I've been a Mac user for 2 years now and love everything about the experience EXCEPT for the .Mac service, which has been a thorn in my side. It just seems arbitrary that Apple should tie things like backup functionality and iCal publishing to an expensive .Mac subscription. And now if I heard Jobs correctly, you need a .Mac account to use the photocasting feature of iPhoto. Is this correct? Will iLife 06 functionality be hobbled without a .Mac subscription?
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iLife 06 without .Mac?
- Thread starter hkriffraff
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I just order iLife 06 and .Mac. I have resisted buying a .Mac subscription until today. I have always felt it is way over priced for the features it had. The new features and iWeb make it a little more bearable.
I still feel it is overpriced. With that said I am moving on, I will not complain about it until I have to renew and fork out for it again next year.
I still feel it is overpriced. With that said I am moving on, I will not complain about it until I have to renew and fork out for it again next year.
I'm hoping the iLife '06 functionality will work with any ol' WebDAV-enabled server. I don't want to shell out the money for a .Mac account, but I might have to.
hkriffraff said:
You can backup iCal anytime you want. I just won't be on the internet. As for requiring .Mac for PhotoCasts, I don't blame them. Hosting isn't free, as Apple has to pay for all those servers to host the sites. You're not going to find hosting for under six bucks a month especially, with the kind of features Apple presents.
Note: Before you rip my math, .Mac is on sale for $69.99, and when it's divided into 12 months, it ends up being $5.83/month.
I was referring to the need to subscribe to .Mac just to use Backup with my own external hard disk. This seems quite unreasonable. I appreciate that hosting costs money, but many people have their own web hosting plans. I really hope that iWeb publishing is not limited to .Mac.
hkriffraff said:
There are lots of free back up tools out there though. I guess using Backup is a perk for having .Mac. To be honest, I have .Mac but I still use Superduper for backups
Bubbasteve said:
I don't really think it's over-priced at all now with all of the cool features you get. If you break it down by the month, it's only like 8 bucks a month, which isn't bad at all for what you get. They've really improved it lately, too, especially with the release of iLife '06.
I am gonna get it, for sure.
I know a few folks who use .Mac w/ their domain names.
I found this from a quick Google search:
http://homepage.mac.com/cherrypop/iblog/C1900478167/E1963581976/
I found this from a quick Google search:
http://homepage.mac.com/cherrypop/iblog/C1900478167/E1963581976/
From http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/
"*iWeb publishing requires Internet and webserver access (.Mac recommended). The .Mac service is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual membership fee and Internet access required. Terms and conditions apply"
This leads me to believe that iWeb doesn't require .Mac. Am I interpreting that correctly? I would love to drop the clunkiness of DreamWeaver (a program I never really learned) and go with a very simple iWeb look for my personal site...but, I want to be able to publish it to the domain name I already have without having to go through .Mac.
"*iWeb publishing requires Internet and webserver access (.Mac recommended). The .Mac service is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual membership fee and Internet access required. Terms and conditions apply"
This leads me to believe that iWeb doesn't require .Mac. Am I interpreting that correctly? I would love to drop the clunkiness of DreamWeaver (a program I never really learned) and go with a very simple iWeb look for my personal site...but, I want to be able to publish it to the domain name I already have without having to go through .Mac.
bpd115 said:
Masking isn't a perfect solution -- you lose the ability to externally link to pages within your web site.
It isn't clear at this point whether iWeb code is portable. With the exception of the blogging and podcasting feature, I'm guessing that it is. I'm going to try to score a copy of '06 today (the Apple Store in San Francisco didn't have it in stock on Tuesday!) and will give it a try ASAP.
As to whether the newest iLife "requires" .Mac, obviously it doesn't. Without .Mac, you won't get some of the newest features of iLife, but I see this as value-added to both .Mac and iLife, not subtraction.
It would be nice if iWeb just exported the site into a folder structure that I could just upload to the server...
stevietheb said:
It very well might. Henry Norr says it does.
http://www.macintouch.com/sf2006/day1.html#ilife
But how much support you'll get for the newest wizzy features remains to be seen.
IJ Reilly said:
I can confirm that it will export to a folder. In the iWeb quicktour video, there is a moment where the click on the dropdown and click publish to .Mac. I paused it, and right above it is publish to folder.
If you can mount your webserver on the desktop (I still use AFP to connect to my Xserve), just publish to that mounted folder and you're done.
Annon said:
That's good news, thanks. Presumably, the number of features supported with be dependent on the server (no WebDAV no blog, etc.). I'll be back on the expo floor again today and try to verify. For some reason, iWeb is being demonstrated on only two Mac at the Apple booth, which makes it difficult to get in any detailed questions.
I'm inclined to think that you are. Just like you don't have to have .Mac to publish iCal calendars, it makes sense to leave iWeb open to non-.Mac users.stevietheb said:
Thanks, Apple, for not locking me into your web hosting.
That would be great...
Does anyone know if you can get an edu discount on software purchased at Apple Stores (I'd like to go to the one in Cambridge today)? Or is that discount only for hardware?
Does anyone know if you can get an edu discount on software purchased at Apple Stores (I'd like to go to the one in Cambridge today)? Or is that discount only for hardware?
I know that there is a discount...I'm asking whether you get the discount IN STORE...for some reason I was thinking that you could not get the software discount in the retail store, only the hardware discount.
I could just be making this up...
I could just be making this up...
Verified -- iWeb can output to a local folder. An Apple rep walked me through the process. Looks simple enough.
IJ Reilly said:
I wonder what dependencies the exported code has, though. By that I mean is it all client side JavaScript type stuff, or is there a PHP interpreter required, etc. If you can export it to a folder and just dump the content of that folder to anyoldhost.com, then sign me up!
I get decent basic hosting "free" with my domain registration ($90 for 5 years, so $1.50 per month) which has 10 email accounts (pop and web access, includes alias for catchalls, etc), 200mb storage space, and a gig of bandwidth monthly. It's a pretty good deal and I've never had it go down on me.
My point is that I don't need or want .Mac, but would really like a good blogging and site management tool (especially picture galleries). Also, the fact that they are limiting Photocasting to .Mac is BS. Sure, if you want to host your *cast on Apples servers you should have to pay, but if I want to store and transmit my *cast from my own host then I should be able to. I'm pretty they said it was standard XML that was read and interpreted by iPhoto.
Fortunately, I think the idea is kinda stupid. I'd rather have a nice web gallery of pictures and maybe an email notification sent to people who would like to be in the know.
So, the AppleStore Cambridge doesn't allow you to use edu discounts on software.
Still unsure if I'm going to buy it...I want iWeb, the wife liked the new features in iPhoto. Hrm...
Still unsure if I'm going to buy it...I want iWeb, the wife liked the new features in iPhoto. Hrm...