Twelve years later, Apple is still trying to erase mac.com email addresses

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 76
    robin huberrobin huber Posts: 3,949member
    I, too, am an old MobileMe guy and still use and love my short easy to type .me address. Noticed a few months ago Apple erased it from the pop-up options when filling in my Send From blank. Still works when filled in manually by pasting. And others send mail to me with that account name. Long live .me!
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  • Reply 22 of 76
    robin huberrobin huber Posts: 3,949member
    Actually, I have them all. “Collect all three!”
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  • Reply 23 of 76
    bluefire1bluefire1 Posts: 1,301member
    In 1984 I purchased the Apple Macintosh and I’ve been an Apple fanboy ever since. No, I’m not giving up my mac.com address.
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  • Reply 24 of 76
    I've never had a problem with iTools/.Mac/MobileMe/iCloud. I remember creating my iTools account way back in 2000 a couple of days after it was released. I've used services from iCards through to all the new iCloud hotness of today and never had a problem. My email always works. Calendars and contacts always sync. iDisk always worked for me, in both incarnations. I hosted a website in my account for several years without any problems. But I've seen many other people have strange problems, especially with sync issues. I helped some people with issues during the .Mac days which is when the syncable services started, but it was mostly during the MobileMe era that I saw people have the most issues. But again, mine has never once skipped a beat in over 20 years. I'm feel rather old all of a sudden.
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  • Reply 25 of 76
    Apple made a huge mistake by moving to the dumb-sounding "me.com" then the even dumber-sounding "iCloud.com", and in jettisoning "mac.com" which had, and still has, cachet.

    No way in hell I am giving up on my mac.com address. If I am forced, I'll simply migrate. End of story.
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  • Reply 26 of 76
    I love the look I get when I go to the Genius Bar and tell them in detail what’s wrong with my product and then they ask my email address and I drop the @mac.com....Instant geek cred.
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  • Reply 27 of 76
    65026502 Posts: 380member
    I remember the days of buying cheap mobileme keys on eBay instead of paying full price. Thankfully that only lasted a few years before Apple made it completely free.
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  • Reply 28 of 76
    payecopayeco Posts: 580member
    I got my @mac.com email address when I got .Mac for free as an Apple retail employee in college in 2007/2008. 

    Back then they had sales attach metrics and you had to have a certain percentage of all Mac (and iPhone after it came out) sales include a .Mac subscription. Same with AppleCare and ProCare, which was like a paid VIP membership for the Genius Bar. If you didn’t hit the metrics for those three things you’d get yelled at, written up, or possibly fired. It felt incredibly scummy trying to push these paid subscriptions on people who is usually didn’t need them and it was the reason I quit. Supposedly they got rid of the attach rate metrics a couple years after I left. 
    edited August 2020 elijahganantksundaramrazorpitdoozydozensuperkloton
  • Reply 29 of 76
    kimberlykimberly Posts: 427member
    Removing the .mac from an email perspective at Apple is easy (or should be) ... remove the MX record from DNS. It is more when the .mac email is used as an ID for something like Apple's straight-out-of-the-nineties finance & accounting backend ... you know, the one that only permits a single credit/debit card payment method linked to your Apple ID. So I'm not surprised that getting rid of .mac IDs from that same system is still a work-in-progress after 12 years.
    doozydozen
  • Reply 30 of 76
    Count me in as an ongoing @me.com user. I find it easier to type, and easier to give out verbally. No one asks me to repeat it. People often comment that they like it and ask how they can get one. I say your can’t anymore. It’s a collectible, like a retired beanie baby 😉.   I was given a corresponding @icloud.com username, but I never use it. 
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  • Reply 31 of 76
    I start my .mac account around 2000’s and not going to let it go. 

    I use gmail for everyone I don’t like. 😀
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  • Reply 32 of 76
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    This story is directly related to one of the major thorns that I still have stuck in my side from Apple. I started off with an Apple ID associated with a non-Apple related email provider that was part of my ISP. I used this Apple ID for years to buy a lot of iTunes content. At some point I signed up for MobileMe and ended up with a me.com email address on MobileMe. When the iCloud services took over for MobileMe they got linked to my me.com email address. Then my ISP went away so I had to change my "iTunes" Apple ID to something new. My naive assumption was to use the same email address that had been used for MobileMe and iCloud for my iTunes account.

