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.Mac update imminent?

Apple should release .Mac as software package ($50 or so) that works against "bring your own" web hosting service or Apple's own web hosting service (additional $50/year per GB).

Most valued .Mac features are Backup, Sync (personal data, Address Book, Bookmark), and HomePage (far more stylish looking templates than iPhoto). All of these features can easily function against third party web hosting service.

Although some may value having a vanity @mac.com email address, .Mac's Mail is significantly behind the time. No filter, search, and rich text formatting to name a few. iDisk is way too slow and unreliable.
 
Price Point

I agree that $99 is too much for the current package, but it's not to hard to find the .Mac subscription for $10-$30 less if you shop around (you CAN use boxes to renew your subscription). I ended up getting this upcoming year's service for $48 after the rebate promo they had in May.

And you do have the option of having 5 other emails with your subscription now (through the aliases), and some unique ones can still be found. I find that feature handy (though why they didn't advertise it when it first appeared before Tiger, I don't know).
 
iDisk has been the greatest thing I ever purchased. I use it to keep my business files live between my 2 computers (Mac at home, PC in the office). The Mac is behind a wifi router, the pc is behind a corporate firewall.

I was half ready to get business dsl line run to the house and then creating a server for my files until I figured I'd try out idisk instead, and couldn't be happier for the decision. Yes it's slow to down/upload files, but that only gets done at the start/end of the day, during the day they're just left open. Then when I go home at the end of the day, they're all there and ready to be used.

What would I like to see, faster access of course wouldn't hurt. The experience from windows is painful (although I'm sure at least some of this is MS' fault). The ability to keep a local cache from windows would be nice to speed things up a little, and provide offline access. Size is definitely something that should be improved. Everyone has been harping on the Google model, and I have to agree. There's no way that Google is getting $150/year in advertising revenue per user, yet they offer 2.5x the space of Apple for that price. I would like to be able to keep my iTunes on the iDisk as well... Keep the files live between multiple computers/multiple locations, get your music when you're elsewhere (without just plugging the ipod into a stereo).

I felt like this information will help the debate, as many people have been harping on the fact that syncing information between computers isn't that difficult a task. Keep in mind that not everyone is doing this behind the same network for their systems.
 
cgmpowers said:
Apple does offer .Mac account on a student discount, I think its $79...
Click to expand...

Nope, no discount. Just checked. It's $99 through their Education site.

And to those people who say it's "all about the syncing"...$99/year to sync two or more computers is just too much $$$, especially on a graduate student's salary.

I gave it a go, and I liked it for a bit, but the novelty has worn off. I'd rather put the $99 on a Shuffle; at least that way I'd have something tangible after the year is up.
 
MacPhreak said:
Nope, no discount. Just checked. It's $99 through their Education site.

And to those people who say it's "all about the syncing"...$99/year to sync two or more computers is just too much $$$, especially on a graduate student's salary.

I gave it a go, and I liked it for a bit, but the novelty has worn off. I'd rather put the $99 on a Shuffle; at least that way I'd have something tangible after the year is up.
Click to expand...

is 27 cents a day really too much for a graduate student's salary? Thats kinda sad if it is. I love my .Mac and i am in college as well. And i have to pay my 100 dollars a month now to keep my website up and running.
 
rog said:
Wow do people actually still buy .mac. I mean it was fine back when they called it iTools and it was free, but I can't see why anyone would pay so much for it. Maybe 10 bucks a year for basic email, web page, and idisk, but any more than that and you might as well just register your own domain and sign up for a cheap hosting plan.
Click to expand...


I have a hosting plan with Dreamhost, but don't have the skills to use it to synch my AddressBook on three macs. Any suggestions?

The other use of .mac for me is to sync / access calendars on three macs and various PC's. Sunbird / iCal and a WebDAV at dreamhost would probalby meet my needs on that.

I'd love to stop paying money for this. Seems like a rip off because the email, website, and many other features are useless to me.
 
eva01 said:
is 27 cents a day really too much for a graduate student's salary? Thats kinda sad if it is. I love my .Mac and i am in college as well. And i have to pay my 100 dollars a month now to keep my website up and running.
Click to expand...

If you use most of .Mac's other services, $0.27/day may be a justifiable expense. But $0.27/day just to sync 2 computers now and then is expensive. Heck, I suppose you can always break down overpriced purchase to smaller units to help you justify: 30-inch Apple Cinema Display... it costs only $0.17/hour if you use it for 2 years. Go buy it!
 
Ja Di ksw said:
.mac? People still use that?

I guess I shouldn't have worded it that way.

...

People EVER used that??
Click to expand...

Yep. All the time. Love it! I'd pay double without a thought. I only hope that the majority of users feel the same as I so that I don't ever have to search for an equally appealing service. It's just sooo easy to use. I post photos and video for family ALL the time. More space would be great, but I'm not running out with 250MB. Since I pull my mail automatically every 5 minutes and leave nothing on .mac, I use virtually no space for mail. I just like having it instantaneously available when I sit down. If I'm on the road I turn off the auto-fetch option, but that's rare.

