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This could be the first step, but why now? This could have occured next week with the announcements.

A more logical answer may be that they needed to upgrade the bandwidth to keep up with GMAIL and SpyMac in terms of email and drive space.

Although, if this is associated with an announcement next week, what about Windows users? Will there be the possibility of this sector having .Mac accounts, being able to eventually use online Mac Apps on a Windows machine (iMovie, iPhoto, etc.)? Could this be a move to try to hedge against the online Office movement at Windows?

I can't wait!

Steve is opening the birth canal for the biggest thing since Christ

MW father, nuffsed

funnily enough, a month is about how long it takes to transfer 1TB to your iDisk.

mine's gone up

look

Email Storage:1024 MB
iDisk Storage:1024 MB
Total Storage:2048 MB

??

i'm sure it was just one gig before !!!

Since it takes several days to sync 1 GB with .Mac, I would love to see how long a TB would take--maybe if you start a sync now it is done in time for release of the 40th Anniversary Mac?

iDisk is the most overrated .Mac feature simply because Apple syncs data a pathetically slow pace that obviates any benefits of iDisk.

Hey, my stinking account still says I only have 512MB and no increase in transfer amount. Guess I'm not special :(

I dunno...will you still be able to download content you buy to your hard drives? This may simply be a way to make a potentially very bad thing (more restrictions on content you buy, having to buy a .mac account, and not having what you bought on your computer) look like a very cool thing.

If the restrictions upon digital content increase under the yet to be proposed system(s), it may appear that Apple has fallen under the sway of the MPAA, RIAA, Sony, and other various evil corporate bastards...

Hmm, my account only mentions storage amounts. Says nothing about data transfer. Why?

Or another obvious possibility:

Apple will soon announce iPodcast, a new member of the iLife suite, which makes it easy to record, edit, and post podcasts to your .Mac account.

The increase in bandwidth is about right for all but the most popular podcasts.

I'm not saying there won't be a video service, but podcast hosting seems even more likely.

It will warm my cockles if I can move my existing music collection from my hard drive, to my iDisk.

I envision that I would be able to access my music from any computer with a net connection, and be able to keep my iTunes playlists, playcounts, etc, all in synch while doing so.

In other words, I would be able to continue to use my music with iTunes as I do now, but from multiple computers!

MW: Set. It's like it's reading my mind!

Perhaps the rumors about what's being called the "NanoBook" are true. An ultraslim notebook, sans harddrive, and free .Mac accounts. *Sight* Maybe, maybe not. But, it never hurt to dream a little...

Where do I look to see my data transfer bandwidth?

All I can see are my storage limits.

I hope Apple doesn't make everyone purchase a .mac account - that would suck. Apple should provide a way to use this new download system without having to pay for .mac.

Lemme see if I have this straight. You'd never actually own the content because you can't take it anywhere you want though you can play it anywhere, would have no control over it other than to play it and ownership could be revoked on a whim if someone decided you broke the rules. If Microsoft had offered this service most everyone in Appledom would have yelped like a gaggle of lemmings accusing MS of taking too much control of distribution and limiting freedom of choice by restricting portability such as the iPod currently does. MW!

I just can NOT see this happening, Think Secret or not.

slike is correct: This paradigm just has "problems" written all over it. People want "reliable". People want "flexible". People want things at THEIR whim, when THEY want it. Transferring this, and streaming that . . . it just sounds far too ethereal for the average user to even understand. "Ooh, wait -- I paused it. But honey, now it says that its 're-syncing' or something. What's 're-syncing'?"

And on top of all this, everyone will now have to get a .Mac account? Are you kidding me? No way. Too much trouble. Requiring as a precursor that everyone "join up" with Apple via a .Mac account is a recipe for failure.

The only way I see anything like this working long-term is if it's nothing more thana type of "experiment" wherein Mac users will "test the waters", so to speak, before it's rolled out wide in a different form. Because I swear to you, a NetFlix account utilizing the U.S. Postal Service sounds more reliable than this idea.

If Apple really announces this in 8 days I will seriously consider dumping all of my AAPL stock.

Yeah, right...
http://discussions.apple.com/ann.jspa?annID=44

This does make sense in that video content owners ie the movie distributors want to limit the ability of users to pirate movies. DVDs can be easily ripped which is not making them happy. Streaming content securely provides another avenue of revenue without opening an additional way to copy the data.

That's why Apple is selling the ivideos will not backup capabilities. Otherwise the distributors would not have gone with the deal.

This type of technology may appeal to some people - not really for me. I'm not interested in paying 2-5 bucks for something I can watch only once or only on one computer. The quality of the feed also would need to match that of current DVDs at least and ideally that of HDTV.

However, this is probably the way of the future. Secure digital distribution of media. It will need to mature first and be worthwhile before I use it.

This might be more like a "savings account" for stuff purchased from iTunes Music Store. Note that they only mention bandwidth increase, not storage. All apple has to do is add an alias from their own media server into your .Mac folder for all your purchases, and they eat the whole 17k space it takes for the link. But you can either click the link in your account and it will stream to whatever computer you are on, anywhere. Or if you are on an authorized computer, you can download it to your mac.

This makes sense for when ITMS offers more shows and starts selling movies. That way you won't always have to have a terabyte harddrive to store your huge movie/music/podcasts library on, but still have certain ones on your laptop/iPod for portability.

This would also solve the "my harddrive died and I don't have a backup of my ITMS purchases, and Apple won't let me download them again without paying." issue.

MW: both. Could be both, could be neither, could be another fake rumour.

Yesterday when i first saw this story i went and check my account and it was there, now its not there anymore. Well i can't even get excited if the speculations are true, because i still can't purchase from the iTMS. The only disadvantage to living in the caribbean.

