boycot .mac - Page 4

[quote]Originally posted by craiger77:
<strong>According to this article in todays Seattle Times Microsoft is planning to charge more for much less then .mac offers: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134494912_msn17.html" target="_blank">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134494912_msn17.html</a>

This idea of a boycott is absurd. If .mac was required in order for your computer to work then maybe that would make sense, but it is a service, and like any service the customer has the choice to make use of it or not. If it does not offer value for the money then people won't buy, which is a huge incentive for Apple to keep improving it to make more sales. With iTools being free there wan't much return on the investment of time and money for Apple to make dramatic improvements. I think we will see a lot coming out in .mac in the next year that we can't even imagine yet. That is why I will spend the $50 and keep it for now...in a years time if I find it worth another $100 to keep it I will, if not I will move on.

It also appears from links posted here that you will be able to keep your .mac email address for free, but without any of the other .mac services. That should satisfy all those here who just want a free email address.</strong><hr></blockquote>

In addition to the MS charges mentioned in that article, TheRegister mentioned yesterday that MS plans to charge for using the MSN Browser if you don't signup for the MSN network...they get you either way. Though i do have a question: anyone ever use MSN Browser? What an ugly, buggy piece of crap that is. Take IE, add a lot of annoying visual distratction to the UI, shrink the viewable browser area to make room for side panel, top panels and bottom panels. Imagine AOL interface, but done in really over the top XP UI, focused on the gaudier eyecandy parts of the UI. Oh, and try to integrate IE, OE, Hotmail and MSN Messenger in one screen and you get an idea what it looks like. ick. ick. ick. And now you get to pay for it. At least .mac looks nice and is actually functional..and you don't pay unless you use it.

[ 07-18-2002: Message edited by: Tulkas ]</p>

This is a peek at the future. As hardware gets cheaper every company will be looking for a way to get revenue via some sort of services.

<a href="http://help.apple.com/mac/1/help/mail/pgs/mac43.htm" target="_blank">http://help.apple.com/mac/1/help/mail/pgs/mac43.htm</a>

Anyone have any more info on this? Is it true that we can just get an email-only account if we want? It would be great if true.

i hate to say it, but after a good night's sleep, i am beginning to wonder if i should pay for this service after all.

yeah, lemon, i know what you're thinking. but my biggest beef yesterday was the value of US$99 for iTools and, for me and a lot of others, redundant services like viral detection and backup.

but what about the stuff it will offer in the future (i.e. iCal, iSync, etc.). sure, these are also somewhat redundant, since i have entourage and palm's hotsync, but considering that they only just started talking to each other, and managed to duplicate ALL of my friggin' contacts again, well, if apple does it all RIGHT, then it might be worth it to shell out the $$$ for well-built software.

damn... succumbing to... RDF... steve must be overhead in his gulfstream...... where is my credit card........

[ 07-18-2002: Message edited by: rok ]</p>

The sad thing is (and correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't have the patience to read all three pages) I'm guessing the nice integration with iphoto is now screwed. My mother thought it was neat how you could publish your pics on the internet by just clicking a button. Its got her thinking about getting a difital camera. I'm quite sure though she's not going to shell out $100 a year just to post a few pics on a website.

[quote]Originally posted by torifile:
<strong><a href="http://help.apple.com/mac/1/help/mail/pgs/mac43.htm" target="_blank">http://help.apple.com/mac/1/help/mail/pgs/mac43.htm</a>

Anyone have any more info on this? Is it true that we can just get an email-only account if we want? It would be great if true.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Apple has amended that help statement to clarify the issue. The "e-mail" only option only applies to additional addresses to a fully-paid subscription. I think it boils down to whether you want to pay $10/year for the additional dotMac accounts or nothing to simply convert existing additional iTools accounts into additional addresses -- only after the $50/$100 is paid for the primary subscription.

iTools was just an Apple's catch to addict mac users to its e-mail services and a slow idisk. For those who were used to iTools e-mail I suggest a couple of free e-mail providers:

mail.justice.com - (name@justice.com) - free, no flashy advertisements, no need to sing in to keep the account active.

<a href="http://www.canada.com/email" target="_blank">www.canada.com/email</a> - (name@canada.com) - another acceptable free e-mail, no need to sing in to keep the account active.

gomailus.go.com - (name@go.com) - very short e-mail, better than yahoo! no need to sing in to keep the account active.

yahoo.com - (name@yahoo.com) - yahoo is ok but you can find better e-mail providers, you have to sing in once in a while to keep account active.

hotmail.com - Although it is free I would not recommend this service to anyone, even my worst enemy it has so much spam that it is unbearable.


I hope this helps, enjoy

If someone needs a free web space:
150m.com offers free 100MB of diskspace, that's a pretty good deal!

Bye bye iTools

which of those offer POP?

[quote]Show me an ISP that gives you 100MB of Online Storage for $8. It's unheard of. The question can also be phrased "who doesn't need .mac for simple webpages?" it makes it very simple.<hr></blockquote>

What??

I pay $45 per year for my hosting. It's unlimited disk space. (I know, unlimited doesn't always mean it, but I have got a starting allocation of 1GB and can upgrade it for free at any time...)

The only limit is bandwidth.

Sure, it doesn't have the fancy interface like .mac, but I've got all the tools available to write them myself or install free scripts.

