Goodbye to .Mac
After some four years or so shelling out to Apple for a .Mac account, I’m finally making the commitment to ditch it. It has never been an overly good value, but changing primary email addresses is always a pain in the butt and takes a bit of effort…and will probably cause a few lost contacts.
In 2003 I got my first Mac, a PowerBook. Shortly after, I forked out AU$199, if I remember correctly, for my first subscription to .Mac. The justifications I can remember were the online services (such as backup to iDisk), the freebies, the iCal synchronization, and there was a bit of ego involved too, wanting a “mac.com” email address.
In the early days, Apple used to give freebies, such as software and Garageband Jam Pack samplers, but I reckon it’s been two years since the last decent freebie. So that was one tick against .Mac.
With the improving Aussie dollar, the price dropped and is now “only” AU$140. In the US it has remained at US$99 as it’s always been.
When others criticized its value, I leapt to its defense. I held out year after year, hoping Apple would add something to make it an unbeatable value, but it never came. I thought about quitting last year but persevered for another year, because I didn’t want the hassle and still had some hope. I’m sorry Apple, all hope is gone now and AU$140 is worth the hassle.
I won’t argue that for some people .Mac is the ants’ pants, and excellent value. But that crowd is shrinking.
From .Mac’s feature list on its website, here’s what Apple thinks makes .Mac still worth US$100 per year, and some comments about why it’s not good value to me.
Web Gallery
Don’t use, don’t need it, use Flickr for free. A Flickr Pro account would cost only US$25 per year and give me more features and much better exposure.
Website Hosting
Don’t use, don’t need, have a Bluehost package. Although it costs US$83.40/year which is almost the cost of .Mac, it has so many better features that comparisons are pointless.
IMAP Mail
I use Gmail now for my primary (and secondary) email account and it also supports IMAP. As do my Bluehost email accounts. Unlike .Mac, which charges for additional email accounts, Gmail is free every time, and Bluehost lets me have up to 2,500 for no extra cost.
Back to My Mac
It would be too slow on my broadband—I’d have to be desperate to use it. And it only works from Leopard Macs. Using Macs at school, this may occasionally be useful, but it’s only a 10 minute ride home. And as far as screen sharing goes, well I don’t have any use for that. If I needed a “Back to My Mac” like service, I’d want it to work from any computer, and I’m sure there are offerings out there that do.
Sync
Always used this and found it useful after System rebuilds. But there are many other ways of backing up—and Time Machine makes it easier. Sync was offsite though, I can backup offsite with other services. I used to use the iCal syncing between Macs but long ago stopped that.
iDisk
Always found this way too slow to be useful. That’s not necessarily a reflection on iDisk, more likely the slow broadband we have in Oz. And other services offer online storage if I need it in the future.
Groups
Never had a use for this functionality. Again, if I did, I could find it elsewhere.
Backup
Although previously a fan of Apple’s Backup app, I have been using Super Duper! for a couple of years. And with Time Machine, the need to use Apple’s Backup application diminishes even more.
10GB Storage
I don’t need that much storage for mail, and don’t use iDisk. After 4 or 5 years of .Mac and being a notoriously poor housekeeper (of email), I’ve only used 2.1GB of that storage, of which 2GB is email. Admittedly Gmail is less, at 6GB, but that’s not going to be an issue. And if I really need online storage, several services offer free storage.
Already the process has had some pain, with Apple requiring me to create a new Apple ID, and I’ll be interested to see if iChat still works with .Mac address as the .Mac FAQs assure. Although, to Apple’s credit, it does make canceling very easy. All you do is turn off auto renew and then not renew. Too easy! Unlike other services which demand a written request 7 to 30 days beforehand.
If anyone has had experience of letting go of .Mac, we’d love to hear your tips to make the transition smoother.
At the moment, you can get by in OS X and iLife without the extra functionality .Mac brings. Hopefully Apple won’t make it any harder. If .Mac was under AU$50 I’d stay on. And although Apple could offer some cool new services, AU$140 per year is unlikely to ever be justifiable again, especially compared to the competition.
So, on February 23, it’s goodbye, Apple, hello, Google. And I hope I never have to say that again.
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Comments
If you want to view your iCal calendar from anywhere using your .Mac account, just publish it.
Yes, but unlike Google Calendars, you cannot edit a published iCal calendar.
The great thing about the .Mac package is all the tight integration.
Near as I can tell, that’s about the ONLY real advantage that dot mac offers, as everything else it offers can be had for free elsewhere.
But I think that since almost all of those free alternatives are offered by Google - and maybe others out there as well - the integration arguments starts to lose some of its value. I can access my mail, calendars, backup documents, web documents, et al right from my Google home page. I don’t use Picassa but I think you can access it as well.
And I can publish to Flickr right from iPhoto or using Flickr uploader, which uploads and publishes right to my Flickr page. Totally integrated and totally free.
I’m just making the point that it’s unfair to point out that .Mac is useless, or a poor value, just because you can find alternatives on the Internet for no cash outlay.
Value is more than just the cash you fork out for something. I value my personal time quite highly and the things .Mac offers work well for me, so I don’t feel the need, or interest, to search for alternatives. It’s also a bonus that I can rely upon Apple to assure the pieces work well together, to fix them when they don’t, and to transparently upgrade them over time, all without my overt intervention.
There’s nothing wrong with others avoiding using those alternatives, or taking the time to find them and keep them up to date.
What bothered me about this article was the underlying premise trashing the .Mac experience. It works, it’s reasonably priced for me, and I don’t have to think about it. I think it’s a great service.
If you don’t want to use it, and prefer to use alternatives, go ahead. But I certainly don’t want Apple to even entertain ending the .Mac offering. I depend on it, and for me it’s an outstanding value.