    Let me just say that getting Apple to combine two Apple IDs for the same exact customer into one  Apple ID is absolutely impossible - and I mean absolutely. Coming up with a solution for Cold Fusion is several orders of magnitude more likely than getting Apple to combine two Apple ID accounts into one account, no matter how much money you are willing to spend. If you encounter an Apple Support person who claims to be able to "fix" this problem by doing something like making one of your Apple IDs a family member of the other one - hang up the phone. It won't work. You will lose stuff. There is really no cure for this, but at least some devices like newer Apple TVs and newer versions of iOS and macOS are cognizant of those of us who have two Apple IDs, one that is linked to iCloud and all of its services and another one linked to what used to be iTunes, which it now identifies as an Apple ID that you use for "purchases." Yes, this is nonsensical because both of my Apple IDs are used for purchases, but Apple refuses to fix the issue once and for all and will never allow you to "cross the streams" of two Apple IDs and combine them into one. If you were actually dealing with humans in a business setting, or at a Genius Bar that had actual geniuses, this would have been fixed long ago. But you are dealing with Apple drones on phones. They are not allowed to stray outside of the box or venture into the world of logic or reason. 

    Unintentionally having multiple Apple IDs kind of sucks. It opens up many opportunities to get your Apple ID account locked because it is not always apparent which account is asking you to provide your password, especially when dealing with older devices that don't handle 2FA cleanly. After getting my account locked out too many times I came up with a workaround that kind of works for me, but your mileage may vary. The workaround for me is to use the same password for both Apple IDs. In general this would be bad advice, and it certainly does not apply if you intended to have multiple Apple IDs, like one for each of your personalities. But if having multiple Apple IDs is a thorn in your side, using the same password for both will reduce the pain and swelling a little bit. You'll still have to jump through some hoops, but at least the potential for mutilation that can occur while jumping through the hoops will be somewhat diminished. 
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  • Reply 33 of 76
    What’s the fuss about?  I created my own domain so I’ll never have to worry about what someone else is doing.  It’s cheap and I can move it around wherever I like.  It comes in real handy to create temp email accounts so spam does come into my main.

    i.e. [email protected] ([email protected])
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  • Reply 34 of 76
    @me, @mac also maxed out my aliases pre @me
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  • Reply 35 of 76
    It’s just stupid to force users to change.
    It’s also mean spirited.

    But the Apple Email “@“ Problems isn’t as foolishly stubborn as the Apple ID problems.

    Here’s a problem I’ve been trying to straighten out for years. Apple wont help me with:

    Early on in the year 2000(?) when we the @mac.com email addresses became available, I created an Apple ID which also became the email address at the time, I subsequently regretted that Address and created another Apple ID @mac.com which is my current primary email.

    I did the following:
    1. For some stupid reason I deleted the ability to receive emails using the first Apple ID
    2. Made all my iTunes purchases and Music Match under the first Apple ID
    3. To simplify things, this continued with all my iOS app & video purchases, etc.

    Apple will not permit me to turn that First Apple IDs’s email address back on.

    Further there does not seem to be a way to transfer my iTunes, TV Shows, Videos, Mac Apps, iOS Apps to my primary Apple ID / email.

    Any thoughts?

  • Reply 36 of 76
    I love my @mac.com email and the fact it’s just my name and no meaningless numbers. As said by others, I’ve also had a few intrigued remarks from younger Apple store employees!  I was very glad I registered both my sons for .me accounts when they were both kids and think it kind of cool that they are now part of a unique bunch of people able to have just their name as their email without any modifiers.
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  • Reply 37 of 76
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    It’s not like iCloud is all it’s cracked up to be, either. I’m CONSTANTLY dealing with unsynchronized notifications and reminders across my four devices. It’s extremely irritating.

    Then there’s the selective feature compatibility, with the most egregious recent change I became aware of being the breaking of iCloud Safari synch between devices when moving to iOS 13 on mobile and NOT Mojave or newer on Mac OS. iOS 13 breaks Safari synch with High Sierra and older.

    If MobileMe and gang were even worse than this... that’s just crazy.
    superkloton
  • Reply 38 of 76
    While on the topic of Mail, how in the heck does one increase the font size on the MacOS Apple client on one's Mac when composing?!

    The tiny size of the letters on my 16" MBP screen kills my (already deteriorating) eyesight every time... :-/
  • Reply 39 of 76
    I signed up with mobileme the first day and scored my first name which is only 4 letters. I get people all the time telling me how lucky I am to have such a short and easy email address such as [email protected]. Apple will have to pry that email address from my cold dead hands.
    superklotonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 40 of 76
    slewisslewis Posts: 2,081member
    I cancelled the account before it became MobileMe, but through an AppleID reset I did on a whim I was able to get my .Mac address back earlier in the year. Apparently Apple does not recycle the usernames as once I logged in, the only information associated with it were my old landline, an old address, my name and the new @me.com and @icloud.com iterations of the address (but @mac.com is the primary.)

    Unless Apple forgets to renew the domain, I don’t see them actually shutting down @mac.com addresses entirely. Too many people have been using it for too long and it would be a breaking change, even if they would like to forget it exists. Their iCloud services team has a better reputation than .Mac and MobileMe ever did, so breaking basic crap like email addresses is just an additional unnecessary black mark to stain the gains they’ve made over the last few years.
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