“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.
.Mac is too expensive and the email gets all spammed if you use it long enough. Love Apple…Hate .Mac
There is no problem with my .Mac. I joined dot Mac since iTool was introduced. I use .Mac every single day and use photocasting, iWeb, homepage, iSync with my Palm based handheld. AND I am extremely happy with it. I am sorry to hear that it had bad affect on ohter .Mac users. Hang in there and you would be happier.
COOL??
.mac is having growing pains. Also, some bastard is using it for spam- not sure how my addresses were compromised, especially since I use my alias. So that might be a hack or inside job.
No program could do for me what .mac does as smoothly. Ever notice how photos are scaled back to preserve disc space? Nice. Plus I really like the fact that there is not a shred of advertising on my site.
Needs more cowbell.
Given the services offered .Mac SHOULD be free or MUCH cheaper…. e-mail? disk space? website? I pay for those once already via my ISP, plus there are free ones I can get all over the place. The disk space limitations make the fact that I can upload my iPhoto library to a gallery pointless… I can use Shutterfly or some other FREE service. The only thing I can’t get elswhere is the sync service… which is unreliable and dead-dog slow no matter where I connect from. It often overwrites addresses, or adds duplicate cards or entries. True, it brings a lot of these services together in one place for folks who do not use this stuff regularly. However its only a matter oftime before someone lie me points out that the performance is bad. When these folks finally do become saavy and learn whats out there, it becomes an embarrasment for Apple. They got greedy in charging for this the way they have.
Better? http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Microsoftian
This is my last year with .Mac. I am constantly having trouble with syncing contacts. Every time I synced iCal it would add my deleted calendars. Next time I opened iCal it would auto update the calendars that were turned off and hold up the program launching. I only do contacts and bookmarks now as anything else creates too many problems. Contacts have had the phone #’s and names switched around, no one has an explanation as to how this can happen. Luckily I have other manual backups and was able to reinstall.
And Backup what is this it makes a new one every time until the disk is full and you have to manually remove old versions.
dot mac sucks monster donkey cocks , so there
I’ve had .mac for 3 years and absolutely love it. It’s saved my “bacon” more than once and makes working with my 5+ Macs seamless as if they were all connected at the brain. Very few problems, and well worth the price, which is way more here in Canada, try closer to $200/yr after taxes.
.Mac, no more! Like many others, I’m not going to renew my .Mac when it expires in a few months. For $49/yr I get 5Gb of space, 99 real email addresses, and a REAL domain name (nulookgrapics.com) at GoDaddy.com.
At GoDaddy.com, if you get a Domain name for $8.95/yr, you get tons of free things much like .Mac’s Homepage.
Quick Blog
Hosting with Web site builder
Complete Email
Getting Started Guide
Secure Domain Locking
Total DNS Control
Status Alerts
But, just add $40/yr and get 5Gb of space. You can add other Domain names for $8.95 and have them redirected to your main domain. You can also make free sub-domains like “apt.nulookgraphics.com”.
Granted, iWeb prevents you from having a few functions like a page counter and flash-like photo album controls in non-.Mac accounts, but I can live without them. For transferring files, “Fetch” is just about as easy as .Mac.
If Apple offered real hosting, Domain names, full control over email names and other similar services as GoDaddy at the same price, I would consider it again. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Paying twice the price for a somewhat easier interface and much few real features and space really isn’t worth it. Apple really buggered this one up! And is faaaar behind the server/hosting industry…. it’s, well, almost Microsoft-like in their lack of innovation and exorbitant pricing.
Could the “rolling blackouts” and the crazy heat have anything to do with the interruptions?
The heat? Possibly. I’ll give them slack if they’re having server room HVAC problems in peak season. Better not happen next summer though (not to mention there ARE ways to do emergency cooling in-season).
Blackouts? No freaking way. If Apple can’t buy backup generators and a little fuel to run them with, they’d better shut down .Mac.
IMO Apple had better be seeing the Google and Yahoo trains coming. Apple, you can either join .Mac with one or the other, or you can watch .Mac get ran over.
Apple’s online listing of .Mac System status for the last 30 days looks almost Microsoftian:
Now that hurts.
Steve Jobs, you should take a little trip down to the server center to see WTF the problem is. Sometimes it just takes a little motivation.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a monster donkey. I think you’re lying.
