[Gator Lager]

thinking of getting the service. but thought I'd do a poll.

[RangerJoe]

I think it's a tad expensive. But I'm sure itching to get it because it'd be such a convenience.

If you wanna save $100, there's always those free services (gmail, etc.). but, once again, it's not as convenient as .mac is.

[Mr. Blur]

instead of yet another thread/poll about "is .mac worth it" why not search and read the other 10000 threads....really....this has been done to death 1000 times over.

[h00ligan]

Originally posted by Gator Lager:
thinking of getting the service. but thought I'd do a pole.

if you are the least bit computer savvy.. then no. for that price you can get a LOT more.. including a service that has 5x the space and webDAV (idisk) support. The only thing you miss out on is backup..

woo



hoo

I don't think it's worth it for anyone but the most BASIC user..

[Randman]

I think it's worth it. Now if the rumored expansion and increase of services happens by year's end, even better.
And don't forget that .Mac Sync will be a big part of Tiger.

[Krypton]

I like many others already have comparable, if not superior services bundled with my ISP - thus provided you know how to use and take advantage of these things, .Mac doesn't really look very appealing.

[chris v]

It's a lot more woth it if you have multiple computers. The .Mac sync using iSync is pretty fab. It's also handy, say, if you're out of town, and a have access to a Mac. You can create a new user, set your .Mac account, sync up, and presto, there's all your bookmarks, Address Book entries, and calendar events.

It's nice to be able to do quicky Finder drag-n-drops of jpegs to the .Mac sites folder for client proofs, or posting imgs on fora, or what have you. less trouble than firing up an FTP client and logging on to a server.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by h00ligan:
if you are the least bit computer savvy.. then no. for that price you can get a LOT more.. including a service that has 5x the space and webDAV (idisk) support. The only thing you miss out on is backup..

woo



hoo

I don't think it's worth it for anyone but the most BASIC user..

If you use 2 machines, it's worth it for iSync with its address book/calendar/safari bookmarks synchronization. Tiger is going to bring synchronization for a LOT more things (mail settings, keychains, etc) and is likely to require .Mac.

[Sod Off Sadr]

Originally posted by CatOne:
If you use 2 machines, it's worth it for iSync with its address book/calendar/safari bookmarks synchronization. Tiger is going to bring synchronization for a LOT more things (mail settings, keychains, etc) and is likely to require .Mac.

nice of you to divine the future. This would go against what apple is doing with music--people want to own, not rent, their music. No one wants to rent ($100 annually) their OS features. They want to own them. Drop $130 and the featurse of the OS are yours. Tieing them to a subscription service is lame.

[wataru]

Originally posted by Sod Off Sadr:
nice of you to divine the future.

Uh, he isn't divining anything. These things were announced along with the Tiger developer preview, and *gasp* they (or previews) are in the developer preview. So tough, because no matter how much you don't like it it's still happening.

Originally posted by Gator Lager:
thinking of getting the service. but thought I'd do a pole.

How about doing a search next time, instead of a "pole." And this is not the right forum for it, anyway.

[k2director]

I agree that if you have 2 machines, .Mac is very handy indeed. Besides synching addresses, calendar info, and Safari bookmarks between two machines, I use my iDisk to store Word and Excel documents I'm currently working on. That way the latest version of each doc is available to each machine.

Can't wait for Tiger to push synching to a long list of other apps...

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

For half the price and double the features/storage it would be worth it.

[booboo]

If it were half the price with more storage space, I'd get it tomorrow.

[Graymalkin]

I too would get a .Mac account if it cost half as much. I get far more space, virtually unlimited e-mail addresses, and more bandwidth for the same price per year with a web hosting company. I don't have WebDAV access but I've got Transmit and an AppleScript FTP droplet which works about as well. I can synchronize bookmarks, contacts, and calendars with a few export commands and my FTP droplet. My Backup is ditto, a shell script, and a cron job. A little Unix and Mac knowhow saves me $100 a year on a .Mac subscription.

