone could sniff packets locally, but most of your important internet traffic(credit cards, passwords) are (hopefully) encrypted anyway. Besides, if you have a mac, your already protected against a lot of things.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to get dsl is if cable is unavailable or if you need the higher upstream of dsl. Even so, most cable companies will uncap the upstream for additional cost.

I went with DSL for two reasons (before I got the discount): a friend of mine had cable at the time, and it did take a huge hit at peak times. Maybe it has something to do with the local cable system, and how loaded (or overloaded) it is. He also had problems with viruses & hack attempts (he's a M$ zealot...got what he deserved, I think).

Secondly, I know it's slower (my DSL is 1mb, vs. 2mb for the cheap cable), but when does this REALLY come into play? The only time it's really noticeable is when I go to download a CD image or something. 2mb is slow when dl'ing something that big, too!!! I have 100mb here at work (absolutely blistering rates during off-peak times), so I do have something MUCH faster to compare to.

For playing UT2004, dl'ing MP3's, *cough* movies, DSL serves me just fine. My ping on UT is usually 10-95, rarely over 100. Beats the pants off my old 56k modem, and all the other places I have been that had severely overloaded networks.

[pcharles]

What a dumb thing to say, how can you compare .Mac to something that is not, and may never be, widely available. GMail has been in beta for over 1 year now and still no official release date.

well, it's not 1 GB like gmail and others, but it's a step in the right direction for Apple as far as the 'worth' of .mac to users.

[pcharles]

Sure, it would be nice to have more storage, but what sites out there only charge $99 for what .Mac offers.

Its integration with the OS alone makes any so called premium worth paying. The ability to upload photos, sync calendars, store bookmarks, shop, and many other functions make it worth the money. In addtion to that, you get the software, which I know some may not use, but at least it is included.

You cannot expect something for nothing, even if that is the way you like to live.

[Xtremehkr]

I haven't seen anyone mention this .Mac download yet. If yuou have you know how addictive it is. As far as free games go, Wingnuts is cool. Just below the level of a game you would expect to have to pay for. Just.

[iNetwork]

A step in the right direction but a case of too little, too late.

According to Apple's X-Serve website:

"Xserve RAID offers up to 3.5TB of high-performance redundant storage at just over $3 per gigabyte"
Reference (http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/)

Money hungry *$%^%#'s!!

Take a hint.. way too little WAY too late... :eek:

[Rower_CPU]

According to Apple's X-Serve website:

"Xserve RAID offers up to 3.5TB of high-performance redundant storage at just over $3 per gigabyte"
Reference (http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/)

Money hungry *$%^%#'s!!

Take a hint.. way too little WAY too late... :eek:

You do realize there's a difference between cost/gigabyte of disk space and cost/gigabyte of web storage, don't you?

You've got to factor in costs of bandwidth, power, server maintenance, backups, etc.

[bankshot]

According to Apple's X-Serve website:

"Xserve RAID offers up to 3.5TB of high-performance redundant storage at just over $3 per gigabyte"
Reference (http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/)

Money hungry *$%^%#'s!!

Take a hint.. way too little WAY too late... :eek:

Hey, you're right! Apple's ripping us off. After all, bandwidth, infrastructure, special deals, software development, and testing are all FREE. Apple's making $98.25 profit on every subscription - that's over 13,000% profit! :mad: :mad: :eek:

:rolleyes: :p

[bankshot]

I just re-upped on .Mac, but I bought the "retail" box from Amazon for $79, instead of using the .Mac renewal button at $99.

Cool, so the renewal worked with the boxed version? If so, that's a nice find! :cool:

[gskiser]

Apples to apples please...$99/year vs $516/year, or, $8.80/month vs $43/month.

While .mac is definitely a luxury and not a necessity, it is not overpriced if you use all of the features and you consider ease of use.

When it was iTools, it *was* a joke. As it is, I have used it and find it not so bad for the price of two DVD video rentals each month.

Just my 2cents...:)

Actually, you're not comparing Apples to apples. You're forgetting that the $99 .Mac doesn't include internet access. The $516/year includes broadband access at 3megs/sec downloads, along with 7x the storage space. Its not an either or. You have to pay for internet access...and then .Mac is on top of that.

