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.Mac Update on Jan 10th
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bignumbers said:
well.
regardless of what time its done.. its night somewhere in the world and regular business hours too.
the US isnt the centre of the universe. even tho apple is based there
Applespider said:
I maybe be almost the same price as .Mac, but last time I checked (not thoroughly) I couldn't keep my own domain name, the storage was a joke and the monthly transfers were pathetic.
Then again, I may remember wrong... I'll go check mac.com right now.
Edit: quite useless... It keeps telling me my .Mac account expired (I've set it up when I bought my Mac mini but never used it). Where can I read the .Mac features?
Edit 2: never mind, I found the "FAQ" link.
Yvan256 said:Oh, CRAP!
Funniest technical warning message I've read in a long time.
It's true - they are shutting down the entire internet so nobody can give information out of what's going on at the keynote, and they are upgrading the entire internet backbone to serve High-Def content in real time to everyone in the world simultaneously - even over dial up.
Just for your knowledge - .Mac has 1GB of storage with 1TB of bandwidth per month.
The bandwidth is good... now give me 10 GB storage!
irmongoose
The bandwidth is good... now give me 10 GB storage!
irmongoose
irmongoose said:Just for your knowledge - .Mac has 1GB of storage with 1TB of bandwidth per month.
The bandwidth is good... now give me 10 GB storage!
irmongoose
I agee - The bandwidth is good - 10GB needs to happen to make this a worthwhile service - and drop the price to $69 and I'll think about it when I get my new PowerBook (hopefully within a couple of weeks)
I used it when it was called PowerTools and it was free - I still think free is a good price point and feature to the Mac faithful and would "urge" windows users to switch with a cool "free" service such as .mac
I'm anxious to hear the details - .mac has a lot of potential as a product, but in it's current form I doubt many folks see value. I imagine they sell a fair amount of .mac to new computer buyers - but I'd guess the amount of second year subscribers is low.
Yvan256 said:
How many personal website publishers do you think would switch to .Mac just because they had a lower price? Are they the market you think Apple should be after? Are there enough of them to make up for lost profit? Take into account that there are free hosting sites, hosts that are regionally targeted, hosts that offer similar services for other platforms, publishers who do not know about .Mac, publishers who think Mac fans are zealots and would never support Apple, folks who cannot break contracts (see your comment), the list goes on.
If you are head of Marketing at Apple are you going to walk in to the CEO and say, 'Hey, I think we can switch X% of all personal website publishers to our service by lowering our profit margin.' or would you suggest we should find out how to continue to serve our consumer base?
Yes, you make more profits if you sell something 100$, but you could be making even more money by selling it 50$ if more than twice as many people get it. That's Economics 101.
A lot more than twice as many people. Try somewhere in the vicinity of 10X. In order to produce that nice profit quarterly for its stock holders, make sure they keep their jobs (and Jobs), and stay in business they need to make a Net Profit not just a Gross Profit. With the increase of sales comes increased overhead. With the increase of overhead comes an additional decrease in profit.
You are correct, these services do not even compare. Powweb seems like a nice place to do just what you are doing. But I think you have just proven the point. .Mac is more than a simple web hosting service and not for everyone.
People complained when they first put a price on the service (which was lower). It is likely that unless it were free there will always be people out there saying, 'Lower the priceI can get it cheaper' but you can't. Nowhere else do you have this setup built right into your computer when you turn it on and easy to use (it's not perfect though).
Yvan256 said:I maybe be almost the same price as .Mac, but last time I checked (not thoroughly) I couldn't keep my own domain name, the storage was a joke and the monthly transfers were pathetic.
Then again, I may remember wrong... I'll go check mac.com right now.
Edit: quite useless... It keeps telling me my .Mac account expired (I've set it up when I bought my Mac mini but never used it). Where can I read the .Mac features?
Edit 2: never mind, I found the "FAQ" link.
Thanks. Next time, just replace your entire post with "Deleted by user."
Lacero said:
OS X is great for n00bs, but just with enough skill and knowing where to look, and what BSD libraries to compile and how to fiddle with window manager widgets, creating your own OS X-like operating system from existing free tools is fairly easy enough to do. I recompile apps every few weeks, so it's not that hard at all!
