.Mac for all!

[steve jr.]

Hello. I'm a WinXP user, and for years I have been trying to get one of those .Mac free trials from Apple's site, but they always use to say that you had to be useing a Mac. Well....NOT ANYMORE!!! I don't know if it is a lucky mistake or if they are doing it for everyone, but I got one of the free 60 day trials. I don't know if this is old news, but I just thought I would share it. I was happy! Has anyone else had the same good luck?

- Steve

 

[Project]

Yep. I registered my name last week when they got upgraded. I switch any day now, so Im looking forward to seeing whether .Mac is worth the money.

 

[fayans]

I didn't know that .Mac is for non-Mac users too. Clever marketing.

 

[Sca1pel]

Can you sync another ftp with isync or just .mac

 

[Josh]

I can't see why anyone would want .Mac

For a fraction (at least 1/3) of the price, you can get 3-4x the features and space elsewhere.

Why buy a $100,000 Ford Pinto, if you can get a $500 Porsche?

 

[KC9AIC]

I can't see why anyone would want .Mac

For a fraction (at least 1/3) of the price, you can get 3-4x the features and space elsewhere.

Why buy a $100,000 Ford Pinto, if you can get a $500 Porsche?

Well, the fact that there's a free trial might have something to do with it.

That and the fact that it's from Apple.

 

[jsw]

Well, the fact that there's a free trial might have something to do with it.

That and the fact that it's from Apple.

That and the fact that you really can't get 3-4 times the features and space for $33/year.

Space, yes.
Features, yes, sort of, many but not all of them.
Space and features, including sync, no.

Not saying it's a good deal for everyone, but, at ~$8/month, it's no rip-off.

 

[Twinkie]

I can't see why anyone would want .Mac

For a fraction (at least 1/3) of the price, you can get 3-4x the features and space elsewhere.

Why buy a $100,000 Ford Pinto, if you can get a $500 Porsche?

That's not a very valid comparison, unless the Pinto comes with 24x7 mechanics, and the promise that parts will always be available, while the Porsche was sold to you by a teenager who is really selling it for some guy he's never met, who may or may not take it away from you if he's unable to sell enough $500 Porsches.

I have a .Mac account and a hosting account that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 a year.

The hosting account is nice, and for the most part, I prefer it to the web hosting that comes with .Mac. On the other hand, the hosting account has gone down twice -- once for almost 48 hours, and once where they lost all of the data on their servers.

The hosting account doesn't give me any of the benefits of iSync, which is important to me, as I use my PowerMac at home, and when I'm away I either use my PowerBook or access my .Mac account from a Windows computer.

Not to mention my .Mac e-mail is more reliable than what I get from my hosting account or my ISP. And while I'm not the type of person to say MY HOME E-MAIL IS VERY IMPORTANT BECAUSE I AM A VERY IMPORTANT PERSON! -- it is nice not having to worry about it.

By and large, any decent hosting with a real SLA is going to cost more than .Mac when you do a comparison of space/transfer. Yeah, Jim Bob's Leet Hosting, LLC may claim 99.9999% uptime... but when you read the fine print, they back that by saying they'll give you a pro-rated refund for however many hours they're down. In terms of real money, say they were down for a week straight and you paid $33/yr. for your account (1/3 of .Mac). Your compensation for that downtime: $0.63.

Sure, you could say "BUT APPLE DOESN'T GIVE YOU ANYTHING!"... but that ignores the fact that Apple would never allow a massive outage like that to begin with, and they have the resources available to keep that from happening. "Some guy" reselling shared hosting can't give you the same assurance.

That's worth the extra $5.50/month to a lot of people.

 

[Josh]

Sounds like you need better hosting, then. You can't say .Mac is better than ALL hosting just because you've had bad experiences with yours.

Take some things into consideration:

Does .Mac give you an SQL database? No.
- Most web hosts give you several, if not unlimited amounts.

Does .Mac gaurantee 99.99% uptime? No.
- Most web hosts do.

