More .Mac Exclusives - Free Web Designs and $20 off Contribute 2

[maxtrax]

Stop whining already!

.Mac is a lousy $8.25 a month, and for that you get an IMAP email account, the simplicity of Backup for small important files, all the iPhoto integration, that works flawlessly and makes it simple to share photos etc. via homepages... The Screen Saver thing is great too. Free Virus software, bookmark syncing, not to mention syncing your iPod and as many Macs as you want, numerous games and some coupons as well. I just don't get all the complaining, and people wanting everything for free. Some of you people act as if Apple owes you this and they should just give it to you for nothing just because. It's a service they provide and it is better than what many others offer. If you don't need it, then don't subscribe! Yes you can pay $5/month for a hosting service and get more than 100 megs, and more than 1 email account included, but for the extra $3.25, look at all the additional services that .Mac gets you. I just cannot really believe how ridiculous some of you are about the measly fee they charge for all this great stuff, and it is only gonna get better with Panther. Sorry for venting, but I do feel a little better now. Thanks.

 

[jayscheuerle]

Re: desperation

Originally posted by Blackcat
I think people aren't renewing, hence the recent rush of incentives.

Make it $79/year and I think people might renew. Better still, $8.95/month is less painful.

Exactly.

Apple figures if they toss in $100 of crappy incentives, boneheads will pony up thinking they're getting the service for nothing. They're too stubborn to price it at a point that wouldn't need incentives to be bought (let's say $59/yr) and Apple never likes to admit they're wrong about anything...

 

[jocknerd]

Still not worth it

I let my account expire. $99 was too much for me. A lot of others say its worth it with incentives like $30 off of this product, $20 off of that product. But you've got to spend another $300 or so to get that $50 savings. Sorry. I don't subscribe to that thinking.

I still think that the .mac subscription base will fall significantly this year. Of course some of you think that anything Apple does or says is the gospel so you'll be glad to plunk down your $99. You'd probably plunk down $199 if Apple told you to.

Me? I like Apple products. I've got an iBook, an iPod. I just bought Panther. But I bought a Linksys wireless router instead of the AirPort. I don't buy something just because it has the Apple logo on it. It has to be a better value. The Linksys was far and away the better value over the $100 more AirPort. The same goes with .mac. $99 exceeds what I consider to be a good value for the product.

 

[Blackcat]

Re: Re: desperation

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Apple figures if they toss in $100 of crappy incentives, boneheads will pony up thinking they're getting the service for nothing. They're too stubborn to price it at a point that wouldn't need incentives to be bought (let's say $59/yr) and Apple never likes to admit they're wrong about anything...

It's simple economics, 100 at $99 or 1000 at $79.

$59 might not cover costs I think.

 

[djdarlek]

Re: Yeah.. with the price per gigabyte falling

Originally posted by tacomancini
i'm new to this posting malarky, and had to quote someone to work out how to post. Sorry.

Has nobody noticed that there is a way around paying the $100 for the .mac experience?

There are a few features that I would be lost without,

1: bookmark syncing - an amazing convenience for the 3 macs I use daily.
2: iCal syncing - ok, there are ways around this without .Mac, but you can't help but admire the simplicity (holey sh*t. My calander is like on my computer from my phone already and i aint done nothin!)
3: iDisk - a handy tool in a few unique situations. (obviously with Panther on its way, everyone is hoping Apple gives them a 60 gig .mac storage account so they can sync their entire comp. between 3 comps. - give it 10 years and it'll probably happen)
4: Address book syncing - again, priceless

however, have you noticed that if you sign up for the 60 day .mac trial account you can use all these features for free? Granted you lose your iDisk information when the trial ends, but if you work with the restrictions and don't mind losing a little bit of webspace (i mean how many of you would pay the $100 to host and run a website when there are so many cheaper alternatives out there?)

