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awrootbeer

macrumors member
Jul 16, 2002
30
0
I don't believe it. I really can't see how it could be possible.. 45% already, and the trial period isn't even up yet? So that would be something like 1 million paid subscribers = 50 million $$$ gross already? No...
 

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,392
5,832
Originally posted by awrootbeer
I don't believe it. I really can't see how it could be possible.. 45% already, and the trial period isn't even up yet? So that would be something like 1 million paid subscribers = 50 million $$$ gross already? No...

yeah - I can't see how it's possible... as there must be tons of throwaway accounts. I'd be surprised if 45% of people even _used_ their itools accounts

arn
 

awrootbeer

macrumors member
Jul 16, 2002
30
0
Originally posted by arn


yeah - I can't see how it's possible... as there must be tons of throwaway accounts. I'd be surprised if 45% of people even _used_ their itools accounts

arn

That is completely waht I was thinking.
 

kansast

macrumors member
Jul 18, 2002
68
0
I would sign up but...

I would have already signed up.. but it seems to me that a lot of the features of .mac would only really be helpful if I had a decent internet connection. I'm stuck with ISDN and nothing better is available in my area.

I like having the mac.com email address, but the larger hard drive space and some other features just don't do me much with a slow connection.
 

Arcady

macrumors 6502
May 24, 2002
402
24
Lexington, KY
bull

I don't believe this.

In any case, even if it is true... I don't think any revenue that .Mac might generate is worth the ill will and lost sales that Apple generated with this whole $100 a year fiasco.

HEY STEVE! Just sell mac.com email for $10 a year already. It took you like 2 years to put a damn CD-RW drive in a Mac. Don't you ever learn dude?
 

dongmin

macrumors 68000
Jan 3, 2002
1,710
6
Re: bull

Originally posted by Arcady
I don't believe this.

In any case, even if it is true... I don't think any revenue that .Mac might generate is worth the ill will and lost sales that Apple generated with this whole $100 a year fiasco.

If it is true, then people aren't as pissed off about it as you think. And if 45% translate into something like 1 million customers, then that's $50 mil of revenue with minimal additional cost for Apple. If I was a shareholder, I'd be pretty siked.

Personally, I think $50 is a pretty fair price for what you get. My only real complaint is that iDisk is not particularly fast. I sure hope they fix it.
 

liven2

macrumors regular
Jan 2, 2002
194
68
Bonney Lake, WA
45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day! .mac will offer more in the future and it will continue to grow and become better. Lets see where things are in a year.

If you had an account before, your first year of 45 bucks and I feel that is worth it. The 100MB of disk space rocks and it is much faster in 10.2 since I am running GM (c115). It is not perfect but it is very nice and very worth it to me.

STOP all your whinning and go buy a PC and do the .NET thing instead like that is going to be any better. OR support the company that you feel is going to be the next big thing of the future...

Yes, change is painful but Apple needs to make money and I want to see them grow and remain profitable even when the other ones are losing money year end and year out!!!

WHAt a bunch of BABIES!!!!!:p
 

BobVB

macrumors 6502a
Apr 12, 2002
839
183
Re: Re: bull

Originally posted by dongmin


If it is true, then people aren't as pissed off about it as you think. And if 45% translate into something like 1 million customers, then that's $50 mil of revenue with minimal additional cost for Apple. If I was a shareholder, I'd be pretty siked.

Considering how many people still have dialups, and only the email is useful to them I am very incredulous. Of the 12 iTools users I know only one has any plans on getting .mac.

Oh, I just thought of something - they may be counting many $10 a year email only accounts. I know the guy who is getting the .mac is letting people pay him $10 to keep their email.
 

Arcady

macrumors 6502
May 24, 2002
402
24
Lexington, KY
Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by liven2
I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day! .mac will offer more in the future and it will continue to grow and become better. Lets see where things are in a year.

First of all, it is $49, not $45. Secondly, why in the HELL would you pay for something that is still free for another 6 weeks? You just lost 6 free weeks of iTools for no reason at all.

And who cares what is coming next year. You can buy your own domain with more web space and more bandwidth for less per year. iTools/.Mac homepages are BULL**** because if you use it like Apple says, by putting a pew QuickTime movies and some images on there, as soon as 3 or 4 of your friends look at it, it shuts off and says you exceeded your bandwidth.

Nonsense.
 

iwantanewmac

macrumors 6502
Oct 24, 2001
356
0
Re: I would sign up but...

Originally posted by kansast
I would have already signed up.. but it seems to me that a lot of the features of .mac would only really be helpful if I had a decent internet connection. I'm stuck with ISDN and nothing better is available in my area.

I like having the mac.com email address, but the larger hard drive space and some other features just don't do me much with a slow connection.