[fithian]

Maybe I missed something but isn't this what the FREE email alias is for? If you're given free alias, why would you need more addresses?

Anyone here get the alias feature to work? It keeps sending me in an endless loop, rejecting all possible aliases, including the ones it suggests!

[fithian]

Cool, so the renewal worked with the boxed version? If so, that's a nice find! :cool:

I used an old boxed version that I bought for $69 shipped and that worked for renewal. The company is currently out of stock.

http://www.bargains101.com/utilities/3376.html

[Wardofsky]

I haven't seen anyone mention this .Mac download yet. If you have you know how addictive it is. As far as free games go, Wingnuts is cool. Just below the level of a game you would expect to have to pay for. Just.

Yeah I downloaded it a while back, that's probably the best part of .Mac for me.

Apple's making $98.25 profit on every subscription - that's over 13,000% profit!

Perhaps they're making up for the 0% profit margin on the iTMS :p

And finally, I love the email aliases; so far I have got these ones:

john_ashcroft@mac.com
dick_cheney@mac.com
colin_powell@mac.com
donald_rumsfeld@mac.com
paul_wolfowitz@mac.com

[zim]

Not quite. :D
I was wondering whether you can have email aliases under the email only account, not other email only accounts. You do know that .mac lets you set up email aliases(email adresses that get sent to your main email adress when adressed) right? That's what I was asking for in the email only account.

At the time, I did not know that you could have aliases under a full account or aliases at all. After reading, I learned that you can have aliases under a full account, neat idea, but you can not have aliases under an email only account.

HEHE... :D

[zim]

Yeah I downloaded it a while back, that's probably the best part of .Mac for me.



Perhaps they're making up for the 0% profit margin on the iTMS :p

And finally, I love the email aliases; so far I have got these ones:

john_ashcroft@mac.com
dick_cheney@mac.com
colin_powell@mac.com
donald_rumsfeld@mac.com
paul_wolfowitz@mac.com


hehe... when you create an alias, does it have to be unique to anything out there? might be a stupid question, maybe I should just test it out.

[Diatribe]

hehe... when you create an alias, does it have to be unique to anything out there? might be a stupid question, maybe I should just test it out.

Yes it does have to be unique. It is just like a regular email adress with the only difference being that it comes through your regular account.

By the way, didn't you have a tar yesterday, or am I getting Alzheimer?

[Diatribe]

You do realize there's a difference between cost/gigabyte of disk space and cost/gigabyte of web storage, don't you?

You've got to factor in costs of bandwidth, power, server maintenance, backups, etc.

The sad thing is Apple doesn't backup your data, so this does not really count.



For those who haven't seen it.... Here's an example of how cheap things CAN be:

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland there is a service that offers FOR FREE:
- 1GB storage for email AND files
- 2 email adresses
- 20MB attachments
- with small ads
- online adress book, etc.

And for 4,99€ you get the following:
- 10GB of storage
- 50MB attachments
- 15 adresses
- no ads
- online adress book, etc.

Now if that only had the integration of .mac it would rule my world.
Just to advertise what CAN be done. The integration is what keeps me with .mac. But do I think it's way overpriced? Hell yes.

To offer a solution from the iLife thread that I made; Give the yearly iLife to .mac subscribers for free. Now that'd be a deal a lot of people could live with. And on top it would show Apple's widely proclaimed integration.
Or have two options $49 for the stuff they offer right now and $99 for the 1GB one. This would still be overpriced but THAT would be a step in the right direction.

[wrldwzrd89]

Anyone here get the alias feature to work? It keeps sending me in an endless loop, rejecting all possible aliases, including the ones it suggests!
Hmm...interesting. The first alias I tried worked and is now active.

[zim]

Yes it does have to be unique. It is just like a regular email adress with the only difference being that it comes through your regular account.

By the way, didn't you have a tar yesterday, or am I getting Alzheimer?

Nope, not me. Maybe Zimv2.0?

Okay so unique aliases... I am still yet to try it because I can't think of any names to use so here is another question. Can you, and I see you can turn them off, delete an alias?

[Diatribe]

Nope, not me. Maybe Zimv2.0?

Okay so unique aliases... I am still yet to try it because I can't think of any names to use so here is another question. Can you, and I see you can turn them off, delete an alias?

