Apple’s .Mac online service “has been the second most-popular Mac offering at retail so far this year, according to The NPD Group,” Eric Lai reports for Computerworld.
“For US$99, buyers get one year’s access to Web-based storage, e-mail and address book syncing between their iMacs and iPhones, among other features,” Lai reports.
“Still, customers may be taken a bit aback when they open up the .Mac box and discover “there’s nothing in there other than a license key,” said Chris Swenson, an analyst at the NPD Group,” Lai reports.
“The conventional wisdom is that software as a service (SaaS) is finishing what piracy, open-source and the Web started: killing the packaged software market,” Lai reports.
“But in fact, the packaged software market is still growing. According to NPD Group, US retail sales of packaged software so far this year (including those by online retailers) are up 10 percent,” Lai reports. “Office 2007 alone has captured one out of six US dollars spent at retail on software so far this year, Swenson said.”
Full article here.
That is so SaaSsy.
(a tribute to Phil Hartman)
If you had .Mac service and dropped it, make sure you check your credit card statements carefully. It has a surprising way of showing up again!
I got rid of .Mac, I’d had my email address since it was iTools, and used to get 50+ spam messages a day, and .Mac spam filters didn’t pick them up.
Crappy email, and the iDisk feature has never worked well.
(Tip for existing users, access your iDisk with Transmit and see the difference in speed!)
I had .mac when I worked for Apple… I seriously doubt I’d go back to it. Your own domain powered by Gmail is just too nice — and the price is good ($8/a month for the domain, email is free)
As far as iPhoto’s photo galleries, I use Flickr or Pacasa Web Galleries… both cheaper than .mac
I’m glad Apple increased the iDisk storage space but mounting and file transfers are still pretty sluggish (cable modem).
Thanks for the Transmit tip, SlimJim.
Have always had one and has worked great for me. I run a business with it, stream videos and have several websites. Now I make money with Google ads and can’t really complain.
I know there are other services but it works for me, my clients and friends. I write it off anyway.
I have been a .Mac user since before it was a paid service, and use it regularly. I back up all my prefences, etc. on it, and all my use data is there. I have two Macs, a desktop and a laptop. I use the local iDisk as my Documents folder, and the automatic sync makes sure that I have the same stuff on both machines! Very handy.
My email gets maybe two or three spams a day, which the local filters usually get at least half of. I normally only need to just toss one spam in the trash daily.
Sorry you had such a bad experience, but mine works great!
.Mac is awesome. There are times where my iDisk is slow but come on. It’s so easy, drag, drop, and go. My co-editor in CA and I exchange 2+ gig files weekly for FCP. Thats way easier than Fed-Ex and alot cheaper. The syncing is so easy with my personal files. I do prefer my gmail for emailing but everything else with .Mac is great. I work at a TX Apple store and when I show customers what you get and how easy it is, 70% say they gotta have it!
Love the .Mac service but I have to wonder why my Sync’d iCal isn’t accessible from the main home page. Seems like a no-brainer got missed. Instead I have to publish it to a page that becomes a URL which is too long to recall when away from my own computers.
yea, I was going to ditch .Mac at the end of this year’s subscription, but then they upped the storage, added more to Sync, and then I got an iPhone.
I’m sure I could get most of the services here and there for free, but it sure has improved, and is so darned handy.
Brau
Save the link to your bookmarks.
I’ve used .Mac for two years to sync calendars and address books in a small law office. It works great for maintaining a joint calendar and address book on computers both on and off-site.
I plan to move to a common calendar hosted by Leopard Server soon, but Leopard Server is not quite ready for prime time. It is still a little buggy.
Thanks TT, I have done that on my computers but it doesn’t help if I want to check my calendar from somebody else’s PC.
Brau,
Delicious bookmarks.
I used iTools when it was free but dropped it faster than Elizabeth Taylor drops husbands when they changed it to .Mac.
