.Mac......whats with that?!

Give it 30 days and see what the reviews say after WWDC - there might be some significant changes afoot.

 

I use it a lot. I use the web space a lot (10GB).

However, I had to re-new it even though I only use the web space and email, because I didn't want to lose my email address.

Hopefully more features will be added. I'm thinking of getting an iPhone, and the .Mac push support sounds interesting.

 

.mac is worth it's weight in gold. Especially if you have two machines and you want to keep everything in sync. Not to mention back to my mac screen sharing and a 10G iDisk. For $8.33 a month, you'd be hard-pressed to find another web hosting service that can match what .mac can do.

Then again, you can get .mac from amazon for $70, so that's $5.83 a month. Wow!

 

Funny it is $70 in America, and £70 in the UK ($140).

 

No, it's $99 in the US.

 

or...

Or 69.99 with the purchase of a new computer in the US

 

Buy .mac on amazon or something and save $20-$30.

 

I've just been to amazon & had alook at the .Mac subscription they have for sale but why are they calling it .Mac 5.0? BTW it's $60 on amazon right now but not sure for how long.

 

I have a love-hate relationship with .mac. It's pretty good for syncing contacts and calendars, and we do that a lot, with a family of four and six computers. But I don't use .mac mail (can't use with my own domain name), don't use iWeb or any .mac web hosting service, and I'm frustrated with iDisk because Time Machine doesn't back it up. So basically I'm paying for syncing, and I'm sure there's probably a cheaper way to do it than .mac.

 

This is exactly when .Mac became valuable for me; when I purchased and began regularly using a MBP to go with my desktop iMac. Syncing is a big deal and I use iDisk to transfer docs, photos, folders, etc. across both computers with ease. Also, I want to continue using the email address (and aliases) as well as the web gallery.

I would LOVE to see Apple institute is a reduced cost .Mac account that woud allow users to get/maintain their email addresses/aliases only (or perhaps with a couple of other features) for a reduced price. For those who don't need .Mac syncing, storage or web galleries, as many online sites give many of these features for free, and don't want to pay $70-$90+ to get or maintain a .mac email address, it may still be worth a $20 or so annual investment to get/keep the address. Call it .Mac Lite or something. Realistically, how Mac users are actually going to benefit .Mac pushing email onto an iPhone? I'll bet it's a lot less than the number who would love to have an IMAP email address that can be checked from any internet browser (though a new interface and functionality is DESPERATELY needed there) and has "mac" in the extension to show the team colors. Also, it works better with Mail than any other email address. It would be nice to see this smaller need for .Mac met with a smaller program and price. Personally, I really wanted a .mac email address but couldn't justify the cost until I got the second computer and needed to sync things. Without the MBP, no .Mac for me!

 

I have had severe problems with .Mac mail refusing to send/receive or thinking it's offline when it really isn't. Since I don't use the syncing feature, and don't have a setup that works with Back to My Mac, I'm probably going to discontinue my .Mac usage this year, unless Apple does something to fix the problems I'm having with it.

 

Email address

A couple of people above have mentioned keeping their email address. I signed up for a free .mac trial about 2 and a half years ago, which gave an @mac.com email address.

For all the time since then i've been using that same email address for my iChat, without paying any money. Is that normal? I've never used it as a normal email address, so i've no idea if that would work, i doubt it though i guess.

 

It will continue for iChat but not for your mail however, I think if you did buy a .mac account it would unlock your email once again so you could retain your address.

I use the family pack since there are two of us and we can send/save things for each other using the disc space allotted which makes it nice. Not to mention we can see what the other has going on when we're apart so we don't plan a couples gathering when it should be a singles event The Syncing options for us are great and Backup is a fine touch even though I have Toast 8 to contend with. I do like the idea of having some off site storage space only for my most important things and with having the .mac family pack we setup one account for such things so it gives more options than just the single account would offer.
So it all depends on each persons needs. I didn't have a .mac until this year and I got a great price from Amazon.com. In the end it was a good investment for me but I can also see where it might be not enough for others.