Yes, you can. The only HUGE problem I see here is the way people will use it and how it is advertised. They want you to use them as "junk mail" then delete them when they draw too much. BUT Apple does not recycle email adresses. Once they are deleted they are gone. This should rid us of a lot of email adresses really fast. Meaning get the ones you want as fast as you can.

[zim]

Yes, you can. The only HUGE problem I see here is the way people will use it and how it is advertised. They want you to use them as "junk mail" then delete them when they draw too much. BUT Apple does not recycle email adresses. Once they are deleted they are gone. This should rid us of a lot of email adresses really fast. Meaning get the ones you want as fast as you can.

Good point, I will put my thinking cap on and come up with some good names. Maybe apple needs to pay attention to the aliases and allow for them to be recycled.

My wife is jealous over the aliases because she has the .mac email only. wonder if there is a way to redirect the alias to her folder, not on the server but rather on the computer.

Thanks again :)

[Diatribe]

Good point, I will put my thinking cap on and come up with some good names. Maybe apple needs to pay attention to the aliases and allow for them to be recycled.

My wife is jealous over the aliases because she has the .mac email only. wonder if there is a way to redirect the alias to her folder, not on the server but rather on the computer.

Thanks again :)

You're welcome. :)
The only way I can think of how this might work is to forward the aliases to your wife's account. (Though I do not know if you can forward the aliases too or just the main adress via the webmail)
If you cannot, you could set it up as a POP account(the alias) and add a rule at mail.app that if an email comes to this alias it is redirected directly to your wife's account. Although the email would have to be checked through mail.app and through your account. The former would be much easier if possible.

[pcharles]

Personally, I think if your broadband is more than $30-35/mo, you're paying too much. My 1mb down/256k up DSL is $25/mo. Typical cable here is 2mb down/256k up & is $26/month for the first 6 months, then to $35/mo IIRC. Faster cable is available...for a price.

Wow! That is a pretty good deal. Charter Cable is much more expensive than that. I think we are paying close to $50 a month for a 2Meg service, but there is nothing else right now and it does discount the TV.

[bluefido]

Who is your provider and where do you live?? Here in a small town in NC its pretty much $40 amonth for 512/256. Cable is not an option because Timewarner (Roadrunn er) told me that their service doesn't work with macs. Never really did anyt checking to confirm it though. even so, they are also $40 a month. I would throw down $30 in a heartbeat for bradband. Actually my wife would let me. :p

DSL, SBC Yahoo! = $26.99/per month per year.
-2 Gigs of email storage (useless) but I get 10 extra email addresses if I ever want them.
-About a Gig of storage space for photos and backup stuff

I am going to let my .mac run out, but I do think I will miss .mac to some extent. It was easier to use, build simple websites, and featured decent integration functions. Unfortunately, I do need to tighten the belt a little bit so I just thought I could save the $100 even if it is for the entire year.

[bankshot]

Yes, you can. The only HUGE problem I see here is the way people will use it and how it is advertised. They want you to use them as "junk mail" then delete them when they draw too much. BUT Apple does not recycle email adresses. Once they are deleted they are gone. This should rid us of a lot of email adresses really fast. Meaning get the ones you want as fast as you can.

Yeah, I think Apple implemented the aliases all wrong. Quite stupid of them, really. Now unavailable email addresses could multiply by a factor of 6 (real address + 5 aliases for every user - more if retired aliases don't go back in the pool), and most of those would go unused. That's pretty crummy.

What they should have done is simply allow you to prefix your regular email address with anything you want, separated by a dash (assuming they didn't allow dashes in regular account names). So joeblow@mac.com could have aliases spam-joeblow@mac.com and dick_cheney_is_a_wiener-joeblow@mac.com but not george_bush@mac.com. The beauty of this system is that you could have unlimited aliases without any need to set them up ahead of time. It also means that there's no reason not to give aliases to email-only accounts.

Sheesh. The more I think about it, the more I think Apple made a boneheaded move by implementing this completely the wrong way. It seems so obvious.

Oh well! :rolleyes:

[crawdaddy]

Yeah, I think Apple implemented the aliases all wrong. Quite stupid of them, really. Now unavailable email addresses could multiply by a factor of 6 (real address + 5 aliases for every user - more if retired aliases don't go back in the pool), and most of those would go unused. That's pretty crummy.