” had .mac when I worked for Apple… I seriously doubt I’d go back to it. Your own domain powered by Gmail is just too nice — and the price is good ($8/a month for the domain, email is free)
As far as iPhoto’s photo galleries, I use Flickr or Pacasa Web Galleries… both cheaper than .mac”
UMM, Well, it looks to me like $8/ month is about the same (or more if you buy from Amazon) as .mac (96 vs 99 bucks!) and when you add in other things like Flickr or Picasa- it seems to me that you are paying more than .mac. Add ease of use and back-to-my -mac features, I really don’t see your point.
@ TowerTone
Okay, I get it now … the bookmark will be available via .Mac. What can I say??! Sometimes I don’t see the tree for the forest! Now if there is a way to have iCal update the published page so I don’t have to republish after each change, now THAT would be great!
i’ve been using it since iTools. sure there are other services out there that are cheaper, but, as with many things apple / mac, i love the integration of .mac with everything else. my sister is close to buying her first mac, and i’m strongly suggesting she at least try .mac. she’s not really into computers, and would love for her to not have any hassles with the alternatives.
Not $8 a month, a year is what that should have been. Sorry
While $8 a month might be expensive to some, you couldn’t do much (or go far) on that same amount on gas in a month. All in all, it’s relatively cheap. You wanna know something that’s expensive? Cough syrup… I think around $200 a gallon (3.78 l).
I think the biggest value comes with its integration with iWeb. Who wants to mess around with HTML and how much easier can it get with managing your website(s) right from you computer?
the reason it is so popular is renewal.. I have seen that many prefer to renew their .mac account by buying boxed .mac at retail store instead of online using cash or whatever.
It’s popular because the Apple Store sales people do a good job of mentioning it whenever a customer buys a new Mac, shrink-wrapped copy of Leopard, or iLife. I’ve used the service for years, and I like it. More and more, new features tie .Mac in nicely with the rest of the Mac-using experience. And yet, I’m still only using about a quarter of the available features.
I’ve had the family pack for several years. Allows me to access and edit my wife’s address book. Published calendars a nice feature as well. Overall, very worthwhile for a few dollars a month.
I had .mac when I worked for Apple… I seriously doubt I’d go back to it. Your own domain powered by Gmail is just too nice — and the price is good ($8/a month for the domain, email is free).
— The Velvet Hammer
What’s so great about $8 a month? GoDaddy charges less than $40 a year for first-rate web hosting with email.
I wish .Mac had worked for me. The first few backups of my documents, pictures and misc. files worked fine, but then rather than continuing to back up incrementally, Backup seemed to be trying to back up the 24 GB on my entire hard drive each time and I began getting the error message that there wasn’t enough storage. In fact, there was plenty of space for incremental backups of my documents and pictures because I had purchased the maximum of 30 GB.
The iDisk also had expanded to the point where it said it was taking up 180 GB of my hard drive.
I looked for answers to the problem in Apple’s Backup and .Mac forums, but didn’t get any help there. No one had an idea what was happening or why or how to fix it.
To add insult to injury, although you’re supposed to get a refund of your first storage purchase when you upgrade to buy more, I never did, despite e-mailing Apple about its improper billing and requesting reimbursement to my credit card.
If Apple is going to charge what it does for .Mac, it would nice to have real tech support to troubleshoot any problems with the service and its billing.
Basically, I feel like I was ripped off.
I’m with TT on this one. I went from iTools to .Mac with nary a glitch then was hit with more storage and features as I was beginning to wonder how good a deal it was. One of the first freebies was a collection of “music for the movies”, designed to go with your iMovie projects, that I’m now using with my podcasts. Not the only freebies I regularly use, but the most significant ones.
SlimJim, they’ve improved the spam filtering, giving the user more input.
Velvet, sounds like you are just angry about no longer working for Apple. Check out what alansky said, and what others have said. You are spending too much and getting too little for it. Get a GoDaddy, or similar, deal, and build a RapidWeaver web site on it to post your pictures. HUGE improvement. And don’t bother quibbling over a GB or two of mail storage – if you need even ONE, you are storing way too much crap.
Dave