.mac is relatively cheap... . mac "lite"

[Okay, before we all get in a tizzy because this isn't 'Future Hardware' let's note that this is his first post.]

I don't mind $99/yr for 100MB + .mac services. I've found making homepages from iPhoto to be worth every penny. 2-click homepages are fantastic!

BUT, why is this in "future hardware" ??

It seems to me that .Mac is neither hardware nor a 'future' product.

Apple sucks and can go to hell for all I care.

Scott_H, why take such effort to write such a thing?

Well, if you're set on writing something, surely your "Phd" can conjure something with more content?

.Mac seems a bit of a waste for services most people will never use. I think it would be well worth the money though if they teamed up with a filtering company like bess, net nanny, cyber sitter or somebody like that. It would go over really well with the school market as well. I would also bet that a heck of a lot more people would pay the $100 fee, specially parents with kids.

Belongs in Software...off you go...

.Mac is a good idea, I just can't see everyone using it. They should also allow a low-cost account that is email only for those who want a .Mac email address but not the other stuff. Some ISPs offer the same services for a much lower rate.

You want the name?......you gotta pay.
$20 a year for email only sound about right

dot mac is priced OK for what you get, not great, but OK.

The problem is that most of us don't NEED everything that comes with dot mac. I don't need all that storage space, none of the apps...

What I need is the mac.com email, and maybe 5-10 MB of space on my iDisk for sharing files. Apple promised that iTools would be free for life when it was introduced, and heralded it as a feature of Macs that Mac users get with the purchase of a Mac. It's a perk for being a Mac user.

Now Apple abruptly decided to charge for what was once a free feature. That's the reason so many people are mad. If I had known that Apple would someday charge for iTools, then I wouldn't have used mac.com as my PRIMARY email addy! I wouldn't have used iTools at all! It's a bait and switch tactic and it wreaks of foul play. Apple is playing us like suckers.

I understand that Apple needs all the revenue they can get, but they went about this the wrong way. What Apple SHOULD have done is the following:

1. Continue to offer free email services at mac.com. This doesn't cost them much and it's a nice perk to mac users, plus it helps to advertise Macs by having emails end with "mac.com". If Apple can spend millions on dumb-ass ads showing Macs spinning around Jeff Goldblum's head in the air, then they can afford to give us free email services.

2. Offer a low-end dot mac service for $25 per year that gives the user more email accounts and some iDisk space...enough to share photos and files.

3. Offer a mid-range dot mac service for $50 per year, same as the low end dot mac but with more iDisk space.

4. Offer a high-range dot mac service at $100 per year. For this much money, one should get not only MANY email accounts, but also a nice 100 MBs of iDisk space, with generous allowances for bandwidth and file transfers. Basically, for this amount of cash, one should be able to set up a website that gets a decent amount of traffic every day.

Since Apple is offering dot mac to Mac USERS, it should be a DEAL, a FEATURE of Macs, not another way for Apple to make money. The entire point of iTools was to give Mac users something that Windows users don't have. Just because Apple cannot afford to keep it free, doesn't mean they can't keep it as a FEATURE, by charging nominal fees and keeping the features special. dot mac shouldn't be seen as a revenue generator, more like a non-profit arm of Apple that breaks even. It's free advertising for Apple, and they should use it that way. It should be an extension of OS X for those who want to use it, and by charging token fees for it, Apple could keep Mac users happy, give them features that Windows doesn't offer, AND increase their Market Share.

Instead, Apple elevated the importance of short term profits over growing their market share, and keeping their loyal users content and...well, loyal!

Stupid business decisions, stupid marketing decision...the whole thing wreaks of bean counting and greed. Pathetic.

My household would not mind paying for .mac services so much if it were offered a la carte. Since all we have ever used of iTools is the e-mail and Homepage, why should we pay for all the extras we won't use in the first place? As it is, with our 3, primary addys that can't be changed (as they are on business cards and various registrations and such), we are gonna have to fork-over an additional $20.

$10 a month is alot to pay for e-mail and a webpage--I could get all that for much cheaper by registering for a domain name and having a family website (multiple e-mail addys all included)--had I known what would become of iTools only 5 months after buying our iMac G4, I would never have used the mail service or Homepage. Now we have no option but to pay the premium.