In all seriousness, $99/year (what, $8.25 a month) for synching built into the operating system, a backup program that can use up to 1 GB of online storage, webmail, web-based calendaring, easy to use web publishing, and a WebDAV-based file transfer point is a pretty decent deal. I pay it, and I also have separate webhosting ($25/month) for multiple domains and offsite storage of 6 GB ($14/month) from another vendor. It's all cheaper than my time: setting up synching between my Macs alone without .Mac would take at least long enough for me to earn back that $99 by doing job-related tasks.
That said, anyone who uses .Mac as their primary business communication channel is at best a hobbyist. $12/month for a decent hosting service is pretty easy to find, and if your business isn't earning you enough money to justify spending $12/month, you probably don't have enough volume to worry about your .Mac email being down for a few hours.
Just renewed 4th year a couple of weeks ago. I think that with a new computer, you could get an email address like first_last@powerbook.mac.com and 1 GB of mail + idisk and 500 GB bandwidth. update to regular .mac, and get 10 GB for mail, 10 GB for iDisk, 1 TB of bandwidth, and whatever else seems good. Also, when you get .mac u also get a regular .mac address, so u have whatever@powerbook.mac.com and whateverelse@mac.com. Just my idea.
EDIT: Those rnt real email accounts so dont try to email them.
EDIT: Those rnt real email accounts so dont try to email them.
applemax said:I think Apple need to do a competition. The prize? An @apple.com address!!! I'd do anything for one of those
Well, you could always apply for a job at apple...
Well, it just says that services will be affected; it doesn't (necessarily) state that the .Mac service will be down.Macrumors said:
Readers report that Apple's .Mac service will be undergoing scheduled maintenance during the Macworld Keynote speech, spawning speculation that .Mac updates are in the works:
Quote:
Mac will be undergoing scheduled maintenance from 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM PST on 1/10/06. All .Mac services will be affected. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Previous rumors had suggested that Apple was revamping its content delivery system to offer feature-length content. Rumors pointed towards the use of .Mac storage for delivery of these products.
Also, I had Hotmail even before Microslop gobbled them up - and noticed the amount of junkmail take an "uptick" after their involvment - but I just grew tired of the lack of Mac-equity, the potential for viruses affecting my e-mail (not my MacOS X system), etc. Finally this Fall I signed up for .Mac - it was $69 for me, because I bought it with Tiger.
I haven't explored all the ins & outs of it, yet, but I am quite happy. It's kinda the same reasoning that I didn't mind shelling out $129 every Christmas for the new version of MacOS X (great upgrade features, but I was supporting Apple's efforts)... At any rate, I haven't taken the time to create my Homepage - one of these days... But just being able to sync my address book, and use Mail with .Mac - I could never get that to work with MSN Hotmail.
Rumor-wise, I've heard about the 1TB bandwidth some users reported, and about the mysterious "iWeb" that appears to be part of iLife '06, and even the .Mac-related on-demand streaming video service... Well, all I want - and I'd pay $150 a year for it - is a .Mac Premium Service that gives me a Global iTMS Bazaar. I can preview, purchase & download music, videos & tv shows from any of the International iTMSs, and Apple will manage the currency exchange rates for me. Yeah, I suspect I may end up paying more than $.99 per song off the UK iTMS, but that's mainly 'cuz their British Pound is worth more than the US Dollar... But the freedom to find artists & songs that are not available on the US iTMS - well worth $150 per year...
Don't get me wrong, though, I'll take any other new features Apple will add to make .Mac more compelling... I'm not stupid.
Why would $70 versus $100 be compelling? That's a difference of only $2.50 per month. That is like getting a couple of extra toppings on your monthly pizza or the cost per month of setting the thermostat up 1-deg in your house. Most folks spend/waste/"lose in the seat of your car" $2.50/month and don't get excited about it. But for some reason, when applied to .Mac, it becomes a big deal.Multiple Folks said:
I personally like .Mac ... I use it to host a family website as well as use the iPhoto integration to do monthly updates when I don't have time to debug my crappy html code (plus backup and the sync features). Apple, up to this point hasn't sought more .Mac customers by sweetening the deal for some reason. I would personally rather see them spend time/effort improving the iLife suite since most of us use something in the suite daily and it IS a software feature that attracts new Mac users.
