“Apple Computer’s latest advertising campaign, pegged to the slogan ‘It just works,’ is irritating some .Mac users as they wonder when the service will become operational again,” Dawn Kawamoto reports for CNET News.
“Over the past four days, .Mac users have struggled to get its Web site publishing features, iWeb, and related file-share capabilities, iDisk, to work. Users have complained not only about the length of the outage, but also what they say is a tardy response from .Mac’s technical support team, according to postings on Apple’s discussion board,” Kawamoto reports.
“Apple, meanwhile, says it is investigating the issue. ‘We are aware of the outage and are looking into it,’ an Apple spokeswoman said. She noted that it is premature to discuss whether Apple plans to reimburse users a portion of their $99.95 annual fee for .Mac service, which also includes data synchronization tools and group e-mail,” Kawamoto reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: According to Apple’s .Mac pages: “All .Mac services are online and operational.”
However, Apple’s online listing of .Mac System status for the last 30 days looks almost Microsoftian:
• 07/25/2006: For 8 hours iWeb publishing produced a network error message for some .Mac members.
• 07/25/2006: EMail was unavailable for 1.5 hour(s) for some .Mac Members.
• 07/24/06: Sync services were unavailable for 3 hours to all .Mac members.
• 07/20/2006: EMail was unavailable for 2 hour(s) for some .Mac Members.
• 07/18/2006: EMail was unavailable for 45 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/18/2006: EMail was unavailable for 3 hour(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/17/2006: EMail was unavailable for 15 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/16/2006: EMail was unavailable for 15 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/14/2006: EMail was unavailable for 15 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/13/2006: EMail was slow for 30 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/13/2006: EMail was unavailable for 15 minute(s) to some .Mac Members.
• 07/10/2006: EMail was unavailable for 1 hour for some .Mac members.
• 07/06/2006: EMail was unavailable for 30 minutes for some .Mac Members.
What’s the deal, Apple?
Are any .Mac members having issues with .Mac? If so, please tell us about it below.
Soon to be in the Oxford English:
Microsoftian
Adjective
1. Of or relating to Microsoft Inc, or its products.
2. Of poor quality; displaying an inability to function or operate
3. Resolved in an untimely manner
Phrases
Microsoftian informal : Apple’s online listing of .Mac System status for the last 30 days looks almost Microsoftian.
Origin
Modern English Microsoft [Computer Software Company of Washington, United States]
Synonyms
Vista-like, shoddy
“.mac should be free”
And so should MacPros….and….and….bacon
Ummm, yeah, Gay Lane…er Ray Lane, really good comparison. .Mac should be free as a value-add for anyone who buys an Apple computer, at least for a year or so to get people hooked. The 60 day trial is almost not worth trying and given the price, they should roll it up with Apple Care or something to really make it a carrot for Apple buyers. Google and Yahoo are starting to up the ante with their free services that will soon catch up to .Mac with no charge. Go eat some bacon, loser.
Flappo,
It doesn’t suck. It just didn’t work for you. Always keep a copy of the idisk on your machine. If you don’t, and you wipe it accidentally, it’s no one’s fault but your own.
m
The sme people who complain about .mac’s $8.25 per month charge are the same ones who don’t mind paying 4-5$ for a stinking Starbucks everyday or $4-5 for a digusting-sized combo meal from MacDonalds.
.mac is cheap
I enjoy .Mac very much. I’d like to see a $99 yearly bundle for .Mac and Ilife, that would be a great package! If i could wish, i’d like to see multiple users serviced in the standard .mac account, so my family could have there own settings without paying 2 hundred bucks.
I should’ve mentioned that either the .Mac price will drop, or LOTS of new features will be introduced with Leopard. With Yahoo and Google on .Mac’s tail, we will benefit. I’m actually pretty geeked.
m
If you don´t like .Mac don´t use it. No one is forcing you to use it.
And if there is an outage – duh, wait.
Apple knows what it is doing – there is a reason for everything Apple does. Just be patient or quit if you can´t handle a little bit of inconvenience. Sheesh – what whiners!
macromancer “.mac is cheap”
And so is macromancer.
.mac costs way too much money when you can get most of the services that they offer for free. I used to have it when it was called iTools in os X 10.1 but when they started charging way too much for it I was gone. I miss my @mac e-mail but $100 a year to have that domain was not worth it especially when it is cheaper to register your own domain name with an e-mail address than it is to get .mac. (on a side note.. don’t you just love run-on sentences?)
Software that works doesn’t just stop working. .Mac worked for a very, very long time before these problems were encountered.
It looks to me as though Apple is trying to load an upgraded version of .Mac, and not having the best of times with it.
hmmm, I wonder what Apple has in store for us with the new .Mac.
Could the “rolling blackouts” and the crazy heat have anything to do with the interruptions?
Where are the servers?
other links in the chain?
