Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

.Mac Update Coming at August 7th Media Event?

The only feature .mac has right now that might be worth the price is "syncing". Of cource anyone with a full time Internet connection can set this up themselves. But for many people it's worth $99 not to have to learn how.

I canceled after the trial period because there was nothing there I couldn't get for free. The other problem is that .mac is Mac Only and does not work well with the other operating systems I use whereas other standards based system are OS neutral.
 
bretm said:
Really? Great. Please enlighten me as I would like to quit paying for sync of all my computers, which includes my adress book and calendars and bookmarks and I'd also like any of these free services to work with real applications, not web based ad ridden ones. I cant wait for you to list all the free back to my mac services as well. and when I am forced to use web email - I'd like it to look and feel exactly like my local app. Where do I get this amazing free suite of utilities? Gmail? Yahoo? Get real.
Click to expand...

I'm with you completely. I would just like a little more storage and some new features.
 
bretm said:
Really? Great. Please enlighten me as I would like to quit paying for sync of all my computers, which includes my adress book and calendars and bookmarks and I'd also like any of these free services to work with real applications, not web based ad ridden ones. I cant wait for you to list all the free back to my mac services as well. and when I am forced to use web email - I'd like it to look and feel exactly like my local app. Where do I get this amazing free suite of utilities? Gmail? Yahoo? Get real.
Click to expand...

So much hate in this one. Are all these software features (that cost Apple NOTHING to run) worth £70 a year? Gmail has it's own advantages, like working well with other OS's, and most importantly it's free! In fact you get even MORE storage with Gmail, and that's the thing that costs money to run.

If you're OK with Apple charging you for something that doesn't cost them anything then good for you. The only thing that costs to run is storage, which other providers offer more of for nothing.
 
Manic Mouse said:
So much hate in this one. Are all these software features (that cost Apple NOTHING to run) worth £70 a year? Gmail has it's own advantages, like working well with other OS's, and most importantly it's free! In fact you get even MORE storage with Gmail, and that's the thing that costs money to run.
Click to expand...

You are partially correct, its the bandwidth, sys maintenance and storage that cost the company(ies).

However considering that storage prices are dropping rapidly, storage is not a hugh factor other than bandwidth and maintenance.
 
sonofclaude said:
...would be nice if the Leopard Remote Desktop iChat feature which was scrapped showed up as a .Mac feature. I would really like to take control of my fathers Mac when he gets in trouble.
Click to expand...

You can do that now, for free. Do a Google on "VNC". It works well.
While VNC is free software Apple re-packages it and calls it "Apple Remote Desktop" so if you want the apple supported version you can have that too. The two inter-operate too, VNC and Remote Desktop use the same on-wire protocol.

VNC runs on Linux and Windows too both as client and server. This is a good way to "run Windows on a Mac" (sort of) by building a headless windows box and getting at it using VNC from you Mac desktop.
 
Tuesday event coverage?

Who is going to be covering Tuesday event?


Eric
 
Connecting the .macs

I agree with the earlier poster that this is probably connected to the statement about lower earnings this quarter. It's about time this was free and used as an engine to give switchers yet another reason to dump the Windows machine. The benefit of .mac is being able to connect multiple Apple devices together. Today that is two macs but tomorrow I'd like to use .mac to connect my Mac Pro to my Powerbook to my iPhone to my Apple TV. Based on what we have seen of Leopard and 'Back to my Mac', Apple is moving in this direction but I really want to be able to search my Mac Pro from my iPhone at work and download a document, pdf or whatever rather than using the currently 'rough at the edges' automator mail rules.

Basically if you think about it, on the financial call Apple said that they were likely to come in about $200M short on earnings with the about same amount of revenue. My guess is that some of this $200M is related to a one time payment to existing .mac subscribers to reimburse them prorata for their subscription once it is free. Since they probably do subscription accounting on .mac revenue (durr!) this would result in only a minor impact on revenues but a bigger hit on earnings in opne quarter. Then everything Apple will connect to everything else Apple and .mac will be the glue.

Can't wait!
 
BritinNC said:
I agree with the earlier poster that this is probably connected to the statement about lower earnings this quarter. It's about time this was free and used as an engine to give switchers yet another reason to dump the Windows machine. The benefit of .mac is being able to connect multiple Apple devices together. Today that is two macs but tomorrow I'd like to use .mac to connect my Mac Pro to my Powerbook to my iPhone to my Apple TV. Based on what we have seen of Leopard and 'Back to my Mac', Apple is moving in this direction but I really want to be able to search my Mac Pro from my iPhone at work and download a document, pdf or whatever rather than using the currently 'rough at the edges' automator mail rules.