Every 60 days (6 times a year folks) I have to sign up for another trial .Mac account, re register everything and re-sync. It probably takes about 10 minutes every two months and saves me enough cash to buy more gadgets, yet you still get all the priceless .mac syncing features and that can't be a bad thing.

thats my piece, please don't rip me to shreds... as you can see <<<<<<< i am a newbie. :'(

dave

 

[jayscheuerle]

Re: Re: Yeah.. with the price per gigabyte falling

Originally posted by djdarlek
Has nobody noticed that there is a way around paying the $100 for the .mac experience?

Nice work Dave!

Legal enough, with a tinge of ethical sliminess! If the hassle of keeping up the charade is non-intrusive enough for you, then this is a great plan.

Of course, a 60 day trial wouldn't be necessary if the service was obviously worth the money....

wow... that was easy enough...

 

[New Guy]

The things I like about .Mac the most are being able to sync my adrresses and book marks between my home and work computers, tight, easy integreation between iPhoto and .Mac, having an e-mail address not associated with my ISP, and simple to use web design software and templates.

The last thing I want to do after working all day as a Graphic Designer is to have to work all night getting my homepage to look the way I want. Apple provides an easy solution that even my wife can use.

I can't tell you how many times I've needed to call someone fromm work and forgot the number at home or vice versa. Address book syncing solves that problem.

I've had 5 ISPs in 5 years. Not having to send all my contacts a new e-mail address every time is great.

I just had a baby girl and I take so many pictures of her that I want to share with family and friends. iPhoto makes it so easy (again, even my wife can do it) to post pictures to .Mac that I'd almost pay the $99 just for that.

So, do I think .mac is worth the $99? I think its getting there. With free iBlog (too bad I already bought it) and now discounted Contribute I see Apple making the effort to add value.

I was asked to fill out an Apple survey regarding .Mac and two suggestions I had were more/better templates and some sort of Blogging application like iBlog. Looks like they listened.

 

[sethwerkheiser]

Re: .mac

Originally posted by NuMan
I have yet to see any benefits of .mac for me? Can anyone that uses it explain how it helps you?

I use a Windows machine at work, and I need to check my ISP email throughout the day (shh!). Yahoo and other free web email programs suck, but .mac works great and syncs nicely with Mail at home. PLUS, I get my fully synced address book at work too. I like it for those two things alone.

 

[Lancetx]

Re: Re: desperation

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Exactly.

Apple figures if they toss in $100 of crappy incentives, boneheads will pony up thinking they're getting the service for nothing. They're too stubborn to price it at a point that wouldn't need incentives to be bought (let's say $59/yr) and Apple never likes to admit they're wrong about anything...

I couldn't agree more. Price it at $59 a year for the core service and ditch all these incentives and I'd sign up then. I honestly think they would get a lot more people on board that way.

 

[iPC]

.mac might be worth something more to me if I used more than one mac. sadly, i only use the iBook at home. my work computer is a win98 machine, my desktop at home is a linux machine, and my 2nd laptop runs linux, and the 3rd laptop runs win 3.11 (old 386 that I still have - office 4.7 pro baby!). the rest of the machines are old amiga's and mac plus'.

with this setup, the sync features are a waste, and 100MB storage is next to useless >> www.yzedf.com/index2.html << to see what i mean.

 

[ajkandy]

About Contribute 2...

Back to the original topic of the post, I have to say Apple is unfortunately misrepresenting what Contribute is and does. I know because I use it every day.

Contribute is conceptually more similar to InCopy - it's a 'lite' editor for pre-existing page templates created in Dreamweaver or other 'real' web page editors. It's designed to give non-technical users a way to contribute content to a web site without ponying up for an expensive or hard-to-configure Content Management System (RedDot, Zope, etc.).

It's OK for quick edits - and painful for anything complex. Despite what the front page of .Mac says, there is NO - read that again - NO HTML editing capability in Contribute, and that's by design, so that Dull Normal users can't screw things up. If certain areas of a template are 'locked,' then you can't change them without using a different program like Dreamweaver anyway, for instance. And each new site you edit has to have a 'site connection' set up - not like HTML editors where you can just open the darn file!

That being said, Contribute does have some nice features like FlashPaper (a Flash equivalent to PDF) integration and PayPal built-in to create your own e-commerce site.