EMKoper said:
Combination of factors. The old $9.95 v/s $10.
General rule of 1's and 10's. Under $50 drop 1 over $50 drop 10. That combined with "ooh, it's a service by APPLE!" and......there ya go.
Customers aren't thinking monthy installments when it comes to stuff like this, unless its advertised originally that way.
Applespider said:
i too am a powweb user and i switched from .mac.
when we signed up for powweb, they were offering a 18 months free deal. so that's 30 months at 7.70 per month.
that comes to $3.08 per month for 30 months.
that's 36.96 per year. for .mac you pay a lot more for a lot less. granted, everything is easier and more integrated with .mac. and i do miss the backup and syncing....but for the price....
~kyle
What Apple should do with .Mac is allow for a monthly billing option. That way, each month, on the date you initially selected, it would automatically renew for the next month. Apple then wouldn't have to send you those annoying renewal e-mails at the end of your subscription each year. At just $8.25 ($99.00/12) per month most people wouldn't even notice or bother to cancel.
By forcing the user to make a $99.00 purchase decision each year, you're forcing them to re-evaluate the value proposition, which, as has been said here, isn't compelling to some. So, why ask 'em?!
--Mike
P.S.: I also like the idea of a 30-day trial period (Of course, they'd already have your billing set up, so you'd have to remember to cancel.)
P.P.S: Let's add some more features and fixes to .Mac while were at it.
By forcing the user to make a $99.00 purchase decision each year, you're forcing them to re-evaluate the value proposition, which, as has been said here, isn't compelling to some. So, why ask 'em?!
--Mike
P.S.: I also like the idea of a 30-day trial period (Of course, they'd already have your billing set up, so you'd have to remember to cancel.)
P.P.S: Let's add some more features and fixes to .Mac while were at it.
Another thing that I'd love to see in .Mac is the ability to boot from a MacOS X Tiger "image" on Apple's servers, so that I can perform some repairs & maintenance on my Mac - I know, that's what your startup DVD/CD is for. But people don't always have their disks with them, if they're on the road, so it would be real handy in that sense. Also, my DVD drive died around June-ish of 2004 (3rd one on my lemon-esque Pismo)...
Another thought is extra templates & functionality for Apple (and 3rd party developers?) software - I know they've done this in the past, via the iDisk software folder, but what if it were possible to (essentially) reserve time on Apple's servers? For example, your iMac G5 2.1GHz is fast, but what if you could use Apple's server farm to take care of some rendering chores in iMovie HD, iDVD, etc.?
One more thought: WiMax is coming - I don't understand all it's technical capabilities, but understand the range to be approx. 5km(?) What if Apple put WiMax transceivers(?) in every one of their Apple stores, and/or (perhaps) licensed some bandwidth from cell-carriers that installed WiMax. And evolved .Mac into more of an Internet Portal... I pay about $95 a month for Time Warner basic cable & high-speed internet, but if I could use WiMax and Apple as my Web Gateway, I could drop the Time Warner service for that. Heck, if Apple came out with streaming video on a subscription base that provided the tv shows I currently watch, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Another thought is extra templates & functionality for Apple (and 3rd party developers?) software - I know they've done this in the past, via the iDisk software folder, but what if it were possible to (essentially) reserve time on Apple's servers? For example, your iMac G5 2.1GHz is fast, but what if you could use Apple's server farm to take care of some rendering chores in iMovie HD, iDVD, etc.?
One more thought: WiMax is coming - I don't understand all it's technical capabilities, but understand the range to be approx. 5km(?) What if Apple put WiMax transceivers(?) in every one of their Apple stores, and/or (perhaps) licensed some bandwidth from cell-carriers that installed WiMax. And evolved .Mac into more of an Internet Portal... I pay about $95 a month for Time Warner basic cable & high-speed internet, but if I could use WiMax and Apple as my Web Gateway, I could drop the Time Warner service for that. Heck, if Apple came out with streaming video on a subscription base that provided the tv shows I currently watch, I'd switch in a heartbeat.