“Earlier this week Apple announced that a new version of webmail for Mac users is ‘coming soon.’ There was a bit of chatter about this around the blogosphere, with most people concluding that this fresh coat of paint on the inferior .mac product is a bit of a yawn,” Michael Arrington writes for Techcrunch.
“I agree that .mac is Apple’s most difficult to use product and needs a lot of work. However, I think that the changes are important for one reason: There are very few Ajax webmail services today that allow users to access multiple email accounts. .Mac will be one of them,” Arrington writes. “I believe webmail is the single most important application to show off the power of Ajax. The reason is that we spend an incredible amount of time on email every day – at least 3-4 hours per day for me. When we spend that much time doing something, even small increases in productivity make a large aggregate positive difference.”
“.Mac webmail will now have both multiple account access and rich Ajax features. Only Yahoo currently offers that. And since .Mac syncs with a desktop client (Yahoo doesn’t of course), it is a completely end-to-end solution. Until now, you had to be using exchange server and Outlook to have anything close to that,” Arrington writes. “This is an important move by Apple that gives its platform a new advantage over Windows Machines and any of the webmail services out there, including Gmail and Yahoo. I look forward to its launch.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Apple teases new .Mac webmail coming soon with drag-and-drop, built-in Address Book, and more – September 27, 2006
This will work with the iPhone
But .mac mail does NOT sync email messages, only email settings. Isn’t that correct? I want to keep the email messages themselves synchronized across machines, and I can’t find any product to do that.
JS– I just have all three of my Macs check for messages frequently. Only one is set to delete emails off of the server after a month or so. Wouldn’t this accomplish what you need?
I may have to make the .Mac leap and try it out. I could have fun with some nonsense web pages. I need to post a Photoshop image of a Zune headstone marking a coffin filled with PlayedForSure partners (accessories not included).
Yes but the real question is: if I already have Mail, why on earth should I care about doing it all in Safari? .Mac’s old webmail was fine for me… I never used it anyway so who cares.
I’ll probably renew my subscription, but it assuages my guilt for being so liberal with my OS X install discs… but .Mac is lame.
I love it when people write ‘intellectual’ just to revel in their own verbiage. “…small increases in productivity make a large aggregate positive difference”. Gimme a break. So, it’ll work better and we’ll get more things done quicker.
Gee, I couldn’t have concluded that on my own.
“Thanks, Sergeant Carter . . . I plum sure didn’t understand a thing he was sayin’.”
Gmail is almost all AJAX, and was AJAX from the start. So it’s not just yahoo and .mac.
I think that the timing has a lot to do with renewals. I started with .mac at the very beginning (back when it was called something else and it was free) and my renewal is in October. I have a feeling that they have a large volume of renewals in October and by giving a sneek peek they hope to have more people to renew.
.Mac is laaaaame.
It’s also displaying Apple’s ability to make thier incredible iLife suite web-based! A couple more apps like this that integrate and function as smoothly as OS X native apps and Google really has something to fear!!
For me to be really excited about .Mac, they need more than feature parity on their webmail. They need some kind of community chat and decent web hosting. And more storage.
MDN word: member. As in, .Mac please excite my member….
Unlikely, but I’m gonna toss it out there. Any chance that the recent addition of Eric Schmidt could have anything to do with this? Could it be based off of gmail to any extent? Are we seeing the beginnings of cross co-operation? Probably not.
“Google really has something to fear!!”
Unless of course, Google is in on it. That will mean a lot more Redmond chair death.
To JS in DC,
Off course the messages are synced. .Mac is an IMAP account which is server based. All work you do is on the server. So no matter what you are using: .Mac, Mac #1 desktop, Mac #2 desktop. All messages will be the same.
Google has nothing to fear. Its free.
I abhor .Mac’s corny looks and interface
I used it out of love for Apple, but it’s just to “Apple”. It’s like having AOL training wheels.
“look at me, I’m a internet noobie!” “Come infect my machine! Send me spam and phishing scams!”
BLAH.
How about something cool looking, easy to set up and edit and dropping the hideous “.mac” address?
And while they are at it, provide a DSL modem. Cumcast, Cox and all these other broadband providers are trying to lock the user with their “.mac” type garbage too. So Apple might as well respond.
I must admit though, all the times I’ve had .Mac I only got a few spams and phishing scams. So Apple IS watching out.
But the object is to send only a few phishing scams to .Mac users at a time for the best result. You hear?
Combine it with a metadata zip file exploit and a email tracer graphic. *whistles*
Yawn….
I dropped my .mac address when iTools stopped being free. I felt betrayed then… still do. Ticks me off even more that Calendar, etc. only syncs through .mac.
Where’s the perks for the faithful?
Cornhole, you are a dolt. Err, in language you can understand – a moron. You are the kind of person that wants people to dumb down their vocabulary because…why? So you can feel better about yourself? Grow up, little monkey.
Very insightful commentary. Dot Mac is among the most glaring examples of Apple’s disdain for its loyal customers.
.Mac ought to be free. Its usefulness is still a promise, not a reality, and the features such as iDisk, Homepage, etc. are pitifully non-robust, and its iLive ‘exclusive’ tutorials are virtually the same as the tutorials available on the free sites for the individual parts.
Those of us who pay the $100 annual fee are being ripped off. Big time!
Improved Mail features are but a tiny beginning of what needs to be done to completely overhaul this joke.
.Mac is fantastic.
The iDisk is indespensible (yeah it’s a little slow–keep a copy locally on each of your machines and have it sync EOD solves that problem). Having all my bookmarks, contacts, calendars, keychains and Yojimbo notes synced on my phone, PSP, home Mac and work Mac is fantastic—I can’t live without it. And if you purchase .Mac through Amazon (or search thru dealmac.com) you can find it for much less than $99 bucks a year.
I can’t wait for the .Mac updates. And my iPhone.
m
Man … I can’t even get anybody to send spam.
Yeah, I know. Don’t admit to stuff like that. heh.
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Anyways, that’s kinda one of the problems with the .Mac, isn’t it? You gotta bring a whole giant social or professional scene with you, otherwise there’s almost nothing there worth purchasing.
hairbo said: “Gmail is almost all AJAX, and was AJAX from the start. So it’s not just yahoo and .mac.”
In case you hadn’t noticed, gmail isn’t fully compliant with Safari, OmniWeb, et al.
Pretty much everything Google does is Windows centric. Updates to other platforms are slooooow.
I just got .mac for the first time, and I find it fairly useful. I think if Apple was really confident in the product they’d offer a free year with new macs to get people hooked for life. But they must know it’s not that great, and the renewal rate is probably low.
Whatever you may say, I still can’t justify spending $100 USD for a tiny amount of space/bandwidth. The only good thing about .Mac is the backup – which you can get from other services just as good.
No thank you.
Meantime in Redmond…
“Aaaaargh!”
<sound of crashing noises and broken glass>
“Hi. Could you have Maintenace come up to Steve’s office for clean up? Oh, and tell them to bring two more chairs. Oh, and a couple more towels. Yes, I know. Mmmkay. Tell me about it.”