Apple hints at .Mac improvements on Tuesday

[AppleInsider]

In addition to introducing new iMacs, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs may use Tuesday's media event in Cupertino to transform his company's .Mac internet service into a more compelling offering.

Several .Mac members note a new posting to the .Mac website that warns of possible service interruptions during the exact time in which Jobs will be addressing members of the media tomorrow:

Due to scheduled maintenance, .Mac members might be intermittently unable to access some .Mac services from 10am to 12pm PDT on 08/07/2007. We apologize for any inconvenience..

.Mac has been criticized by industry watchers over the years as an overpriced subscription service with low storage quotas and limited functionality. For instance, .Mac offers its paying members an e-mail storage quota that is much smaller than that of free services such as Google's Gmail.

While some have called upon Apple to lower its $99 annual fee for the service, others have taken matters into their own hands by issuing a $10,000 dollar bounty aimed at funding a GPL replacement for the service, dubbed the "notMac Challenge."

Apple, however, may be one step ahead.

During a recent interview, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg held Jobs accountable for the poor state of .Mac, to which the Apple co-founder offered an interesting reply.

"I couldn't agree more [with the assessment]," Jobs confessed. "And we'll make up for lost time in the near future."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[SpinDrift]

It's about bloody time!

[Ireland]

What the majority of folks really want = a much cheaper price.

Exact same existing service = $29
More storage + same bandwidth = $49
More storage + a lot more bandwidth $99

Whatever else = bonus.

i.e. don't just don't add some stuff and features and keep the same price. People want the option of paying either $29 or getting the existing service for free. $99 for this service is a crazy rip-off. Give people options. Gmail is free, hello! We know folks at Apple read these boards here, now hows about those folks give back to their users for once. We support you Apple, through thick and thin. Here's a chance for you to show us you actually give a shit about your customers.

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by Ireland

What the majority of folks really want = a much cheaper price.

Existing service = $29
More storage + same bandwidth = $49
More storage + a lot more bandwidth $99

Whatever else = bonus.

What do you mean by "bandwidth" in the .Mac context?

[icibaqu]

i want all .mac to be free. seriously, free integration of all your mac's and apple devices, synced.

that would be

maaaaaaybe i'd be willing to pay a little bit. i resubbed again about a month ago, but because i had slept on figuring out other free solutions. pisses me off.

[Padilla79]

I remember something way back when the iPhone was announced that Google and Apple would be working together with .Mac to either bolster the service or get rid of it entirely and just incorporate all of Google's services instead. Not sure what's gonna happen, but I can almost guarantee that Google will play a major role.

[MsNly]

Tomorrow is going to be a day of 's and a day of empty bank accounts...

[Artistgreg]

I think it may be related to a subscription movie service.

[biggsjm]

Originally Posted by Padilla79

I remember something way back when the iPhone was announced that Google and Apple would be working together with .Mac to either bolster the service or get rid of it entirely and just incorporate all of Google's services instead. Not sure what's gonna happen, but I can almost guarantee that Google will play a major role.

Jobs - "We will make up for lost time"

That means . . .

On August 7th, .Mac users will receieve a full refund and special bonus for the pain and suffering. .Mac will be shut down and all users can transfer their data over to a "real" suite of services hosted by Google. Mail, Docs, Bookmarks, Storage, etc. Its all there. And for the price of FREE!

[Phlake]

With new services for .Mac being added into Leopard, such as "Back to My Mac," it certainly would make sense to provide a free version to users.

[kilraq]

Originally Posted by biggsjm

Jobs - "We will make up for lost time"

That means . . .

On August 7th, .Mac users will receieve a full refund and special bonus for the pain and suffering. .Mac will be shut down and all users can transfer their data over to a "real" suite of services hosted by Google. Mail, Docs, Bookmarks, Storage, etc. Its all there. And for the price of FREE!

*Cries* I sure as hell hope so. Cause it SUCKS right now.

[waytogobuddy]

"I couldn't agree more [with the assessment]," Jobs confessed. "And we'll make up for lost time in the near future."

you better.....

[syklee26]

Apple will NEVER give .Mac for free. they might add some features but never for free.

.Mac is by far the worst Apple product existing right now. they better make some serious upgrade or I am not going to renew. My renewal comes up in 40 days.

[msantti]

We have it all wrong here.

Its not a Mac event.