[CharlesS]

.Mac is one of these "unlimited" providers - they don't tell you what your bandwidth limit is. And if they decide that you've used too much bandwidth some month, they just take your web site down instead of simply charging you a bit extra for that month.

So I wouldn't use it if you rely on your website being up for your business...

[Appleman]

If you consider it has only 100 MB of space, while you can back up to a CD = 700 MB, or a DVD = 4.4 GB, the storage space is rediculous.

eMail? Yahoo! offers 100 MB space for free.

Webspace? Several companies offer these for free as well. Have a look at Spymac and you see there is a lot more than dot-Mac.

I still use it, but going to stop subscription if they don't come up with a more compatitive offer.

[Elvin]

.Mac is everything I need. A simple easy to tell customers e-mail address. Lots of storage (Who on earth needs 1GB of storage? Someone who never deletes e-mail from their in-box... that's who), Syncing abilities, online storage, little discounts here and there, anti-virus software.. should I need it one day. It's all there for me.

[fiesta cat]

Originally posted by Appleman:
I still use it, but going to stop subscription if they don't come up with a more compatitive offer.

Tiger. Everything they announced with Tiger (which apparently Sod Off Sadr didn't bother to read about) will probably require more space, so I'm thinking they will upgrade the accounts with Tiger.

[booboo]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
.Mac is one of these "unlimited" providers - they don't tell you what your bandwidth limit is. And if they decide that you've used too much bandwidth some month, they just take your web site down instead of simply charging you a bit extra for that month.

So I wouldn't use it if you rely on your website being up for your business...

This is actually a really important point. and it's not uncommon to find any given .mac site off-line for this very reason, especially those by small developers providing some software largely through their love of the Mac. There's a real irony there . . .

I think Apple need to provide a better service and do so at a lower cost.

[romeosc]

I use SpyMac as well as others........

Free & Dandy!

[Brass]

For half the price, I get 500MB storage, unlimitted number of email addresses, and all the other features I need.

.Mac sounds like a rip-off to me. The only advantage is it's integration with some Mac OS X features, but these are all either unnecessary, and/or easily duplicated with free third-party tools (eg, php iCalendar).

[Randman]

Yes, a [email protected] shows you're on the ball. Along with a simple way to post pics and videos for the family to see easily enough, and to have a place where I can have my c/v and clips of my design work and writing samples online as well as available for download, it's well worth the money. Add in the @mac.com e-mail address and it's even better.
I just wonder how many people are going to change their stories once .Mac expands and gets a makeover.

[Millennium]

If they offered some kind of dynamic Web hosting, it might be worth it. As it stands now, however, it's nothing but a broken promise.

[cheng66]

My .Mac subscription expires in 4 days and I AM NOT renewing it. While I love the homepage website feature, I don't use email, the address book, or iSync, so it is definitely not worth it for me to shell out $99 for my website. If it were cheaper (like the $70 I spent a year ago when Apple offered a discount) then I might reconsider. But for now, I am sadly going to let my homepage go down the tube.

Also, 100MB of storage space is definitely not enought for my site with the number of vidoes I like to post, and I can't imagine what it would be like if I did use .Mac for email and storing personal files. The storage upgrade price is out of this world expensive, it almost gets me fuming how expensive it is. $60 for another 100MB! Crazy. What a ripoff.

[itai195]

Originally posted by Brass:
For half the price, I get 500MB storage, unlimitted number of email addresses, and all the other features I need.

Same, plus it's a real web hosting solution, unlike .mac which only supports mostly static web pages. .mac definitely isn't worth it anymore, it has at the very least fallen way behind the times as far as e-mail storage is concerned. The only features it offered that I miss are the integration of iDisk with OSX and Homepage with iPhoto. You can still achieve the same basic functions with a web hosting solution, it's just likely to require more work on your part. Personally I don't use iPhoto anymore anyway, so no loss there.

I'm disappointed the see that Apple hasn't done more with .mac. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for two years, expecting to see great things from a service with heaps of potential. But it's still essentially the exact same service they introduced at MWNY 02.