Those two features alone make .Mac not even worth considering.

But if you still think .Mac is a good deal, lets compare .Mac to a web host, such as ASO.

.Mac $99 a year...1gb of space...10gb bandwidth...no database...no gaurantee of uptime.

ASO $120 a year...1gb of space...25gb bandwidth...unlimited databases....unlimited email accounts...99.99% gauranteed uptime...24x7 support...cpanel, ftp, tons of supported coding platforms (such as ruby on rails) and a whole plethora of other features.

.Mac is nothing more than an expensive way to share pics and basic web pages.

If you actually want to run a site such as a blog, forum, and share your pics/movies at a cheaper and more full-featured cost, .Mac is NOT the way to go.

 

[jsw]

If you actually want to run a site such as a blog, forum, and share your pics/movies at a cheaper and more full-featured cost, .Mac is NOT the way to go.

Well, true, but .Mac is not oriented to meet the needs of people trying to run websites. It is, however, much easier to use for virtually anyone, and the sync feature is invaluable to those who use multiple Macs, travel extensively, etc.

For the price of a Mac mini, you could set up a much more powerful Linux-based solution. [edit]I was vague here; I meant that simply because something was cheaper/more powerful doesn't mean it's "better" for most.[/edit] That doesn't mean it's better for most people, and most people are not running a blog or forum, etc.

I've got .Mac, and I've got other hosted sites, and they both serve different purposes. I'd never run a commercial site off of .Mac, but I use it every day and finally think it's gotten to the point that it has some real value. And, yes, a lot of that's due to laziness (although Sync would be hard to replicate). But I'm lazy, and so are a lot of other people.

I think hosted sites are great. A Small Orange has a devoted following and they seem reliable and reasonable. I'm not dissing them, just saying that you don't have to be a complete imbecile to enjoy the features of .Mac or to think they have similar value to a hosted site for certain purposes.

Edit: and unlimited SQL databases and unlimited email accounts are cool, but the number of .Mac aliases is suitable for almost anyone, and only a tiny portion of the public will ever set up even a single SQL database.

And let's face it, if you can't run server-side apps (like Java, etc.), you're pretty constrained anyway.

 

[Twinkie]

Sounds like you need better hosting, then. You can't say .Mac is better than ALL hosting just because you've had bad experiences with yours.

Take some things into consideration:

Does .Mac give you an SQL database? No.
- Most web hosts give you several, if not unlimited amounts.

Which is worthless to people who don't need a SQL database at all.

Yes, a SQL database is important if you're going to use PHPNuke or a similar CMS. But Apple provides similar CMS functionality already, through iPhoto and Groups.

Does .Mac gaurantee 99.99% uptime? No.
- Most web hosts do.

Which is asinine, as I've already pointed out.

Tell you what... my posts are 99.99% accurate and true. I absolutely guarantee it!

There you have it. My guarantee that everything I say is true 99.99% of the time. Now tell me what you're going to do if I ever say something that isn't true. What's your recourse?

It's a matter of trust. Do I trust a for-profit company to keep their system running, and to have any role in fixing things that break, or do I trust some kid in Iowa who is reselling hosting on a box in the Netherlands that he's never seen, much less has access to fix?

But if you still think .Mac is a good deal, lets compare .Mac to a web host, such as ASO.

.Mac $99 a year...1gb of space...10gb bandwidth...no database...no gaurantee of uptime.

ASO $120 a year...1gb of space...25gb bandwidth...unlimited databases....unlimited email accounts...99.99% gauranteed uptime...24x7 support...cpanel, ftp, tons of supported coding platforms (such as ruby on rails) and a whole plethora of other features.

Again, you're spinning your wheels on guaranteed uptime and stuff that your average user does not care about.

The whole reason .Mac exists is (for the most part) so Joe Sixpack can click "publish" in iPhoto and magically have a page appear. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about being able to SSH in to his account, fire up vi, and start banging out his own PHP to hook to the six MySQL databases he created.