It's a great tool if you are a beginner and/or have lots of templates to start with, but if you prefer or need to roll your own, best to look elsewhere.

 

[Powerbook G5]

Re: Still not worth it

Originally posted by jocknerd
I let my account expire. $99 was too much for me. A lot of others say its worth it with incentives like $30 off of this product, $20 off of that product. But you've got to spend another $300 or so to get that $50 savings. Sorry. I don't subscribe to that thinking.

I still think that the .mac subscription base will fall significantly this year. Of course some of you think that anything Apple does or says is the gospel so you'll be glad to plunk down your $99. You'd probably plunk down $199 if Apple told you to.

Me? I like Apple products. I've got an iBook, an iPod. I just bought Panther. But I bought a Linksys wireless router instead of the AirPort. I don't buy something just because it has the Apple logo on it. It has to be a better value. The Linksys was far and away the better value over the $100 more AirPort. The same goes with .mac. $99 exceeds what I consider to be a good value for the product.

Just because I think .Mac is worth it does not mean that I think everything Apple does is gospel. What kind of flawed logic is that? For me, I got rid of AOL, which is already a big savings than a $70 subscription to .Mac for a year, I got two free software programs for free that I was thinking of getting anyway, I got two free games, and I use many of the features quite heavily. To me, that is worth well more than the cost. Just because you think it isn't worth it doesn't mean that everyone who subscribes to .Mac is a brainless zombie willing to do anything for Apple.

 

[lmalave]

Originally posted by New Guy
I've had 5 ISPs in 5 years. Not having to send all my contacts a new e-mail address every time is great.

And notice, .Mac email included the ability to forward the mail to another email address, so even if you really want your mail sent somewhere else, all your contacts can still use your @mac.com email address.

I was already paying for premium Yahoo! mail service to get features like that plus extra storage. I like .Mac because it gives me:

- The equivalent of Yahoo! Mail Plus services (POP access, forwarding, and extra storage). Cost: $30/yr
- The equivalent of a Yahoo! Geocities Plus website (no banner ads): $5 month or $60/yr.
- An online Address Book and iCal that integrates with iSync (Yahoo! has a similar Intellisync software for its online caledar and address book, but it only works on Windows).
- Free and actually quite useful software like Backup, Virex, StickyBrain, iBlog, etc. Getting the VersionTracker Plus was cool too.

So for me it's been worth it. If you'll notice, just the email and web hosting features compare quite favorably to Yahoo's "Plus" services: they're about the same price ($90/yr. vs. $99/yr), but .Mac gives you the ease of use and tight integration with OS X, not to mention the software freebies.

The major request I have for .Mac is more powerful iCal integration. I would like it to be more like the Yahoo Calendar, where I can actually edit it online.

 

[gopher]

Nice, except I've already spent money on my webpublishing packages. Where's CGI BIN, Server Side Include and PHP support, not to mention domain name hosting? Games (I guess if I had kids it would make sense)? Webmail without spam filtering? Anti-Virus (Norton Anti-Virus is less expensive in the long run since updates on definitions are free for life, and it detects PC viruses that hit your Mac before you are a carrier that infects networked PCs)? Bookmarks on website (oh but I'm getting that already)? Backup (see Carbon Copy Cloner, does more for nothing)? And how about a reliable server for both webhosting and e-mail, .Mac goes down more frequently than any webhost I know of. Is it worth $99 a year for games? Maybe.

 

[Powerbook G5]

Originally posted by gopher
Nice, except I've already spent money on my webpublishing packages. Where's CGI BIN, Server Side Include and PHP support, not to mention domain name hosting? Games (I guess if I had kids it would make sense)? Webmail without spam filtering? Anti-Virus (Norton Anti-Virus is less expensive in the long run since updates on definitions are free for life, and it detects PC viruses that hit your Mac before you are a carrier that infects networked PCs)? Bookmarks on website (oh but I'm getting that already)? Backup (see Carbon Copy Cloner, does more for nothing)? And how about a reliable server for both webhosting and e-mail, .Mac goes down more frequently than any webhost I know of. Is it worth $99 a year for games? Maybe.