[absmiths]

No. Another "Is .Mac worth it" poll is not worth it.

[G-Force]

My .Mac account expires in September and I'm not renewing either. I've recently switched to Dreamhost.com as my hosting service. They offer 800MB of storage, plus webdav support, 60 email accounts, ssh access, plus a free domain, and much much more. To me this deal has a much better value than a .mac account.

Basically, the only features of .mac that I don't have with dreamhost is is .mac synchronization with iSync and there is no way this is worth $100/year alone.

[kuzelnik]

I signed up the first day it was available and all I've had is trouble ever since. The email box is limited to 15MB, which is A JOKE, not to mentioned email attachments are limited to only 2MB each. This is, of course, when the email isn't down for "scheduled maintenance" in the middle of a business day.

If you have any tech-savvy whatsoever (and even if you don't), there are plenty of other ISPs/hosting providers that will give you much more for much less. The syncing is occasionally reliable and not worth $100/year, so what makes it worth the money? The occasional free piece of crappy software? The lame web templates for hosting your little iMovies? The slower-than-molasses iDisk? The email-only tech support? (What if your email is down???!) Apple feigning indifference when thousands of users complain in their forums about the service being down or their webpages being inaccessible?

Yeah, sure, I'll cough up $100/year for all those headaches. I did last year, and when my "membership" expires next month, I'm saying buh-bye to .mac.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kuzelnik:
I signed up the first day it was available and all I've had is trouble ever since. The email box is limited to 15MB, which is A JOKE, not to mentioned email attachments are limited to only 2MB each. This is, of course, when the email isn't down for "scheduled maintenance" in the middle of a business day.

If you have any tech-savvy whatsoever (and even if you don't), there are plenty of other ISPs/hosting providers that will give you much more for much less. The syncing is occasionally reliable and not worth $100/year, so what makes it worth the money? The occasional free piece of crappy software? The lame web templates for hosting your little iMovies? The slower-than-molasses iDisk? The email-only tech support? (What if your email is down???!) Apple feigning indifference when thousands of users complain in their forums about the service being down or their webpages being inaccessible?

Yeah, sure, I'll cough up $100/year for all those headaches. I did last year, and when my "membership" expires next month, I'm saying buh-bye to .mac.

Sounds good, just that I wouldn't use the free domain. Get your domain at a separate registrar - that way if you need to switch web hosts for whatever reason it's easy and hassle-free to do so.

[Brass]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Sounds good, just that I wouldn't use the free domain. Get your domain at a separate registrar - that way if you need to switch web hosts for whatever reason it's easy and hassle-free to do so.

Absolutely. When .Mac became a paid service, I went out and got a cheaper better solution, but was foolish enough to go for the free domain name. Later, when I wanted to switch to another service (even better value for money), I had a VERY difficult time getting control of my own domain name again. Eventually I did, and now I pay for my own domain name separately to the hosting service, and am happy to do so.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by Sod Off Sadr:
nice of you to divine the future. This would go against what apple is doing with music--people want to own, not rent, their music. No one wants to rent ($100 annually) their OS features. They want to own them. Drop $130 and the featurse of the OS are yours. Tieing them to a subscription service is lame.

yeah, especially when they could have written a way for 2 computers on the same network (think desktop/laptop) to sync address books and calendars. that's what i want. screw .mac.

[bedoughty]

I am an ex-.Mac customer.

.Mac is not only NOT worth the $$, it's a bloody insult. 15 MB of email storage space?? 100 MB of plain 'ol file/web/music/movie/anything else storage space? I can find better deals for cheap or free by blindly typing into Google!! Yahoo, MSN and a slew of other services already make short change of .Mac on a simple email service comparison. But since .Mac isn't only email...

I found a similar and painfully superior service @ Spymac.com. 1 GB of email for free, (with ads) 250 mb FREE image storage space? iCal hosting? FREE? But wait, there's more - and no ads!