This method, which will be every bit as simple and straightforward for consumers as the iTunes Music Store is now, poses a number of advantages over Apple's current pay-once-download-once system, including saving users' hard drive space and essentially providing a secure back-up of everything purchased."

A full copy of purchased video content most likely will not reside in your .Mac account. This would stress Apple's storage capacity beyond reason.

Apple will most likely show you an image of the content, with a pointer back to the original. This would have the double benefit to Apple of reducing storage capacity needs, and further insulating the original software from the owner/hacker/pirate.

This anti-piracy scheme will be very attractive to the studios, and I'll wager anything that Apple has patents that will prevent someone from setting up something similar, without stepping on Apple's patents.

Looks like Beavix has the definitive answer/link on the issue. Time to come down off the ledge, people.

everyone's so excited and upset, and all it is a mistake!!! HA

a cut price version of .mac is inevitable. They just need a killer app to sell the new idea

iDisk is totally overrated. All it ever did for me was crash my iBook. Sync-ing is waay better in theory than in practice. Plus, an online PRV would be useless for anyone with less than ~1MB broadband, let alone anyone wanting HD viewing. Boo to this rumor.

Right MS, same for me with my iBook. Crashed by sync to my .mac account! So I cut syncing.

Apple's new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive

Oh yes it will, with SnapZ Pro X it most definatly will.

Until the Mactels come out and then we are all up $hit creek with all the DRM in those processors bypassing the OS.

Get a PPC based Quad quick if you ever intend to record high definition Tv shows.

Apple is giving you the chance before our machines are locked down tighter than a frogs a$$ underwater.

This image @ http://homepage.mac.com/alphamatrix/bandwidth.png is fake reason is the image says the person has a total of 1024 MB, which all .Mac people have. But you can not change your storage settings to Email Storage 80MB and iDisk Storage 944 MB, but you can have the Email Storage as 100 MB or 50 MB not 80. Also the iDisk storage can have 924 MB or 974 not 944. So there is my reason why this is fake.

Dunno about you, Macdude, but I record HD on my TiPB, with my ElGato 500. It's uncompressed HD, as high as 18Mb/s. I'm watching Ohio State beating NotreDame in HD, right now. No DRM, no need for a Quad. If my 1Ghz TiPB can record HD and play it back, then I'm sure a Mac mini can as well.

I always have to chuckle when I see or hear someone missuse the term "bandwidth". This is a term that is missused by the vast majority of the computer users of the world it seems, making it not funny but sad.

Bandwidth is not measured in bytes, it is measured in Hettz. Figure it out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth

Ace--
Careful with that statement:
"Steve is opening the birth canal for the biggest thing since Christ"
Poor John Lennon got in deep doo doo using similar references to the Beatles back in the 60's.
; )

As for .Mac Syncing. When it gets cranky, I have found if you sync only one at a time ex: just the Address Book, each will sync separately without problem, even though failure alerts come up if you try to sync Address Book and Calendar and Bookmarks all at once.

Just to be clear, I think this would be an excellent option, if it were simply that--an option.

I don't need to have my music on my hard drive. I would prefer otherwise in fact, if it meant that I could access the same music from my home computer, and through my Powerbook, and I could synch my iPod with either of the two.

But that doesn't mean that I would like to be locked in either.

Make it an option though, and I'm all over it.

.Mac works perfectly for my. I have never had a problem with iSync and my guess is that most people do not. If one or two of you have problems with your iBooks then try re-installing your OS instead of complaining on forums every week.

Super-fast broadband that could support HD film downloads is not very common right now. Not only that but only a fraction of computers can actually play 720p HD films encoded with the settings of trailers on the QuickTime site. Forget about streaming HD films, there is no market for it yet.

For full-length movie content for your video iPod, check out http://www.4Flix.net They are all just $1.99 each and DRM-free!

I just renewed my .mac account for no other reason than the fact that I'm too lazy to deal with an e-mail address switch. Yes, I'm dumb.

Personally, I find .mac fine for e-mail. But at $100 p.a., it's just ridiculously overpriced. I tried to use my iDisk for a while, but it's so slow it reminds me of my old Mac SE. C'mon, Steve! We need a killer app!

Washington Post newspaper article on CES:
"What's more important, TVs are a ubiquitous household item: the cherished conduit for broadcast, cable or satellite programming, movies and video games. And if all goes as many tech companies want, they will also one day become popular vehicles for accessing photos, videos and music stored on a home computer network, or other online content.

Tech titans like Microsoft and Intel Corp. are banking on it."

Apple is going to be surprised (well they know it, Macheads don´t)when Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others announce the downloading of movies, etc via their websites. (And they don´t work on iPods - maybe?....gulp.)
Every computer maker is going to have the same computer hardware as Apple has (Intel processors) - there will soon be no more advantage to Apple and its delivery system.
Everyone will have it.
The winner here - Intel.

I dropped my .mac account this year. Tired of spending $100 for what it offered. Now I've got a gmail account, a flickr account, and a del.icio.us account. Who needs .mac?

If Steve will only offer movie downloads to .mac users, then he's seriously limiting his customer base. I pay Apple enough for the hardware I buy. They don't need a monthly check from me as well.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks .Mac is a rip-off. I got a 90-day trial with my new Mac, but that was way too short. I had hardware issues with my Mac, so I was without it for 2 weeks at the beginning. By the time I was ready to try it out, my trial had expired. This was my first Mac, so there was a learning curve, plus I'm just too busy to be geeking out 24/7.

If I were Steve...

1. All Mac owners would get a basic free lifetime .Mac account.
2. The trial period for the premium account would be 1 year.
3. The premium account would be priced more reasonably, like maybe $29.95/year.

If I had had more time to play with .Mac, I might have joined. I was not very impressed with what I saw, but maybe I didn't use it enough to appreciate it?