Don't count on it.
I have ADSL and my oh my it's sloooooooooooww. Did any1 say slow? :)
.slow was/is a good name. Who thought of that?
 

sparkleytone

macrumors 68020
Oct 28, 2001
2,308
0
Greensboro, NC
Originally posted by Shrek
With such high prices on Macintosh computers, .Mac should be FREE as an incentive--a thank you for buying a Macintosh. Why isn't it?! :mad:

i'm sure we'll see a promotion like that soon. something like buy a mac and .Mac and get $100 rebate.
 

iwantanewmac

macrumors 6502
Oct 24, 2001
356
0
Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by liven2
I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day! .mac will offer more in the future and it will continue to grow and become better. Lets see where things are in a year.

If you had an account before, your first year of 45 bucks and I feel that is worth it. The 100MB of disk space rocks and it is much faster in 10.2 since I am running GM (c115). It is not perfect but it is very nice and very worth it to me.

STOP all your whinning and go buy a PC and do the .NET thing instead like that is going to be any better. OR support the company that you feel is going to be the next big thing of the future...

Yes, change is painful but Apple needs to make money and I want to see them grow and remain profitable even when the other ones are losing money year end and year out!!!

WHAt a bunch of BABIES!!!!!:p

Maybe you have a pile of cash somewhere in your closet.
We are NOT whining. They said it would be free for life.
ah but that's typically apple.
Maybe you feel that it's worth the money.
I certainly don't.
 

alex_ant

macrumors 68020
Feb 5, 2002
2,473
0
All up in your bidness
Re: Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by iwantanewmac


Maybe you have a pile of cash somewhere in your closet.
We are NOT whining. They said it would be free for life.
ah but that's typically apple.
Maybe you feel that it's worth the money.
I certainly don't.
Actually, I don't think they ever said iTools would be free for life. Free maybe, but not free for life. That would have been really stupid of them. In fact, I'll bet that if you look in the iTools Terms of Service, you'll see something to the extent of "Apple reserves the right to cancel or amend the terms of this service at any time."

Not that I think the $100/year idea with no option to subscribe to just the email service isn't dumb...
 

awrc

macrumors regular
Apr 20, 2002
215
1
Milwaukee, WI
I don't believe it - and before anyone starts throwing around terms like "whining babies (interesting how the primary tactic of the pro-.Mac lobby appears to be throwing insults around rather than presenting their case rationally), I decided the features are worth it to me and paid for it a couple of weeks back. I have .Mac. It was worth it to me. I can, however, see how somebody who only uses the e-mail address might consider $100 a year for a bunch of stuff they don't use rather steep.

Reason I don't believe it is that in an interview shortly after .Mac was announced (sorry, can't remember the source, might have been on the CNet site) an Apple exec was quoted as saying they were aiming for a 10% uptake rate i.e. they were expected to retain 10% of iTools users as .Mac customers.

So we've got Apple expecting a 10% uptake rate, yet I'm supposed to believe that Apple exceeded their own expectations by 450% despite the volume of complaint that arose? Oh, and throw in all those people who plan to sign up but are holding u\off until the very last minute so they get the most out of their trial accounts, and the numbers seem even more unbelievable.

One possible explanation I can think of is they they're counting each converted .Mac e-mail address as a customer. So a family that had five accounts, turned one into a full account and the rest into e-mail only would be counted as 5 conversions, but would bring in $140 rather than $500.

Al
 

awrc

macrumors regular
Apr 20, 2002
215
1
Milwaukee, WI
Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by liven2
I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day!

Unusually expensive? While I agree that we're going to see more and more services becoming subscription based, with the exception of the $49 introductory fee, .Mac is rather overpriced for what it offers (except possibly for those users whose needs mean that they squeeze every last possible bit of use out of those 100MB).

It's also the case that in the majority of services that *have* become subscription-based, they've had the sense to offer a "lite' version for free, to act as a draw to potential new customers. The problem with .Mac trial accounts is that the feature that most people have been using in iTools accounts (the mac.com e-mail address) isn't exactly something you can usefully try out for 60 days, it's more of an all-or-nothing proposition. It's like offering a subscription to an online newspaper that lets you read the gardening, financial and lifestyle sections, but only contains month-old information in the current affairs section. It's there so that you can see what it looks like, but not actually a lot of use. Oh, and the sports section is off-limits completely until you sign up for the full thing. Once the initial group of former iTools trial accounts expire, most people using the trial will be doing it to investigate iDisk and Backup.

Personally speaking, $49 *was* enough to justify signing up for me (and for those who wonder why I didn't wait until later, I was doing a system rebuild and expected rather more of the Backup program than it actually delivered - my bad, really, given the "quick and easy to use" nature of most .Mac services, a reasonably powerful backup program was too much to expect). I also have a hunch that by this time next year they might have added enough (*) to .Mac to make the $100 worth paying then.

Al

(*) Assuming all these additional .Mac services they promise don't all turn out to be "for only an additional $25 a year..."
 

topicolo

macrumors 68000
Jun 4, 2002
1,672
0
Ottawa, ON
Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by liven2
I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day! .mac will offer more in the future and it will continue to grow and become better. Lets see where things are in a year.