Does it really go down that often? I've heard quite a few people complain about the reliability, but it's been pretty bulletproof as far as I've seen so far.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Re: .mac

Originally posted by NuMan
I have yet to see any benefits of .mac for me? Can anyone that uses it explain how it helps you?

Yes.

As a freelancer, I use my .Mac email account extensively for both personal and business-related mail. It's IMAP, which is a huge deal for me. It's available both through Mail.app and through webmail.mac.com. It's fast and incredibly reliable. I can give out my address with impunity because somehow junk mail just doesn't get through. The address is short and sweet and easy to remember. And the service is 100% reliable.

(Don't believe the doom-and-gloom proclamations; I've send and received more than 5,000 emails through .Mac since signing up last year, and I've never lost one, nor had a single one delayed in transit. I honestly have no idea where the complaints that emerged a few months back were coming from.)

That's just email.

I also use iDisk extensively for shuttling files around securely. The other day I needed to take some fairly big PDF's to a client's office. Rather than burning them to a CD and carrying the CD, I just uploaded them to my iDisk, then downloaded them from one of the Windows computers at the client's office. I do that all the time.

I also use my iDisk's Sites folder to share a diary and photos with friends and family.

I use Backup every day to back up my most critical documents and my keychains to my iDisk.

I use iSync every day to keep my bookmarks, address book, and calendar synchronized across three Macs. Being able to get to my address book from any Internet-connected computer in the world is a huge plus to me. I also use the heck out of bookmarks.mac.com when I'm away from my computers.

And, of course, when Apple offers me free stuff, I take it. Much of the time the free stuff has been no big thing, but I got 100 free Kodak prints for signing up--those went into last year's Christmas cards--and I've passed many an hour playing Super Nisqually. I used the free DropStuff utility a lot until just recently; I've given up on StuffIt in favor of compressed disk images. And the other freebies have been a nice plus.

All in all, .Mac is more than worth the $49 I paid for it last year, and easily worth the $99 I just paid for it a few days ago to re-up for a second year.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Re: Re: Re: Include MacOS and I'll join today

Originally posted by cnladd
Now, more to the point: is there a benefit to joining .Mac, over and above "rolling your own" service?

Yes. If you "roll your own" service, then you have to, you know, roll your own service. With .Mac you don't have to. It Just Works™.

I understand that some people have more time than money. I don't, because when you're a freelance consultant your time is money. So every minute I spent diddling with some hacked-together bundle of Internet services would be a minute I couldn't spend on billable work (or, more importantly, the fun stuff that I do the billable work in order to pay for).

 

[billyboy]

I didnt think .mac looked particularly good on paper, but once I stomped up the cash and started using it, it has proved to be a great asset. The @mac.com name is worth about $5000 to me, it is so neat, and sticking photos on my homepage is tremendous too. Not quite sure how much that is worth, but its close to $100.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Okay, I'm a little annoyed now.

I downloaded the Contribute trial to see what it's all about, and ran the installer. The result? See the attached picture.

This happened to me with one of the Adobe updates, too, though I can't recall which one at the moment. It absolutely infuriates me when installers refuse to run because I'm not an admin user. Of course I'm not an admin user, you dimwits! I want my computer to demand a password before I do anything stupid! Apple has a whole framework for authenticating the user; they use it in their own installer. Why can't MindVision get with the program? An installer should ask the user for a privileged username and password; it shouldn't just refuse to run until I log out and log back in. That's just absurd.

Even better are the ones that insist that all other programs must be closed before the installer can run. I think it was the InDesign 2.0.2 update that pulled that one on me. Talk about a blast from the past.

Why anybody still uses MindVision's products is absolutely beyond my comprehension.

Sorry for the off-topic rant. This sort of thing just makes me so damn mad.

I'll be happy to post my thoughts on Contribute the next time I log out and log in as the administrator... in six to eight weeks.

Sheesh.