Hello everyone, Apple is getting some new stuff ready for .mac for WWDC next week. Duh. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that. Come on PEOPLE !!!!!!!!!!
I would never pay $100 for services available free. Granted, they aren’t as integrated as the .Mac solution, but at least they work.
War,
You can get a free .Mac email. Sign up for the trial. When it ends, you can choose not to pay for it and you keep the email. Simple.
Good times.
I find the .Mac service great, only once had a problem getting to webmail, but that’s about it.
I don’t think they should (or will) give the service for free, but the cost is way too expensive for what you get in comparison to other providers. It would be so easy for Apple to increase the storage size above the measly 1Gb, especially since this is shared between mail and iDisk.
I’d also like to see the speed of access increased, the uploads/downloads to and from the iDisk can be painfully slow at times.
How about it Apple?
Dankman: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Microsoftian
.Mac should exist in two version, one free with the basic stuff (email, host iWeb blog, …), and one premium, with the data storage and synk ability…
dot mac dot blows
How do you apply a retail box (such from Amazon) purchase as a renewal (keeping all the things uploaded such as address book and ical)? They automaticly billed me the $99.99
First, the problems with .Mac:
.Mac has some huge reliability issues. The questions is: Why?
1. .Mac is a chash cow, which is why Apple has choosen to put as little into it as possible.
2. .Mac has problems with renewals, rivaling that of OnStar… The funds .Mac does receive are largely funneled into Marketing efforts for Mac buyers to buy .Mac…
As for where .Mac is heading:
.Mac sits in a no-mans-land. It is a “me too” product with other online options that contain better features at lower prices.
So is .Mac to continue in this fashion? Two thoughts here:
1. .Mac stays it’s typical lame self with marketing majic around it…
2. .Mac becomes absored by a new ground up solution.
Looking at the horizion there are several service needs coming into play:
1. eMail services for a phone/blackberry type of device. Where is this email hub handled? .Mac? Let us pray not…
2. web hosting/portal services for phone/blackberry type device. Does this take place via T-Mobile, Cingular or some Apple/Carrier hybrid solution with .Mac services required for access (with a massive chunk going to a carrier)?…
3. Digital Home: The digital hub will share data between computer and iPod, but what about content anywhere, anytime? Will not Apple have a $$ per month or annual .Mac-type of subscription fee to access content you have purchased or rented anywhere, anytime on other “eMac” (entertainment Mac) boxes? eg: I purchased Pirates I, and am at a friends and want to watch it. I can stream it from the iTunes/.Mac account through their eMac. Why have physical content?
4. Video chat via iPhone/blackberry? Is this .Mac or some other solution with the carrier with a .Mac name on it?…
My guess is Mrs. Miller (spearheading .Mac – and formerly at M$ btw), is in quite the political dog fight (or was) for the .Mac part of the pie.
Personally, this should stay a low-end consumer solution tied tightly with iLife and leave it at that. For content and iPhone, a seperate service should be created.
For me, .mac has been the most reliable email and ftp site I use. If you use them, there are a lot of features to it. Attention to the details makes my life easer. It’s not perfect, but it’s been indispensable for my work.
If they want to keep the price where it is, they do need to make improvements more frequently including more space and bandwidth to stay on top of the competition, not just keep up with them.
homepage.mac.com/daddysteve
I am syncing 5 Macs with .Mac and have had numerous proplems with data corruption. Calendars duplicating and not syncing. Many problems with Palm and RAZR syncing, numbers mixing up with other contacts and or numbers/addresses being deleted at random. I am not happy with .Mac and need to get something else. But, Love my Mac(s)!
given that most people have access to their own webspace (work, school, ISP) it is irritating that iSync requires .Mac to function.
I always thought that a neat feature would be to allow the iPod to serve as the middleman when synching iCal or address book on two computers.
Oh well … at $70 there is just no way that it is worth it. I might pay $30/year for the convenience but maybe not. Now, if they added iTunes library management to iSync’s capabilities then i might have to reconsider. Keeping two versions of iTunes in sync is a pain right now.
My .Mac email is working normally, but I have never been happy with the performance of iDisk, nor with the fact that Apple provides virtually no support options for .Mac subscribers. AppleCare techs refer one to the .Mac feedback link on the Apple website. Very lame!
I continue to subscribe to .Mac because I find some features useful, but never stop wishing for the service to work better than it does. Someday one of the other services (perhaps Google) will offer similar functionality with better performance; that’s when I’ll kiss .Mac goodbye. I don’t mind paying, but .Mac really needs to get its act together to hold onto subscribers going forward.
It is easy to pay less than what Apple charges. Just make sure you do NOT have the automatic renewal turned on. For several years now I’ve bought my renewal off of eBay. The box arrives and I just enter the activation key online. It usualy ends up costing me about $55 with shipping.