Regarding spam with the .Mac account. A MacInTouch reader posted a rule for Mail that catches the jpg based spam. It seems to work very well. Don’t have enought time with it to see what gets a false positive but so far it’s batting 100%. I posted the hint in the .Mac forum here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2825171#2825171
You can read the MacInTouch page here: http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/dotmac/index.html#jul31
I use .Mac for my podcasting (TheWarOnDemocracy.com) and for the most part I like it. Its ease of use is to be commended. However, the fact that .Mac gives the user very little subscriber statistics (unlike Libsyn, which gives the podcaster many different usable and valuable statistics) is quite frustrating. Considering the .Mac, iWeb, iTunes combo, it seems that Apple could really allow the podcaster to see many different statistics…
I’ve been having problems with my .Mac for months with no help at all from Apple – a first. I have been unable to sync my address book – which is crucial to our business, as could be understood. On the .Mac site there is no option to enable synching, as there used to be.
I’ve been back-and-forth with Apple regarding this situation and they keep dropping the ball.
l33t h@XXor – “IT WAS ME!!!
Ok it really wasn’t me personally, but a NASA run Mac OS X website was hacked recently with the results (and the how to’s) published on Slashdot recently.”
—> l33t h@XXor – Look, this issue has been discussed about five times in various threads over the past months. The problem lies in PHP *NOT* OS X
Here is an article that explains all about it:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/03/when_macs_attack.html
Quote from said article:
———————
A large number of Web sites running vulnerable PHP applications on OS X systems are regularly defaced by hacker groups who replace the sites’ home pages with hacker screeds or even some political statements.
In some situations — depending on how the Web site operator has set up his system — flaws in those third-party applications can be leveraged to install malicious code on the victim’s system that could allow bad guys to access files or run programs. Take the “Lupper” worm, which spreads to Web servers through known PHP flaws and opens a “back door” on the affected system that hackers can use to install malware later.”
^^^ Addendum:
“PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open-source, reflective programming language. Originally designed as a high level scripting language for producing dynamic Web pages, PHP is used mainly in server-side application software.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
PHP has known flaws that were exploited in the instance you provided.
.Mac is missing that killer app.
I thought iWeb was going to be it but, for me, it wasn’t.
BuckLo,
All email address, if active long enough, get spammed. That’s why .Mac provides you with up to 5 aliases. Never give out your original .Mac email address, only give out your aliases.
Problem solved.
I don’t know, it seems like lots of the issues people are having with .Mac or easily preventable user-errors.
1) IDisk too slow? Keep a copy of your iDisk on your machine and sync in manually at the end of the day.
2) Getting lots of spam after using the same address for awhile? Change it. Never give out your original .Mac address. Use aliases.
3) Having problems syncing? Set your computers to sync automatically (but NOT the iDisk, webdav is too slow for that).
4) Think .Mac is too expensive? Don’t purchase .Mac through Apple, go through Froogle or Amazon or Pricegrabber. Save at least $20.
5) Don’t want to pay that much for a simple .Mac email address? Then don’t. Get one for free by signing up for free a trial, just don’t renew it.
m
l33t h@XXor –
One other thing – The article also mentions them gaining entry through a leak in the SQL Injection. Note Sites:
avdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/phpgdv2
…1.it/modules/Bacheche_2005_06/sql_db.php
Note: my emphasis added to site names/extensions
PHP flaws…(just wanted to double check the data from my posts above for total accuracy).
^^^^ Damn! forgot something. Let me re-emphasize one of the sites again:
…1.it/modules/Bacheche_2005_06/sql_db.php
sql_db = SQL Database + php extension.
I am still a mac user. I started with .mac when i converted to mac 2 years ago. But since May this year.
I GAVE UP TOTALLY on .mac as it’s pretty EXPENSIVE to even buy an account and doesn’t really worth the money for just a simple favourite .mac email account and its iweb.
No more .Mac for us Asian mac users.
It’s Apple’s fault
Why?
For not adding multiple compartmentalization to thier operating system.
Do you think just one password will get you access to anything in the Pentagon?
Mac OS X is secure right out of the box alright, but that’s about it.
dotMac is very cool. I use it all the time and have had no problems with it. I think some of you people need to run software update more often. Sure, it could be better. How about some of you geniuses out there develop something better. No, that’s what I thought. If it didn’t work Steve would have killed it a long time ago and I don’t believe you people are dumb enough to pay for something that doesn’t work. If you don’t like it, shut up and don’t renew.
I have used dotMac for users in large organizations who can’t get their IT staff to figure out how to share a file or sync a calendar app.
I would like to see, however, the dotMac functions built-in to OS X Server. Sure, you can build it but it’s a pain in the ass. If it’s part of the server it could handle a lot of Enterprise projects and be dumb ass simple to set-up. Come on Apple, you can do it.