What they should have done is simply allow you to prefix your regular email address with anything you want, separated by a dash (assuming they didn't allow dashes in regular account names). So joeblow@mac.com could have aliases spam-joeblow@mac.com and dick_cheney_is_a_wiener-joeblow@mac.com but not george_bush@mac.com. The beauty of this system is that you could have unlimited aliases without any need to set them up ahead of time. It also means that there's no reason not to give aliases to email-only accounts.

Sheesh. The more I think about it, the more I think Apple made a boneheaded move by implementing this completely the wrong way. It seems so obvious.

Oh well! :rolleyes:

No, that's not a good idea because all you have to do is strip off everything before the '-' and now you have my account name and actual email address. The whole idea is to pick something new that has no connection to your account name.

[bankshot]

No, that's not a good idea because all you have to do is strip off everything before the '-' and now you have my account name and actual email address. The whole idea is to pick something new that has no connection to your account name.

Ok, good point. :p I guess I was assuming that spam harvesting bots wouldn't be smart enough to know that. It just kind of stinks that people now have the ability to tie up good addresses without legitimately using them. Maybe Apple should have a random generator ('Your new alias is 87btJCJWzaBN2ufE@mac.com') instead of allowing users to choose. Is that better? ;)

[g4cubed]

If .mac is going to keep going and growing, Apple will need to start recycling the names or otherwise you'll end up with either joeblow26585643978@mac.com or xbgskurnkdkp@mac.com. Even if they would included iLife, who will be willing to pay big bucks for those.
If they wait two or three years then release the names again those addresses should be clean. Something like what the phone companies do with unlisted or private numbers.
Just my opinion.

[aswitcher]

If they wait two or three years then release the names again those addresses should be clean. Something like what the phone companies do with unlisted or private numbers.
Just my opinion.

Well mobile phone numbers get recycled after about a year. That should suffice.

I really hope they upgrade the .mac to allow more than one pop account, so my wife can get her own email without funneling through my account and having rules forward it on to hers. I find that messy.

Also, I hope Tiger brings better intergration wiht .Mac so I can easily send email out with my .Mac address...unless of course you cna do this now and I dont now how :o

[ijimk]

speaking of .mac i just tried spider-man 2 for mac. (free demo if you are a .mac subsciber) it was ok controls seem weird using mouse and keyboard but it seemed pretty kool.

I do think the cosole sytems have a better version of the game. They have different missions and i think using a controller helps alot. What you all think?

[ASP272]

I heard that the PC version is very restrictive as compared to the console version. You can't go anywhere you want. I don't know if they made the Mac version the same way, but I've got a controller and I'll surely try it out.

[Xtremehkr]

I managed to get richardchenery and condaleezarice. But I can't believe that Gilgamesh and Enkidu have already been taken.

Probably someone has them for their .mac accounts. I guess you can't pick an alias that is already someones account address.

[Xtremehkr]

I still can't get my Palm to show up in iSync. What a great idea, too bad it takes so long to get everything just right, I'm assuming.

Why do third parties have so much trouble with writing decent software for OSX. Logitech does well (sorry guys, not paying $60 for a one button mouse), even my ancient Creative Nomad Mp3 player showed up automatically in iTunes.

After iSync I still have to get the damn scanner to show up. Argh!

[bonk]

how do I make it stop telling me that the size of my idisk doesnt match every five minutes. I've 'ejected' and remounted the idisk, and still the same. is this just a bug that hopefully they'll fix on their end? it's driving me nuts!

[wrldwzrd89]

how do I make it stop telling me that the size of my idisk doesnt match every five minutes. I've 'ejected' and remounted the idisk, and still the same. is this just a bug that hopefully they'll fix on their end? it's driving me nuts!
The only way to make this go away is to turn off the local iDisk then turn it back on. The root cause of the problem has nothing to do with the .Mac servers - it is rooted in the fact that local iDisks are disk image-based, and the fact that a disk image currently cannot be resized.

[munkle]

Well mobile phone numbers get recycled after about a year. That should suffice.

I really hope they upgrade the .mac to allow more than one pop account, so my wife can get her own email without funneling through my account and having rules forward it on to hers. I find that messy.