I also use .mac syncing but agree with other posters that this should be a native OS X capability rather than a .mac extra. I publish my calendars for personal and family use and I use the public folder for sharing larger files with friends all over the world.

Yes, I could probably find all of these services elsewhere, but I'm not aware of anything as elegant and easy to use as .mac. When that comes along, maybe then I'll switch.
 
ASTO

Guys, haven't any of you got a free account from ASTO? If you go to www.apple.com/salestraining you can register as an Apple retailer with any old details. If you get more than 8000 points you get a free account for a year and its pretty easy, it only took me a few hours to get to it.

I'm surprised more people don't do it. I actually am eligable but I know a lot of people who aren't and just made up some details and done it anyway 😉

Also, you have to make sure you get 80% on the .mac quiz, not too difficult.
 
nutmac said:
If you use most of .Mac's other services, $0.27/day may be a justifiable expense. But $0.27/day just to sync 2 computers now and then is expensive. Heck, I suppose you can always break down overpriced purchase to smaller units to help you justify: 30-inch Apple Cinema Display... it costs only $0.17/hour if you use it for 2 years. Go buy it!
Click to expand...

If i had a dual DVI video card i may just do it 😉
 
Whyren said:
The online bookmarks and iDisk come in handy...but considering my most used feature (other than email) is webhosting, I'd love to see support for PHP, CGI, Perl, MySQL...all them dynamic languages.
Click to expand...

That'd be nice but there are other services that are cheaper. .Mac is not for geeks - those are geek features.

.Mac is for novices and for those that don't want to spend the time setting up and maintaining geek features like those above.
 
Just Dumb

hayesk said:
That'd be nice but there are other services that are cheaper. .Mac is not for geeks - those are geek features.

.Mac is for novices and for those that don't want to spend the time setting up and maintaining geek features like those above.
Click to expand...

This is a ridiculous attitude. If .mac supported these features then Apple could build more sophisticated templates that would allow more easy features for novices.

I suppose since compression algorythms such as mp3 or mpeg4 are for geeks that Apple shouldn't build software like iMovie, iTunes, or iPhoto.

Just dumb. 🙄
 
digitalbiker said:
This is a ridiculous attitude. If .mac supported these features then Apple could build more sophisticated templates that would allow more easy features for novices.

I suppose since compression algorythms such as mp3 or mpeg4 are for geeks that Apple shouldn't build software like iMovie, iTunes, or iPhoto.

Just dumb. 🙄
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts, some people call it "geek stuff" and others technology, Apple wouldn't be an innovation leader without "all them geek stuff" and hence .mac lacking of innovation and cutting-edge technology without such features and I just want to know how can somebody think that Macs are for novices only, it's absurd and completely uninformed.
 
The $99 price point is rather steep. I might consider the service were it priced at $49. For their price, I can get 1.6GB of webspace and unlimited emails, plus full FTP and BBS services from several different web offerings. You don't get Backup, but backing up over IP is rather lame anyways. I use the free SilverKeeper for backup tasks.
 
Nobody has mentioned this but how about access to the email using a mobile phone. I use my phone for internet all the time. Why not allow me to check my .Mac account on the go.

Oh... And more space.
 
If your phone has a POP3 or IMAP client then you can check it using your phone assuming you can access data services on your subscription. If your phone doesn't have an e-mail client then you can still use services like mail2wap.com to access it.
 
I want:

* more iDisk space
* faster iDisk access
* HTML for Dummies-ish editing features
* assistance getting a podcast up and running

Squire
 
Nobody thought about privacy?

I wouldn't hate .Mac, if it would focus on Email, Webspace etc.

But I do have privacy concerns regarding syncing and that some cool features like iPhoto-Sync to a webpage is only limited to .Mac. You need to create the page locally and upload it later via ftp. Would be nice, if ftp or webdav would be possible inside of iPhoto.
Syncing as well. Even if you have OS X Server. The mobile-home-client feature is not as good as .Mac.

And why? Because Apple wants to sell .Mac.

Just think of Microsoft having a feature like that...I still can remember those rumors, that Windows is spying your disk for licences or documents.

And here we have people giving it to apple for free...no..even paying for it.

As I said, I don't mind the email and web-feature.

But Apple mustn't neglect core features like sync because of this service. Not to mention the speed. I don't want to sync my video raw-material via internet. It's only possible with geek features.

And therefore I agree with one of the previous postings, that .Mac is nothing for geeks. If Non-Geeks are novices or something else, is a different discussion.

Markus
- g5 dual 2.7
- 12" Powerbook
- mac mini
- eyeTV
 
.Mac has always been pants to me - it's so OS 10.1. And every update seems to mean just a new release of Backup. Big deal.

The reason it has so few subscribers (let's face it, it has) is because there is no killer app. If Apple charged $50 a year for the web space and a decent killer non-web-based HTML editor for dummies (something I was hoping Pages would be able to handle) - something like Netscape Composer but that can produce non-proffessional but decent-looking personal websites - then I and many more Mac (and Windows) users would jump on board. Homepage is half-arsed and completely sucks and I can't afford or need Dreamweaver, etc. Know what I mean?

They need a complete overhaul and I'd part with the cash.
 
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