.Mac is nothing more than an expensive way to share pics and basic web pages.

Funny how you managed to completely ignore iSync and e-mail. Even funnier that your example costs 20% more than .Mac.

If you actually want to run a site such as a blog, forum, and share your pics/movies at a cheaper and more full-featured cost, .Mac is NOT the way to go.

That's a red herring, and I'll tell you why:

To some people, time is very valuable. Yes, with a full-fledged hosting account, you can install whatever CMS you want, but that takes time and a certain degree of technical knowledge.

Heck, I'll even offer up what would surely be your utopian retort to that: Yes, with a full-fledged hosting account, you can use Fantastico to install whatever CMS the hosting company happens to offer, but that takes time and a certain degree of technical knowledge. (Like it or not, Fantastico is not faster or easier than the .Mac integration in iPhoto).

For the sake of perspective, I'm a network and systems engineer by trade. I have a hosting account precisely for doing things with MySQL, PHP, and some light CGI. But when I want to flip pictures I took on a weekend vacation, .Mac is substantially faster and easier.

Yes, I can install the slideshow CMS of my choice on my hosting account. I choose not to, because it frees up my time for posting on forums.

 

[Josh]

Which is worthless to people who don't need a SQL database at all.

Yes, a SQL database is important if you're going to use PHPNuke or a similar CMS. But Apple provides similar CMS functionality already, through iPhoto and Groups.

May be not much use for everyone, but having it is better than not having it. Your praising .mac for NOT giving you a feature? Nice.

Tell you what... my posts are 99.99% accurate and true. I absolutely guarantee it!

There you have it. My guarantee that everything I say is true 99.99% of the time. Now tell me what you're going to do if I ever say something that isn't true. What's your recourse?

It's a matter of trust. Do I trust a for-profit company to keep their system running, and to have any role in fixing things that break, or do I trust some kid in Iowa who is reselling hosting on a box in the Netherlands that he's never seen, much less has access to fix?

That is a very moot point. I'm not suggesting some grab-bag host, or some company selected at random. I am comparing a reputable company to .Mac, and so far, regardless of your opinions, a reputable host offers more feautures and space for the money.

Again, you're spinning your wheels on guaranteed uptime and stuff that your average user does not care about.

People don't care about the uptime of their web host? News to me. "Yeah, I pay for my site...but who cares if it's up or not!"

The whole reason .Mac exists is (for the most part) so Joe Sixpack can click "publish" in iPhoto and magically have a page appear. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about being able to SSH in to his account, fire up vi, and start banging out his own PHP to hook to the six MySQL databases he created.

One-button photo publishing systems exist for hosted accounts. In fact, you've actually got CHOICES of systems to use with a hosted account, rather than being restricted.

Funny how you managed to completely ignore iSync and e-mail. Even funnier that your example costs 20% more than .Mac.

How did I ignore mail? I pointed out very directly that with several web hosts, such as ASO, you get UNLIMITED email accounts. You can use as many as you want, give them away...it's your call. What does .Mac offer in comparison?

And yes, I know the price is $21 more...but you get a TON more features.

Compare the price to the features you get, and it is a better deal.

Take your $99 (heck, even $50) to ASO and you will still get more space, more features, for less money.

But, .Mac is "cool", so heck...why not pay more for less...the zealots will love your for it

 

[jsw]

But, .Mac is "cool", so heck...why not pay more for less...the zealots will love your for it

But... .Mac is easier and, for well over 95% of the Mac community, just as useful in every way.

And you don't address the issue of Sync, which is not an option without .Mac, nor do you address Backup 3, which, for most people, is vastly easier than using anything else. Yes, you can duplicate Backup 3 trivially (well, not trivially, but without a lot of work - things like nightly backups of purchased music could not be easier than they are in Backup 3). But it'd take a lot of work to duplicate the .Mac sync capabilities.

.Mac is easier and faster to use than any other service. If easier and faster (counting the setup time for the 3rd party stuff) isn't important, then, great, get something else. Many of us use both types of services. But no way do you "pay more for less" if you are in the overwhelming majority of Mac users who don't need the other features.