Thanks guys, nice way to pay for your yachts and estates....

Kirsten <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />

The problem with ala carte is that it's a nightmare from Apple's perspective. I think a compromise can be found, as many have suggested, in a tiered system of .Mac services.

[quote]Originally posted by macosxmommy:
<strong>My household would not mind paying for .mac services so much if it were offered a la carte. Since all we have ever used of iTools is the e-mail and Homepage, why should we pay for all the extras we won't use in the first place? As it is, with our 3, primary addys that can't be changed (as they are on business cards and various registrations and such), we are gonna have to fork-over an additional $20.

$10 a month is alot to pay for e-mail and a webpage--I could get all that for much cheaper by registering for a domain name and having a family website (multiple e-mail addys all included)--had I known what would become of iTools only 5 months after buying our iMac G4, I would never have used the mail service or Homepage. Now we have no option but to pay the premium.

Thanks guys, nice way to pay for your yachts and estates....

Kirsten <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>

<a href="http://www.godaddy.com" target="_blank">www.godaddy.com</a> is a good place to register for those that need to transfer. They have very cheap registration fees and hosting fees. If anyone has watched "<a href="http://www.thescreensavers.com/" target="_blank">The Screen Savers</a>" they've endorsed this site from personal use a couple of times.

BTW, what was the result from that other thread you have macosxmommy?

[ 07-26-2002: Message edited by: pyr3 ]</p>

I think I will end-up using <a href="http://www.webworkzcentral.com" target="_blank">http://www.webworkzcentral.com</a> for my hosting. $8/month sounds reasonable for a 100MB site and they have been very prompt in responding to a couple of my questions.

Thanks,
Kirsten

[quote]"Behold the power of CHEESE!"<hr></blockquote>

So pick-up lines ready DO work !!

( for those that are humor-impaired, cheese = cheesy and picky lines are cheesy )

[ 07-26-2002: Message edited by: pyr3 ]</p>

I don't know whether pick-up lines work or not, but I am from Wisconsin and LOVE cheese, so it has become my motto--I will never suffer bone-density problems!

Wow, what a digression from the thread--fun though. I think we could all use a break from the stress and irritation caused by Jobs and Co., re: .mac. I think I'll go have myself another brew....

:cool: <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote]Originally posted by macosxmommy:
<strong>I don't know whether pick-up lines work or not, but I am from Wisconsin and LOVE cheese, so it has become my motto--I will never suffer bone-density problems!

Wow, what a digression from the thread--fun though. I think we could all use a break from the stress and irritation caused by Jobs and Co., re: .mac. I think I'll go have myself another brew....

:cool: <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>

Sounds like fun. Drinking and reading appleinsider.com ... ah, the finer things in life.

[quote]Originally posted by macosxmommy:
<strong>I think I will end-up using <a href="http://www.webworkzcentral.com" target="_blank">http://www.webworkzcentral.com</a> for my hosting. $8/month sounds reasonable for a 100MB site and they have been very prompt in responding to a couple of my questions.

Thanks,
Kirsten</strong><hr></blockquote>

You will switch to webworkzcentral for $8/month, when .mac is &8.33/month??
<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[quote]Originally posted by Derrick 61:
<strong>

You will switch to webworkzcentral for $8/month, when .mac is &8.33/month??
:confused: </strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm thinking that that is for hosting AND domain name as she wanted a different domain name in the other thread.

[quote]Originally posted by pyr3:
<strong>

I'm thinking that that is for hosting AND domain name as she wanted a different domain name in the other thread.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yup, I have a business domain, so I needed something that was a bit more "searchable" online. We are going to stick with the .mac for a year (with the $50 price), but then will dump it and get a family domain name and site going. Homepage loads too damned slow for all of our friends and family still on dial-up (including us).

As it is, .mac would cost us $120/year with 3 e-mails, so it is a rip-off, as far as we are concerned....

Kirsten

[quote]Originally posted by macosxmommy:
<strong>

Yup, I have a business domain, so I needed something that was a bit more "searchable" online. We are going to stick with the .mac for a year (with the $50 price), but then will dump it and get a family domain name and site going. Homepage loads too damned slow for all of our friends and family still on dial-up (including us).

As it is, .mac would cost us $120/year with 3 e-mails, so it is a rip-off, as far as we are concerned....