Also, I hope Tiger brings better intergration wiht .Mac so I can easily send email out with my .Mac address...unless of course you cna do this now and I dont now how :o

What do you mean you can't send email out with .mac? Are you talking about from mail.app? If so mail.app is great with .mac, just go to preferences, accounts and fill out the info from there. Mail.app can easily handle more than one acount.

[Spidermanjohn]

...Mac is damn cooooooool to use. You just don't get it if your not watching your novice web developer wife use .Mac with glee. No not for the power user, but that is not what Apple is all about. Soccer mom's unite!!!

SJ and dad out :p

[aswitcher]

What do you mean you can't send email out with .mac? Are you talking about from mail.app? If so mail.app is great with .mac, just go to preferences, accounts and fill out the info from there. Mail.app can easily handle more than one acount.

AWESOME! Wow, after 5 mins fiddling I had it all set up. Most excellent. Thanks. :o :p

[pcharles]

I still can't get my Palm to show up in iSync. What a great idea, too bad it takes so long to get everything just right, I'm assuming.

Why do third parties have so much trouble with writing decent software for OSX. Logitech does well (sorry guys, not paying $60 for a one button mouse), even my ancient Creative Nomad Mp3 player showed up automatically in iTunes.

After iSync I still have to get the damn scanner to show up. Argh!

All you do is turn it on in the Hotsync conduit, and then go to iSync to add it.

[munkle]

AWESOME! Wow, after 5 mins fiddling I had it all set up. Most excellent. Thanks. :o :p

No worries, just glad you managed to sort it out! Makes emailing a lot more fun! Check out Mail Appetizer (http://www.bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/beta/) for a cool app that gives you a notification window for any incoming mail, works great with .mac :)

[Rower_CPU]

All you do is turn it on in the Hotsync conduit, and then go to iSync to add it.

Not quite - you have to install the iSync Palm conduit (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/isyncpalmconduit.html) first.

[Zweben]

If you're buying .Mac for just the storage GB or just the email, then you're not buying wisely. If you're buying for ALL or most of the MANY features, including easy OS X integration (iDisk, iSync, Backup, etc.) and free/discounted software, then you know why GMail in no way competes with the .Mac package.

Personally, I doubt that very many people really need the whole package that .Mac offers. So don't buy it... I didn't :D And I'm talking my parents into dropping .Mac since they only use email anyway. Yet I don't see people who TRULY use .Mac's features complaining.

It's like saying Photoshop costs too much because you can re-size photos for free with other apps. You probably shouldn't be a Photoshop customer :)


I agree. I tend to use a lot of the features of .Mac, and nothing else offers the same set of features and benefits that .Mac does.

[pcharles]

Not quite - you have to install the iSync Palm conduit (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/isyncpalmconduit.html) first.

True, but you would have to be pretty dumb to make that mistake!

[Rower_CPU]

True, but you would have to be pretty dumb to make that mistake!

Make the mistake of installing it or not installing it?

It's actually pretty easy to overlook that you need it. Apple and Palm need to do a better job, IMO, coordinating their syncing efforts.

[zim]

I agree. I tend to use a lot of the features of .Mac, and nothing else offers the same set of features and benefits that .Mac does.

Same here, the iDisk and email is nice but the iSync is the icing on the cake for me. 3 computers 1 miles from home, at work, all synced :).

The online address book and book marks have also proven to be quite handy.

[headhighguy]

I think many people buy a .Mac subscription for the wrong reason and then they feel ripped off. It shouldn't be seen as an email service with so many space for so much money and that's bad. It is more like the digital hub on the web for creative professionals that use apple computers. As this product has been matured over the time, I still think it lacks just a little bit to actually be the hub for your digital life on the internet. Let's see what it actually offers:

a) Email

It offers a basic email account, accessible through POP3 and IMAP4 standards, offers 250-1GB of space, a neat web interface to access it when not at home, forwarding, email aliasing, no advertising, junkmail filter, spellchecker, and neat integration into the Mac OS X mail application.

How does it measure up: Competitors do offer more space, and larger attachments, but that's not all that is to email. Unparalleled is the integration between desktop email and web based email and the fact that you can assign email aliases, that virtually represent identities. I have not seen that anywhere else.