After testing out the free services I sprung the $40 for their all-out Wheel service. 3 GB of IMAP/POP/webmail email space. All the other fixins, (image space, iCal, etc) plus Backup software and and online storage space via an online disk like .Mac's?

I am an avid Mac enthusiast and most of their other products while @ face value seem expensive, I firmly believe that usually they wind up being almost more than worth their price.

.Mac however, HORRIBLY falls short of this assessment.

[brettcamp]

I just decided to let it go after a year and renewal coming up in a few weeks. (BTW note how hard they make it for you to find out how to not renew). I'm sure it's OK for some people, like my wife the photographer, who posts a lot of photos. But I'm with a university, so that takes care of email; I finally learned how to make a basic webpage, which my U. will host; when I travel I take my iBook, so not much need for access to iDisk; I can back up to CDs a heck of a lot easier than using Backup with .mac (and in fact, the last several times I tried to backup that way, it wouldn't work); and the last straw was when I tried to add a couple of small text files to my website and then my iDisk, and I kept getting messages that there was no free disk space -- when I could see that I was only using 60 of the 100 megs for everything. Not worth the hassle, and not enough freebies.
What they ought to do is make .mac free with your purchase of AppleCare-- another incentive.

[bedoughty]

No what they should do is pay us to use the service...

[Appleman]

Originally posted by bedoughty:
No what they should do is pay us to use the service...

[Krusty]

I voted 'yes' (again .. in the umpteenth poll on this topic).
I use iCal calendars
I use homepage
I use iDisk often
I use Backup (this really shined bright when I got my new machine and ... presto! was able to get my entire prefs/addresses/bookmarks onto my new machine in a snap)
I use a couple of the free apps they've posted for members (PhotoStudio X, for one and I'm starting to tinker with iBlog)
I use .mac mail and webmail
I've sent numerous iCards (custom ones, not the free ones for everybody).
I use iSync ... which throws my whole address book up for use with .mac webmail
I use a few other programs (ImageWell, iPhoto, iMovie come to mind off hand) that integrate seamlessly with .Mac too.

Yes, all services can be had more cheaply. All of them working together and well integrated with one another and my machine is worth a few extra bucks for me. It's $99/yr. ($8/month) for crying out loud -- worth it for the lack of headaches, IMO.

Having said all this, it is about time for another upgrade. I'd like to see:
More iDisk space (several hundred megs would be nice)
More default email storage.
A coupla extra FREE email accounts with purchase

Of course, if you only use mail and/or homepage ... its a HUGE ripoff.

[Diggory Laycock]

They really need to significantly increase the storage (mail and iDisc)

[Randman]

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
They really need to significantly increase the storage (mail and iDisc)

I'm sure Mail and iDisk will get updates and expansion as Tiger draws closer, if not sooner.

[tuqqer]

No on .Mac.

I think .Mac is perfect for, and was designed for, people new to the Macs and want the kind of syncronization that it offers. No hassling with registering a domain, getting a separate program like DreamWeaver, etc. I think Apple did a great service for new folks.

But once you get pretty savvy, I can't imagine .Mac being useful, or worth the money. 15Megs for email? I just emailed a friend a 7 Meg picture. How can anyone, beyond the first year, do with 15 megs for email. 100 megs of total storage space? Holy moly. My Entourage (cleaned out constantly and kept tight) runs 387 Megs alone. That doesn't include docs, or photos, or anything.

Anti-virus software? Find me ONE MAC USER, just one, who has gotten a virus in their Mac in the last 4 or 5 years. Even if you can locate one, what are the odds of it? 1 in a million?

I may not understand this correctly, but if you don't use iCalendar, and iMail (I use Entourage for both), then most of .Mac 2-Mac sync becomes a moot point.

Like G-Force and others have said, the only envious thing going for .Mac, is iSync. Something very cool about being able to click a button to Back up off site. But I wouldn't know where to start if my total capacity was 100 megs.

No to .Mac.