Kirsten</strong><hr></blockquote>

Ok, so we just decided to bite the bullet and register our own family domain name now, rather than monkey with iTools/.mac any longer.

We registered a .us name for 10 years, at $80 total. So our domain will be $8/year, plus $95/year to host a 100MB site through webworkz. That is still cheaper than our $120/year with 3 e-mail addys .mac. Plus, we can make it whatever we want, and not be constrained in any way, or pay for things we don't want/need/use.

Kirsten

[ 07-27-2002: Message edited by: macosxmommy ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by MajorMatt:
<strong>Scott_H, why take such effort to write such a thing?

Well, if you're set on writing something, surely your "Phd" can conjure something with more content?</strong><hr></blockquote>

If it's worth writing to say something is good then isn't is also worth to say something is bad. "mac.com" email was a good marketing tool for Apple but now no one will want one. For $100 a year I should get a dial up connection too.

Apple sucks.

Does .mac even work with OS 9 'cause we all know I can't use OS X since Apple dropped support for my "supported" iMac.

I don't care if it's "relatively cheap"--anyone who pulls a bait-and-switch on me loses my custom.

[quote]Originally posted by scott_h_phd:
<strong>

If it's worth writing to say something is good then isn't is also worth to say something is bad. "mac.com" email was a good marketing tool for Apple but now no one will want one. For $100 a year I should get a dial up connection too.

Apple sucks.

Does .mac even work with OS 9 'cause we all know I can't use OS X since Apple dropped support for my "supported" iMac.</strong><hr></blockquote>

You just like to b*tch, that's all.

So what, apple dropped support? I can find PCs that won't run under WindowsXP. You don't see people bitching about how MicroSoft doesn't support Windows 98. You just have to accept that computers get old and OSes die out. Or are you one of those people that expects OfficeXP to run on a 1MHz machine? You only think that Apple sucks because YOU are not being catered to by them. Don't you think that is a bit selfish? Maybe the Mac world will revolve around you when you de-throne Steve Jobs, but until then just bite the bullet because you are not going to change Jobs' mind by b*tching on AI.

[ 07-27-2002: Message edited by: pyr3 ]</p>

Leaving aside the fact I'm very upset about Apple about the .Mac 'disaster', I feel it's a pretty dumb move from a marketing perspective. It seems that most users, like me, were using iTools just for the email address. Most of us already have an email address through our ISP, along with home page storage etc. I was using mac.com as my primary address 1. to show I was a proud owner of a Mac 2. as it's an easy to remember address.

Is it worth paying $ 99 for an additional email? From a rational perspective not for me. And since I'm upset the emotion certainly works against a subscription to .Mac too.

Now lot's of iTools users will have to email all their contacts that their mac.com address can't be used any more. And all of them will not be happy to do that. Imagine many of them sharing their discontent over Apple in their email. And this comes from the very people who used to be advocates of the Mac. Doesn't sound like good publicity to me.

Another subject to consider - you are getting lot's of free email addresses from companies you have never had or will have any business with. But those with a mac.com address have spent lot's of money on Apple's products already...

As a person with a Marketing background I can only say - you shouldn't do something like this with your customers. Customer Relationship Marketing is 'the' big thing now, but Apple obviously thinks they can disregard its principles.

I can only hope this one backfires on them - so that they learn to value their customers.

I think that for some people .mac will be great, but for most $99/yr is just too much. For instance...if I were to pay fatcow.com $119/yr I would get a domain of my choice, up to 100 email accounts, 100 MB of webspace, and much more. So other than the backup and virus software, Apple is not giving up a whole lot. I think for their sake and ours they should have done the following plans.

Mac Platinum - $99/yr
3 email account POP/IMAP/WebMail
100MB Webspace
AV software - Downloadable & CD mailed to you
Backup Software

Mac Gold - $59/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
50MB Webspace
Choice of AV or Backup Software - Downloadable & CD mailed to you

Mac Silver - $29/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
15MB Webspace

Mac Bronze - $19/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
2MB of Webspace

Or something in this area. But going from free, to $100/year is a bit drastic when your whole new promotion is based on switching people. Not good to hit the loyals when the newbies are watching.

But I could be wrong.