If you had an account before, your first year of 45 bucks and I feel that is worth it. The 100MB of disk space rocks and it is much faster in 10.2 since I am running GM (c115). It is not perfect but it is very nice and very worth it to me.

STOP all your whinning and go buy a PC and do the .NET thing instead like that is going to be any better. OR support the company that you feel is going to be the next big thing of the future...

Yes, change is painful but Apple needs to make money and I want to see them grow and remain profitable even when the other ones are losing money year end and year out!!!

WHAt a bunch of BABIES!!!!!:p

Apple shareholders need more people like you :)
 
Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by liven2
I got mine the week it came out! Get used to it folks everything online is going to be this way some day! .mac will offer more in the future and it will continue to grow and become better. Lets see where things are in a year.

If you had an account before, your first year of 45 bucks and I feel that is worth it. The 100MB of disk space rocks and it is much faster in 10.2 since I am running GM (c115). It is not perfect but it is very nice and very worth it to me.

STOP all your whinning and go buy a PC and do the .NET thing instead like that is going to be any better. OR support the company that you feel is going to be the next big thing of the future...

Yes, change is painful but Apple needs to make money and I want to see them grow and remain profitable even when the other ones are losing money year end and year out!!!

WHAt a bunch of BABIES!!!!!:p

Stop being silly. The folks who are signing up are too lazy to hunt down a service which can give you the same thing for 10% of the price.
.Mac cannot be compared to .NET. .NET's vision was far grander and offered much more. The only thing the simplistic .Mac has in common with .NET is the ".".

If everyone bought into every foolishly overpriced service in the name of "want to see them grow and remain profitable", then the companies could charge a thousand bucks and watch the suckers line up. Fortunately people don't seem to be that stupid, yet. Apple is not offering a $100 product. It's not even a $50 product. Of course, the same could be said for their machines, but Apple has never been about value, so why start now?
 

bbarnhart

macrumors 6502a
Jan 16, 2002
824
1
iDisk slow

One reason why iDisk may be slow is upload speeds for DSL and cable modems is not nearly as fast as dowload speeds. Same is true for v.90 56k phone modems.
 

bbarnhart

macrumors 6502a
Jan 16, 2002
824
1
45%

This number may be accurate for several reasons. Apple knows that people create 'throw-away' accounts all the time. If an account is not active, they aren't going to considered it as a baseline for the 45% conversion rate.

Also, people may have paid-up without knowing you can wait until late Sept. when your trial period runs out. I doubt most people keep tabs on what is going on with Apple like we do.
 

Foocha

macrumors 6502a
Jul 10, 2001
588
0
London
I think it's fine for Apple to charge what they like for the service - people can take it or leave it. I do believe, however, that Apple should have given people with e-mail accounts a little more notice in order for them to make alternative arrangements. I think 6 months would have been more appropriate notice period.

I'm a self confessed Apple fan, and I don't like to see them failed, so personally I think it's good news if they have achieve so much on this so soon.
 

jelloshotsrule

macrumors G3
Feb 7, 2002
9,596
4
serendipity
Re: Re: 45.00 fo first year is reasonable!

Originally posted by Arcady
And who cares what is coming next year. You can buy your own domain with more web space and more bandwidth for less per year. iTools/.Mac homepages are BULL**** because if you use it like Apple says, by putting a pew QuickTime movies and some images on there, as soon as 3 or 4 of your friends look at it, it shuts off and says you exceeded your bandwidth.

the fact is, .mac is not for professionals or probably even prosumer types, which many of the people here are..

if you were to get your own domain, it'd be cheaper. and you'd get more space. and more email addresses..

but would you be able to load your latest vacation photos onto a web page with a few clicks?

now, these prefab web pages aren't great, they're cheesy and easy. that's all. but guess what, the regular consumer generally can't create a web page. so maybe throw a bit more money out as an expense to hire a web designer... then the 99/49 bucks makes more sense.

personally, i consider myself a prosumer type and wouldn't pay for it as of now. but for those who can't make their own pages, etc. it makes sense.

also, i am certain the bandwidth issue is not there when you pay for .mac. anyone confirm this?


i think there should be a free/cheap email only option. but oh well..
 

QuiteSure

macrumors 6502a
Jun 20, 2002
542
121
Waiting for Jaguar

I'm surprised at the 45% figure as well; like many others (I suppose), I'm waiting for Jaguar to come out so that I can see how the new features coordinate with my trial version of .mac. If I find that these new features truly add value to my mac-using experience, I will probably buy.
 

medea

macrumors 68030
Aug 4, 2002
2,517
1
Madison, Wi
Actually, everbody signed up for .mac just so they could bitch about it on the support forums....
I'm happy with it really, and cant wait for the rest of the iApps to come out.
 
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