[Randman]

Time spent on Macs means nothing. I've been using Macs regularly since my second year of uni, and that was in 1986.
.Mac suits my simple website needs though. I also like the ease of integration. I'd be the first to cheer when more space is given and iDisk speeds up.
As far as virus protection, if you do any work with pc users, it's good to have because Macs can still be a carrier of a virus.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by romeosc:
I use SpyMac as well as others........

Free & Dandy!

For those SpyMac enthusiasts - why is it so friggin' slow? The HTTP server must get about 1K/s throughput, when it does connect (today). Is that typical?

[ManOfSteal]

Yes.

[bedoughty]

No it's not typical. Probably just a ton of traffic at that given time. I know they're going through a bit of a move/upgrade process as far as their servers and traffic load is concerned. Stay tuned. I've been using it, a lot, for the last few months and have been really happy with the site's overall speed.

[Randman]

Originally posted by bedoughty:
No it's not typical. Probably just a ton of traffic at that given time. I know they're going through a bit of a move/upgrade process as far as their servers and traffic load is concerned. Stay tuned. I've been using it, a lot, for the last few months and have been really happy with the site's overall speed.

And how does that differ from iDisk being slow now and then. Not that spymac carries much weight.

[:dragonflypro:]

I do web dev adn marketing. I am fully capable doing my own stuff.

That said, I say YES to mac.com

At the end of the day, I don't want to futz with my personal phots. iPhoto integration ALONE is worth it for me. Make a collection, upload, done. I could spend time and code it, use DW, whatever. The hours I'd not spend on that a month just to share is worth the $8 bucks a month. MY time is worth more than that.

Sync of my Addbook, etc is great. Webmail sync with it is a dream while on vacation!

iDisk more tha once has saved the bacon!

I could go on about the free games, etc that are fully worth the $ involved.

I choose to acknowledge the value. Others don't.

Toby

[Brass]

Originally posted by Randman:
As far as virus protection, if you do any work with pc users, it's good to have because Macs can still be a carrier of a virus.

I disagree with this reasoning. Yes, a Mac can carry PC virusses, but so what? How are you going to transfer them to your PC buddies? They are certainly not going to propogate themselves once their on your Mac, and in 99.99999% of cases, you'll just put them in the trash and delete them, and they'll never get transferred to anyone else.

[bremner770]

Originally posted by Brass:
I disagree with this reasoning. Yes, a Mac can carry PC virusses, but so what? How are you going to transfer them to your PC buddies? They are certainly not going to propogate themselves once their on your Mac, and in 99.99999% of cases, you'll just put them in the trash and delete them, and they'll never get transferred to anyone else.

If it's an Office macro virus then if you forward the infected document onto a PC user then they will be infected if not protected. If you deal with PC users on a regular basis then to be a good net citizen you really should have some form of virus protection whether you can get infected or not.

[Appleman]

Originally posted by bremner770:
If it's an Office macro virus then if you forward the infected document onto a PC user then they will be infected if not protected. If you deal with PC users on a regular basis then to be a good net citizen you really should have some form of virus protection whether you can get infected or not.

There is a tribe that has a virus among them.
I am immune to this virus, but able to carry it.
I got this from this tribe.
Now you want me to spend money so I won't give back this virus, because they don't spend money in protecting theirselves in the first place?

[Randman]

Originally posted by Appleman:
There is a tribe that has a virus among them.
I am immune to this virus, but able to carry it.
I got this from this tribe.
Now you want me to spend money so I won't give back this virus, because they don't spend money in protecting theirselves in the first place?

If that's all .Mac offered, no. But as one of the extras, why not take advantage of it. I do freelance work in my spare time, and I'd rather not accidently pass along a virus to a client even if he isn't smart enough to use a Mac.
.Mac offers more than just that.

[an0therdumbsn]

Just in case anyone is looking for a good deal http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=299767&is=REG click that and get the .mac service for a couple bucks less.
I am really considering becoming a .mac member but i think ill wait to see what added stuff tiger comes with. Plus ill wait a few months until i get my g5 imac so i can use isync between my powerbook and imac.