[quote]Originally posted by cyko95:
<strong>I think that for some people .mac will be great, but for most $99/yr is just too much. For instance...if I were to pay fatcow.com $119/yr I would get a domain of my choice, up to 100 email accounts, 100 MB of webspace, and much more. So other than the backup and virus software, Apple is not giving up a whole lot. I think for their sake and ours they should have done the following plans.

Mac Platinum - $99/yr
3 email account POP/IMAP/WebMail
100MB Webspace
AV software - Downloadable & CD mailed to you
Backup Software

Mac Gold - $59/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
50MB Webspace
Choice of AV or Backup Software - Downloadable & CD mailed to you

Mac Silver - $29/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
15MB Webspace

Mac Bronze - $19/yr
1 email account IMAP/Webmail
2MB of Webspace

Or something in this area. But going from free, to $100/year is a bit drastic when your whole new promotion is based on switching people. Not good to hit the loyals when the newbies are watching.

But I could be wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Oh I like this idea indeed!
Gee, I am going to miss my @mac.com address! Even tho I have to others with my own domain!

[quote]Originally posted by GM555:
<strong> I was using mac.com as my primary address 1. to show I was a proud owner of a Mac 2. as it's an easy to remember address.

</strong><hr></blockquote>

And to pay for an @mac.com address seems a bit like us paying them to advertise for them.... There is a good reason why my parents would not buy me Coca-Cola shirts when they were in vogue (during the mid 80's for those of you who may not recall that fad). They thought it ridiculous (and rightfully so) to pay $40 for a shirt that advertises a company. If Coke (and later, Pepsi) wanted people to wear articles of clothing which advertise their product to consumers, they should be the ones shelling-out the cash for it, not the consumers themselves.

Is it just me, or are we (well, some of "we" anyhow) being suckerd into paying for Apple's advertising? Too bad that this may very well come back to bite Apple in their proverbial, collective arse. If bad PR makes people not want to buy your product, it matters little how much money you might lose on free/cheaper iTools/.mac usage. As low as Apple's marketshare is, this is one very dangerous gamble, IMNSO.

Yup, as much as we love our Macs (the only OS we have ever owned), we will not pay to advertise them--that would make us one step closer to becoming PC owners....

Kirsten

Apple had a tiered system. A basic account was free with 20MB and an e-mail address. You could pay to add extra storage space.

Well, what happened?

Some ****ers abused it.

I downloaded a movie once that was broken into 7 parts, all of which were stored on 20MB iDisks.

moviename1
moviename2
moviename3
...etc.

A family member ran out of space, and got a second account to get more space.

Westlake Interactive, a macintosh game porting house, got multiple accounts and used them to host patches for games.

Nobody was paying for the higher tiers, they were just abusing the free system, and when something good is abused, it either dies or becomes less good.

Bandwidth is not free. Apple was paying a shitload of money to keep iTools going for people who abused the webhosting. They eventually had to cap the bandwidth, so if too much was downloaded from your site in a day, it would be repalced with a page saying "temporarily unavailable, this user has exceeded their bandwidth allowance for the day, please try again tomorrow."

This cost will prevent people from abusing the system. You post a video and it gets linked to on a popular site, and bandwidth usage is through the roof. Most ISPs charge if you use too much bandwidth, and/or restrict the types of files you can post. I'm guessing the bandwidth cap will be lessened or removed for people paying to use .mac.

For people using just e-mail, yeah, it would be nice if it was cheaper, I definitely agree. However, I think the price is quite fair, and having a web page is a good thing. Everybody can use a place to host some pictures, programs, files, etc, and .mac is a very no-hassle way to do just that. The price is also very comparable to other services, and looks even better when you consider the ease of use.

At $50 for all of the people complaining for the first year, it's a steal. Besides, all of the other services will probably cost more a year from now anyway.

Other things, mostly to the OSx mommy...

Your domain name doesn't generate hits. Writing a site with good meta tags and cleverly designed pages does. I've hosted mac.com websites that get into the top 3 on Google searches. It's not hard, just write good keywords in the meta tags and wait a month or so for the spiders to find your site. It happens faster if you put your url in your sig on message boards.

Also, your webhost won't have any effect on the speed of modem downloads or uploads, unless your host is so terrible that they can't even pump out 5k/sec, and I know mac.com is much faster than that.