Its a "."Mac event.

[tacojohn]

Please please please give me a good reason to renew my account that expires in 11 days....

[eAi]

The competition is funding a BSD licensed replacement, not GPL licensed...

[Kickaha]

As someone who runs his own domain server... I'd just be thrilled if they'd roll .mac *hosting* capability into MacOS X Server. Include the Sync engine for internal control of syncing on the LAN. Let iWeb hook into a .mac proxy running MacOS X Server as easily as it does .mac, etc.

[Dave K.]

I can't imagine what Apple could offer ex-.Mac users to make them want to come back. I am so use to other services that are free. One stop shopping is not needed...

Dave

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

What do you mean by "bandwidth" in the .Mac context?

When you sign up for the standard .Mac account you get a monthly data transfer limit, I think it's 10GB. If you use iWeb a lot you can burn it up pretty quickly.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by tacojohn

Please please please give me a good reason to renew my account that expires in 11 days....

As I was saying they need to lower the current price considerably. Would a new price-point of $29 per year for the same existing service make you renew?

[tomkarl]

Maybe it's just me, but I like the mac domain in my e-mail address.

It's not an exceptionally great service, but I do like the synching that comes with it. I'm hoping for more services but no transfer to google or yahoo.

[MiMiC]

Originally Posted by syklee26

Apple will NEVER give .Mac for free. they might add some features but never for free.

.Mac is by far the worst Apple product existing right now. they better make some serious upgrade or I am not going to renew. My renewal comes up in 40 days.

I agree! I do truly hope that .Mac allows for real domain name hosting to coincide with iWeb as iWeb really looks unprofessional with the obscure and long URL. And even longer with its blogs.

I want people to go to RichGetz.com and stay at RichGetz.com with all the features of iWeb and real hosting such as WebTrends.

I want to be able to pull all my .Mac information into my iWeb to create my own experience (with Apple templates of course).

I also want to be able to sign non Mac users up with .Mac accounts so I can manage websites through iWeb on .Mac servers.

If .Mac, then also iWeb (iLife) to be featured tomorrow as the two should be joined. I also want drop in scripts for iWeb for such things as forms and messaging. Yes, this can all be coded by hand quite easily, but even easier with iWeb allowing me to concentrate on what I truly love to do.

Rich

-----------------------------

My Blog

[hdasmith]

The thing that really bugs me about .Mac (although I do subscribe) is that when I bought my G3 iBook, the box advertised iTools as part of the package. I therefore feel very cheated at buying a computer that was supposed to have it for free. I phoned Apple, but they didn't care, and wouldn't give a suitable reason as to why I should suddenly have to pay. The only thing that changed was the storage size. We've since lost software that even iTools gave.

[Squirrel_Monkey]

Whatever happens, I hope it's retroactive. We just bought a .Mac account last friggin' week!

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by Ireland

When you sign up for the standard .Mac account you get a monthly data transfer limit, I think it's 10GB. If you use iWeb a lot you can burn it up pretty quickly.

OK. I get it. Thanks. (I didn't realize that such a data transfer limit existed).

[hdasmith]

Originally Posted by MiMiC

I want people to go to RichGetz.com and stay at RichGetz.com with all the features of iWeb and real hosting such as WebTrends.

I don't know why you're having that trouble. We have a sailing club site, which I used to host on my .Mac service. It's now hosted on the university site, but then and now, it only showed www.nusyc.co.uk in the address bar. Maybe you need to have a chat with your address provider. I think with us, it was an option we had to check.

[mmmdoughnuts]

Originally Posted by Squirrel_Monkey

Whatever happens, I hope it's retroactive. We just bought a .Mac account last friggin' week!

Look at how Apple uses its accounting to record profits. .Mac service is added monthly to revenue, just like the iPhone. This is so they can roll out improvements without excluding any member or charging for improved services. Everyone will get the same benefits, even someone who bought in last week.

[ericjames]

I really have a hard time imagining .mac being compelling. Half of the appeal to a lot of the cutting edge web 2.0 technologies is that they're accessible to anyone on any platform and promote interaction. Sites like Facebook, Picasa and Panoramio are cool because they allow users to tag eachothers files with people and location tags - you can't have that level of interactivity with a product available only to Apple users.

The same problem extends to blogging in Apple's closed sandbox - it makes a lot more sense to do on a comprehensive social networking site where people go to interact with friends and contacts.