Room for Improvement: No WAP service. There is a workaround to forward to something to like yahoo.com and then use their WAP service, however this is not satisfying.

b) Addressbook

.Mac features a web based addressbook that syncs with your desktop computer. Through iSync, it even sync's to you cellphone. It is probably one of the strongest features in .Mac, as it provides true multiple device syncronisation to the point that you don't have think about whether you have an addressbook entry available and uptodate or not.

How does it measure up: There is not many other services that integrate an addressbook to as many platforms and devices as .Mac does. Yahoo and MSN are in my opinion the runner-up's as they provide the branded intellisync application that allows you to sync with outlook. However the intellisync app does not sync to as many devices as iSync does.

Room for improvement: The address book should have a windows counterpart. There should be the opportunity to sync from .Mac into outlook. A lot of people have Mac's at home and PC's at work.

c) Bookmarks

The .Mac bookmarks feature lets you synchronize your browser bookmarks to your .Mac account, where it becomes accessible through a web interface. Also, if you have a 2nd mac computer, you can synchronize the bookmarks from .Mac to it. It delivers true bookmark synchronization between multiple computers (Macs) and a web interface.

How does it measure up: No other service as a service that lives up to the one that .Mac provides. Other contenders, such as MSN or Yahoo, have bookmarks stored on the web, however, you have to import/export your computers bookmarks in a separate step everytime you want to update it. There is no synchronization possible. MSN has a bookmark synchronization service that is close to the .Mac implementation, however, it works only with the MSN browser and has no web interface for access to it when no MSN browser is present.

Room for improvement: Interesting to see here is, again, the windows counterpart for the sync. If you were able to sync your bookmarks from .Mac into your PC web browser that would be tremendous.

d) Homepage

Homepage is a service that provides an easy way for the creative professional to publish a neat looking website and maintain it without using any 3rd party design software. Due to the template driven approach, people can rapidly create professional looking pages. Also, .Mac provides webspace from 100MB up to close to 1GB to place your files into.

How does it measure up: I haven't seen anything coming close to this service out there, in terms of ease of use, integration to the OS, and professional appearance. Geocities, tripod, etc. do offer similar services, however they are not as template driven as Homepage is, and they need far more technical knowledge in order to achieve results.

Room for improvements: As this product recently has been made "windows" compatible, my improvement request for this would be to add more backend and script based pages. It would be nice to have templates with certain logic behind them such as a guest book, a forum, and custom asp or php or even webobjects scripting.

e) iCal

Nice calendaring application that allows you to create multiple calendars and share them across the web. .Mac also offers a web based viewer application to display your calendars, however does not provide edit functionality.

How does it measure up:: It is not as powerful as e.g. outlook or yahoo calendars, however, provides the step into the right direction of future calendaring. Yahoo calendars have the ability to be edited when synchronized through yahoo's branded intellisync application, which poses an advantage over the iCal solution. MSN has a similar solution to integrate with outlook and their msn browser.

Room for improvements: The application iCal has some flaws in terms of usability, often times cumbersome to operate, and lacks true group calendaring functionality. There is no application on the windows side that is truly compatible. The closesed app to iCal that also provides (limited) access to iCal calendar files, is Mozilla Thunderbird.

f) Miscellaneous Apps

iDisk is a great utility to store files for transfer between physically distributed locations. Note here that there is a windows version of this available, and it is based on the WebDAV standart.

iCards doesn't quite live up to what hallmark or yahoo greetings bring, but it is a nice addition to the package and well appreciated.

Backup is very nice, however, shouldn't be a .Mac only option. I use it to backup files and folders and app data to my .Mac account as a 3rd failover option. I also use backup to use my ipod as an external media. Leaving out e.g. the itunes library can shrink the amount of data being backed up to the size that may fit on a .Mac idisk account.

Virex does its job when it comes to virus scanning on the mac platform. However, there is no eMail virus scan features implemented, yet.

Summary:

.Mac is a suite worthwhile of Internet/Desktop apps that make your transition to a "digital Life" possible. It lacks in a few points here and there, but if used appropriatly, it can even be used as a PDA replacement. I wish Apple would put more effort into platform integration, possible introduce windows counterparts of their apps, or maybe partner with yahoo or google to integrate more web based information services and evolve to the true personal web portal that you live your iLife in... :)