I'm not saying that's good for everyone, but it sure as hell suits me better than $100/year on a pretty interface

Amorya

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I had to add my own two cents...

I've been through the original press releases and whatnot for iTools and mac.com, and Apple made no promises that we were getting these services free for life. In fact, there are a couple of interviews in which it seems to be suggested that there'd be more advanced pay-for services coming.

In some ways I'd like to see everyone retain their e-mail address for free, even if it was just accessible via webmail. Having said that, if I choose to subscribe to .Net Jr... I mean .Mac... I wouldn't want all those freeloaders leeching bandwidth.

$49 (then $99) is worthwhile for me because I love, love, love having an IMAP mailbox. 15MB of IMAP loveliness!

However, considering $100 a year doesn't include dial-up access, I'm going to bug Apple about giving as more advanced services for our $$$. How about shell access, CGI, Perl, and some of the other features you'd get paying a host $100 a year?

The backup to iDisk feature is quite nice, too. I usually backup my most important documents by hand and forget to do it much too often.

I just did it.

They got me.

I tried to upload something to my iDisk (big site) and it borked due to lack of space.

I thought, "Hmm."

I thought, "I could do with Virex too."

I thought, "I was drooling over that iCal stuff because of work."

I thought, "Sod it. Where's my Visa?"

Wow! I'm surprised so few of you are bitching about this. I agree.

Sure, it sucks that iTools is no longer free, but offering free email and disk storage to over 2 million customers couldn't have been cheap. .Mac is simply a smart business move.

You get a 15MB mailbox instead of 5MB.

You get 100MB of iDisk space instead of 20MB.

You still get Homepage, now with password and iCal support.

You still get iCards.

You get Apple's new easy-to-use backup software to protect your data.

You get free technical support.

And, you also get a free copy of Virex 7.1.

And it only costs $8 a month. $4 if you already have iTools. I don't think that's so unreasonable, given the fact that Apple will likely add more services in the near future.

My idea: .Mac community web forums (Complete with Future hardware thread)

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: Kecksy ]</p>

double post.

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: Kecksy ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Flounder:
<strong>The sad thing is (and correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't have the patience to read all three pages) I'm guessing the nice integration with iphoto is now screwed. My mother thought it was neat how you could publish your pics on the internet by just clicking a button. Its got her thinking about getting a difital camera. I'm quite sure though she's not going to shell out $100 a year just to post a few pics on a website.</strong><hr></blockquote>

No, Flounder it still works.

oops i missed Flounder's point

I upgraded my .mac account the first chance I had. I did this despite being rudely spoken to at the Online Apple Store booth where they said, "The internet cafe is that way" when I asked them to unlock a machine.

I would have purchased an iPod at the same time but instead told him that he lost a sale making sure every other Online Apple Store rep (as well as the financers) heard me. They were pissed at him too.

I decided that when it comes down to it, I pay about $100 a month for my computer. If I take into account what my computer cost and how many months I've had it, that's what it comes out to be. Since that's just about up, I decided that paying $50 to keep my mac.com account was worth it, just as paying $50 for Jaguar will be worth it. That's my $100 for the month.

At the same time, I got an offer I couldn't refuse for net hosting and email, so I registered a domain and set up my website and email. I get an unlimited amount of email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, and a large amount of storage space. In that regards, it makes the mac.com services look a little worse, but since I got Virex and a good backup tool, I still think it was worth the $50.

[quote]Originally posted by Belle:
<strong>Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I had to add my own two cents...

[snipped a bunch of stuff]</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think your time away has made you too reasonable. (In other words, I agree.) I certainly hope Apple has more compelling stuff up their sleeves in terms of both new services and improved current one at the same price point. Backup could use compression tools and custom filetype backups like what they have for Office and AppleWorks documents. That would be an incredible time saver and give me peace of mind. Also, while I don't use the advanced web features like what you're talking about, it's a good idea as well. Virex virus definition updates would be a huge bonus as well, and hopefully Virex itself will get more robust ala the Mac OS 9 version. I'm currently trying to think of a service that would be both compelling and particularly suited to what is essentially a subscription service. I've criticize Microsft's .NET because the overtone were that everything you use would be for rent. I have a real problem with that. What they have right now is pretty fair -- keeping it true services, but I do wish they had a poor man's .Mac.

Anyway, don't worry, Belle. We'll have you back to raving lunatic status in no time!

[ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:
<strong>Anyway, don't worry, Belle. We'll have you back to raving lunatic status in no time!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh, let me tell you, BuonRotto, I didn't get any of the news from MWNY until a few days ago, and I can tell you it had me seething at the time. Having countless hours to think about things obviously took the edge off.

If .Mac is more reliable than mac.com has been, then I'll be happy. You just can't find IMAP mailboxes anywhere else.

The hardware announcements were fine - It's good to see that Apple are updating at least some of the lines much more regularly, which I feel is important. Of course that doesn't prevent me being annoyed that my less-than-year-old iPod is now amazingly out of date, and it has probably angered some who've had their top end iMac G4 for less than six months...

Jaguar looks great (Especially the packaging! Meowrrrrrr!), but I don't like the upgrade pricing. I feel those who've suffered Public Beta thru 10.1.5 and provided Apple with feedback about all the crap they've put up with deserve better than a bill for $130.

Even just knocking the price down $50 for those who bought the retail 10.0 would be a reasonable step.

Still no sign of PowerBook Jr., though...