Edit:
“There’s nothing wrong with others using…” vice “avoiding using…”
My Dear Beeblebrox, you keep using the words “free” and “open” and yet, to paraphrase the great Inigo Montoya “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”.
The question of “free” isn’t “spin” in fact it’s pretty heavily discussed topic that has involved a pretty big community of people. To equate the time to update .mac with the significant questions of privacy under Google’s services suggests that at least one link is in order:
http://epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html/
The Electronic Privacy Information Center is by no means a tool of spin, and they seem pretty certain about some of the privacy concerns.
With .mac, the Terms of Service (TOS) are much clearer as to what Apple can, and cannot do with the content of my mail.
As you might have noted from the other comments here, many of us like .mac services for a variety of reasons. But to pretend that Google mail has no cost whatsoever defies any kind of economic sense that exists.
Google makes money; they sell something - that means they have something to sell. What is their product? YOU!
If you hate Apple so much as to waste time reviling their inadequate openness of platform, maybe it’s best to find a new platform.
I personally like the products that come out of Apple, and rarely find myself cursing their lack of “openness”.
But to pretend that Google mail has no cost whatsoever defies any kind of economic sense that exists.
I’m not saying it has no cost whatsoever. I’m saying it’s free. It’s free in the same way updates to iTunes and the iPod and Quicktime are free. And when someone says that they are, I seriously doubt you launch into your ridiculous diatribe about how it “costs” you SOMETHING.
Do you?
If you hate Apple so much
I don’t. It might seem that way because I’m not the regurgitating apologist fanboy that you are, but that doesn’t mean I hate them. I own two Macs and an iPod.
I just think dot mac is for fanboys, who are pretty much the only ones who could find value in what they’re offering for the money.
I personally like the products that come out of Apple, and rarely find myself cursing their lack of “openness”.
Well duh. You wouldn’t be a fanboy if you did.
Followed the faq link - and the first paragraph reads:
Gmail is supported by advertisers who buy keywords, much like the Google search engine’s AdWords advertising program. Gmail uses “content extraction” (the term used in Google’s patents) on all incoming and outgoing e-mail in order to target the advertising to the user.
Love it - how many people actually know each and every email through Gmail is read and examined to pester you with targeted advertising. What is the average worth of each email in your Gmail account that Google sells?
pocketRocket, a nice bit of mischievousness there, bordering on FUD. By the clever use of words, you make it sound like human beings at Google are reading our emails, and therefore, by subtle implication, our privacy is being breached.
Neither is true, of course.
Further, again with misleading words, you imply (as did morganew also), an excess of advertising. As I use Mail to check my Google mail, I never see any advertising.
So I jumped on Gmail and discovered this pestering with targeted advertising, amounted to a whole 1 line ad at the top of my inbox.
Yes it was targeted. No, I did not feel pestered.
Also found, if I turn on “Basic view”, the advertising disappears.
I also checked out some of Google’s other services to see this pestering.
Calendar: No advertising
Documents: No advertising
Picasa Albums: No advertising
Google Reader: No advertising
I’m struggling to feel pestered.
Dave, I agree with you about what value is, i.e. more than monetary. And all those things you raise are reasons .Mac is not good value to to me.
And I also agree there was probably an “underlying premise of trashing .Mac”. But not for all users. I wanted to make people think about whether they are getting value for their dollar. But decided - even though the effect of this article on Apple would be like a pimple on the butt of a gnat in its campus garden - I shouldn’t be abrupt or blunt about it, mainly because that would be giving too much weight to my opinion.
But people should re-evaluate .Mac. Like any service you use, online or otherwise.
If they are not getting value from it, they should first consider taking advantage of all it has to offer. And then if they find they can’t or don’t want to, they should consider the alternatives.
Again, what the article really boils down to is, if you aren’t using all or most of the services of .Mac, it’s not good value.
Everyone who’s defended .Mac seems to be doing so from a POV of using all or most of the services.
I just read this article and the comments and thought that I would post, the first thing I noticed was that while registering to post I was asked to input my income. So perhaps AppleMatters “uses” your data in the same way as Google, yet no-one has mentioned that in any of the comments above!
Anyway, back to the topic in question, like Chris I too have decided to end my dot mac subscription. It has served me well, but my needs have changed to I must change with them. When I first got .mac I had just come over from the pc world and the anti-virus offered as part of the package made it all worth while to me. Little did I know, that soon this would be no longer available to me (I seem to recall that it wasn’t Tiger compatible), then as I learned more about Macs I realized that viruses are not something to be too worried about, but lets not open that discussion.
I was unable to work during the time that iWeb was launched, I played with it heavily using .mac, and I must say that publishing websites is very easy, I will miss that integration. But I have a new host, for less cost and also the servers are much faster, yes I lose some integration, but overall I am happy. I have also found that using FileZilla I don’t spend too much time publishing via ftp.
Syncing with .mac, I don’t honestly remember the last time this actually worked for me. I don’t think that I have had a true reflection of my computer on .mac for two or more years.
Onto email, I do hear all of the privacy concerns about google, but I use gmail and love it, the simple way to stop getting the advertising links is to use Mail to send and fetch your email (Either POP or IMAP). This way you can avoid being “pestered” while reading your email. Personally this has never bothered me, and I have always found the gmail web interface much faster and easier to use than .mac.
I have also found that to simply publish some pictures of my baby for the family to see, I can use Picasa and the gmail account that I set up for him! I can export straight out of iPhoto and my wife can also publish and maintain them from her pc, cross platform integration!
Dot mac definitely has a place and I cant really disagree with the reasoning behind using it, but for me its time to move on
The simplicity and integration of building and putting up web sites is worth every penny. I have used Bookmarks to locate my favorite websites from PCs in the U.S. the U.K. and Italy. For anything to work in Italy is a miracle.