So in order to be even mildly competitive, .mac needs to be free, available to all, and boast a radically improved interface. Steve Jobs has pulled rabbits out of hats before, but that's a tall order - the coolest thing I can reasonably imagine is some kind of Google partnership with really nice perks for mac owners (perhaps more storage space and iCal/Google Calendar syncing).

[dkrieb]

How about a better built in spam filter similar to spamcop which allows you to automatically report without having to forward each email.

[popmetal]

Improvements to .Mac?

Let me guess:
- jack up the price $50 for a basic version
- you have to pay $200/year for a premium version if want to keep your email
- generous 80 MB extra space
- they'll remove the Groups feature
- maybe they'll reintroduce the anti-Virus program
- free FreeVerse game for all members
- new Garageband JamPack sampler

an upgrade like this would actually be outstanding considering .Mac's history

[OS11]

It's always shocking how many people think .Mac costs $99 per year!

Maybe if you pay FULL RETAIL at an Apple Store, but if you shop around it's 25% less in most places.

Do a Google "Product" Search for .Mac or "dotmac", and you get some as low as $72 with free shipping.

All you need is the "activation number", not the box or any of the paper.

Try ebay as well... but never, never pay $99. that's a fool's price.

[tomkarl]

Originally Posted by dkrieb

How about a better built in spam filter similar to spamcop which allows you to automatically report without having to forward each email.

2nd.

I always wonder if they actually do anything with all the spam I forward to them.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by ericjames

I really have a hard time imagining .mac being compelling. Half of the appeal to a lot of the cutting edge web 2.0 technologies is that they're accessible to anyone on any platform and promote interaction. Sites like Facebook, Picasa and Panoramio are cool because they allow users to tag eachothers files with people and location tags - you can't have that level of interactivity with a product available only to Apple users.

The same problem extends to blogging in Apple's closed sandbox - it makes a lot more sense to do on a comprehensive social networking site where people go to interact with friends and contacts.

True. Apple's sense of "blogging" is quite limited, there isn't even a way to post a response, its sense of interactivity is quite limited in comparison.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Ireland

When you sign up for the standard .Mac account you get a monthly data transfer limit, I think it's 10GB. If you use iWeb a lot you can burn it up pretty quickly.

I think it would have to be a pretty popular site to eat through that with just web pages. With my own host, I only go through 2-3GB/mo for four different domains, and that's including video files.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by OS11

It's always shocking how many people think .Mac costs $99 per year!

Maybe if you pay FULL RETAIL at an Apple Store, but if you shop around it's 25% less in most places.

Do a Google "Product" Search for .Mac or "dotmac", and you get some as low as $72 with free shipping.

All you need is the "activation number", not the box or any of the paper.

Try ebay as well... but never, never pay $99. that's a fool's price.

Generally, retail price is a good baseline for comparison, though the difference is that Apple products are rarely discounted in any meaningful way.

[popmetal]

Originally Posted by tomkarl

2nd.

I always wonder if they actually do anything with all the spam I forward to them.

The amount of spam I get has not declined significantly since I started doing that.

[faithfulFrank]

Yes, I'm almost embarrassed to say I've been a loyal .mac subscriber for a few years now.....hoping it would get better.........but it has not.

I like the .mac e-mail address, and it is good advertising for Apple. People know from that I have mac's ........If I had a dollar for every person I've helped switch, I'd have more then a few extra bucks right now....

Unless there is some impressive news tomorrow about .mac, I think this will be the last year I will have it. I said that LAST year....I mean it this time.......

Frank D.

[johnhood]

New .Mac and Google goodies, sans subscription, from tomorrow! That would be wonderful news!

[Buck]

2nd.

I always wonder if they actually do anything with all the spam I forward to them.

You have to "redirect", not "forward" by the way... That's what our users do and it SpamAssassin doesn't like that.

[pmjoe]

I don't see how $8.25/month is such a big deal. You're paying a premium for services that are integrated with your Mac. Of course people who are Internet/tech saavy are going to find better deals. "Free" almost always equals "Ads" (which I don't see Apple doing). Apple is trying to provide a premium service for the Mac, not to compete with web hosting services or Google. That doesn't mean they won't offer better deals, but people looking for a free lunch may as well forget about it.

The .Mac site update probably just coincides with a new version of iWork/iLife.