Basically if you think about it, on the financial call Apple said that they were likely to come in about $200M short on earnings with the about same amount of revenue. My guess is that some of this $200M is related to a one time payment to existing .mac subscribers to reimburse them prorata for their subscription once it is free. Since they probably do subscription accounting on .mac revenue (durr!) this would result in only a minor impact on revenues but a bigger hit on earnings in opne quarter. Then everything Apple will connect to everything else Apple and .mac will be the glue.

Can't wait!
Click to expand...

Ditto, with .Mac (or at least a limited version) being free it'll be yet another fantastic part of owning a Mac and another boon for integration.

Fingers crossed.
 
bretm said:
Really? Great. Please enlighten me as I would like to quit paying for sync of all my computers, which includes my adress book and calendars and bookmarks and I'd also like any of these free services to work with real applications, not web based ad ridden ones. I cant wait for you to list all the free back to my mac services as well. and when I am forced to use web email - I'd like it to look and feel exactly like my local app. Where do I get this amazing free suite of utilities? Gmail? Yahoo? Get real.
Click to expand...
For starters, you are aware you can set-up Gmail will Mail.app aren't you?
 
Manic Mouse said:
The only thing that costs to run is storage, which other providers offer more of for nothing.
Click to expand...

They do need to pay for the Internet connection. Bandwidth at the wholesale level delivered to a co-location facility still costs something like $1,000 per month per megabit. and a megabit is "nothing" if you are running a big service like .mac or Google Mail. They would need multiple fiber lines pulled into their facility and these do cost real money. I saw someone do this a while back (Earthlink was moving into a building) and they were outside digging up asphalt with backhoes and dump trucks and laying pipe and pouring concrete over. I don't know how many dollars a mile work like that costs.

Storage does cost too. What if 0.1% of all Apple users each wanted 10GB. That is not going to happen with some Apple xserves and a rack of SATA drives. I think Apple would be talking to Sun, IBM or EMC about building out a data center.

Don't forget about power and cooling at $0.14 per KWH it adds up fast.
 
So, does anyone else think this might be the main reason for the event? With new iMacs being just something we rumor mongers have cooked up with a dash of wishful thinking? I was just surprised they decided to hold a smaller event if the supposed iMac redesign had finally arrived.

I just don't want too many people to be whining and disapointed on the threads tomorrow, so we can talk about what DID get released, instead of whining about what DIDN'T (not that I think there will be many less whiners for posting this, but every one less whiner counts).
 
I've been a .Mac user for a few years now. It would be awesome if Apple decided that .Mac would be a free service for all Mac owners. They could exploit the simplicity of hosting a webpage, sharing photos, etc. so much better than they do now.
 
Fixed version of webmail, improved groups

Personally, I would like to see them fix the webmail client. Do a reply to all, and the display names in the CC: field don't get entered correctly (with ""). There are some other issues, but I can't remember them right now.

I just started using groups, and I'm not impressed. I tried to invite people and lot of my friends thought they had to spend $100 to get signed up because of the convoluted registration process. And editing the calendar can only be done on iCal? Not good. Maybe an update iLife will include the ability to publish web pages to your group.

All-in-all, though, I like the service, like the ease of web publishing with my Macs, and the iDisk has been very useful.

In 24 hours, we'll know....
 
I wonder...

Ok I suspect we will get both an iLife and iWork updates. But the biggest thing I think we might see tomorrow is iWork for Windows. They have a chance to beat Microsoft to the punch here. Who would pay money for office on a PC if iWork is in the 79-99 range can open Office Documents. The reason I say this is the recent release of Safari on Windows is once step forward in the framework to build iWork and possibly iLife for Windows.

Who knows really but it has been rumored that iWork was coming to windows can't recall where I seen this.

/b
 
Cleve said:
http://9to5mac.com/iwork-update-august-7th-spreadsheets-54235423
Looks like there is going to be a spreadsheet application
maybe even google apps tie in too
Click to expand...

This scares me a bit - especially phrases like "whole new way to work with spreadsheets." Pages is NOT a word processor, it's a newsletter/page layout tool, and isn't a replacement for something like Word (or Word like products). I'm worried to see what a spreadsheet product might actually look like :)
 
Grimace said:
10GB storage capacity per user
Integration with Time Machine
Easier photo/video sharing/uploading interface
iPhone integration
More sync between multiple computers (Win/Mac)

Let's see it Apple!
Click to expand...

Add to that web sites that are searchable and index by Google. Today there is a problem that Gooble does not pick up the sittes because of something done differently by .Mac.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back