 

[macMaestro]

All this stuff about tricking backup to use a different server has got me thinking. What if you could trick Panther into using a non-.Mac server as an iDisk. Suddenly you could have a folder accessible to all your computers that would automatically sync and all that other iDisk stuff that's new in Panther. It could be much larger than 100MB and you wouldn't have to pay $99 dollars a year for it. Just set up an old computer as a server and voila!

Would it work? I'm not the most admin minded person out there so I don't really know.

 

[digitalbiker]

.Mac needs to improve reliability

I can't believe that there are users here who don't acknowledge the poor service reliability of .Mac and the email service.

I for one would much rather see Apple spend time improving service reliability, uping the idsk space, etc. rather than providing freebees that most people don't need. That would provide far more value to me.

I have three different isps and I would say that they are up and functional 95% of the time. Apple's .Mac is probably completely functional 75 - 80 % of the time. My wife, son, & I all have .Mac subscriptions and we are astounded at the number of times that the email server is down. I don't think I have ever lost any messages but there have been many times when I need to get to my idisk or needed to get an email sent and .Mac was down.

 

[kryten2000]

I think I have gotten my moneys worth.If you break it down the services really work out to be like 8 a month.How can you beat that. Theres been a lot of really cool downloads avaiable too. I will
be renewing when my year is up. Cant wait for Panther for the idisk integration









Emac 700
384 ram
jbl Creatures
griffin powermate

 

[cnladd]

Originally posted by macMaestro
All this stuff about tricking backup to use a different server has got me thinking. What if you could trick Panther into using a non-.Mac server as an iDisk. Suddenly you could have a folder accessible to all your computers that would automatically sync and all that other iDisk stuff that's new in Panther. It could be much larger than 100MB and you wouldn't have to pay $99 dollars a year for it. Just set up an old computer as a server and voila!

Would it work? I'm not the most admin minded person out there so I don't really know.

That's really what the page for tricking Backup was about--it starts out with instructions on how to trick Mac OS X into using a non-.Mac WebDAV service for your iDisk. In my case, it's an 80GB drive.

It works on Panther.

The biggest problem is that once you do that you can no longer access .Mac. I like the idea of .Mac, I prefer the simplicity, I like the extra features and apps. I just don't know about the loss of iDisk space...

 

[lmalave]

Originally posted by gopher
Nice, except I've already spent money on my webpublishing packages. Where's CGI BIN, Server Side Include and PHP support, not to mention domain name hosting? Games (I guess if I had kids it would make sense)? Webmail without spam filtering? Anti-Virus (Norton Anti-Virus is less expensive in the long run since updates on definitions are free for life, and it detects PC viruses that hit your Mac before you are a carrier that infects networked PCs)? Bookmarks on website (oh but I'm getting that already)? Backup (see Carbon Copy Cloner, does more for nothing)? And how about a reliable server for both webhosting and e-mail, .Mac goes down more frequently than any webhost I know of. Is it worth $99 a year for games? Maybe.

Ok, well if you've already spent money elsewhere and are happy with it then what are you complaining about? The Yahoo! Geocities Plus that I was comparing it to I think would be the closest competitor, and it's $60/yr with no cgi-bin, SSI, PHP, or anything. Keep in mind Yahoo! and Apple are similar in that they are *profitable* and will definitely be around 10 years from now, unlike any number of hosting services that are hemorrhaging money and have no clue about how to run a solid business.

Domain name hosting would be a nice addon, though. But at any rate I'm already forwarding my .name domain to my .Mac web page. Yahoo! has domain name hosting available, which they basically just a rebranded service from another company. Apple could do the same.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Re: .Mac needs to improve reliability

Originally posted by digitalbiker
I can't believe that there are users here who don't acknowledge the poor service reliability of .Mac and the email service.

I speak only for myself, but I refuse to acknowledge any reliability problems because I haven't seen any. As I said above, I've used .Mac email to the tune of more than two dozen messages a day (send and received combined) for just over a year now, and I haven't had a single problem.

I'm sure you've had some kind of problem, but it certainly hasn't been a universal thing.