 

[risc]

I can't see why anyone would want .Mac

My GF and I have .mac accounts mainly to support Apple, we don't buy hardware or software off them every year, and USD$99 each isn't much money to pay to do our bit for the cult.

 

[jsw]

How did I ignore mail? I pointed out very directly that with several web hosts, such as ASO, you get UNLIMITED email accounts. You can use as many as you want, give them away...it's your call. What does .Mac offer in comparison?

Aliases. What percentage of the population uses more than one or two addresses? A pretty small number. And the unlimited accounts don't come with unlimited space, so you just divide things up into smaller pieces.

 

[Josh]

But... .Mac is easier and, for well over 95% of the Mac community, just as useful in every way.

And you don't address the issue of Sync, which is not an option without .Mac, nor do you address Backup 3, which, for most people, is vastly easier than using anything else. Yes, you can duplicate Backup 3 trivially (well, not trivially, but without a lot of work - things like nightly backups of purchased music could not be easier than they are in Backup 3). But it'd take a lot of work to duplicate the .Mac sync capabilities.

I'll agree that Sync is one thing .Mac does have - but that is the one and only thing.

ASO does both database backups and file backups nightly as well. Downloading a previous state/backup is as simple as clicking a link.

I understand .Mac aims to make it easy to share photos and all that...but why not use something like flickr to share your photos, and gmail for email?

Both are easy as pie, and free.

It seems like the advertising behind .Mac not only aims to make .Mac look incredibly easy, but to make any other way of doing the same thing incredibly hard.

Sharing photos, generating pages, slideshows, email, etc can be done just as easy without .Mac (perhaps even easier!)

 

[Bern]

Ok I have a question maybe a few of you can clear up for me.

I'm an artist and animator. I want to put some of my work up on the web, but I don't just want to use the standard user friendly "iPhoto to web" technique .Mac offers.

Now I know one can design their site themselves and upload it in .Mac using Go Live, Dreamweaver or HTML, but what I'd like to know is what limits (besides PHP, ecommerce etc) there are to this? Can I create say a Flash based site for example for my .Mac website?

I haven't seen very many .Mac sites that are completely made by a "web designer" as such.

 

[peterparker]

I'll toss my $.02 out as a user of both .Mac and ASO. I use .Mac only for email. ASO for everything else, for multiple domains/sites. But, I think most users will achieve what .Mac offers easier with .Mac unless they have someone with the talent to setup the equivalent elsewhere.

For instance my wife only uses her site for posting photos to Gallery. If it wasn't for the wonderful iPhoto2Gallery plugin, I would have her using .Mac.

That said, they could do just a few changes to .Mac to make it much more usefull. And I wouldn't mind a price drop either.

 

[Twinkie]

May be not much use for everyone, but having it is better than not having it. Your praising .mac for NOT giving you a feature? Nice.

Your logic is flawed. If ASO gave you three acres of land in Antarctica to use however you wanted for as long as you were a customer, would that make it an inherently better value than a company who wasn't?

That is a very moot point. I'm not suggesting some grab-bag host, or some company selected at random. I am comparing a reputable company to .Mac, and so far, regardless of your opinions, a reputable host offers more feautures and space for the money.

You're using ASO as your "reputable company". I'm sorry, but outside of gamefaqs.org, Apple has a better reputation than A Small Orange.

People don't care about the uptime of their web host? News to me. "Yeah, I pay for my site...but who cares if it's up or not!"

Did you know that ASO flatly says that they plan to be offline for a minimum of three days a year? Or that you get no compensation for an outage that lasts less than 12 hours each month?

If Apple said "Buy .Mac! It's only down for an half hour every day or so!", you'd be screeching.

One-button photo publishing systems exist for hosted accounts. In fact, you've actually got CHOICES of systems to use with a hosted account, rather than being restricted.

Then you shouldn't have any problem listing the ones that work on OS X.

How did I ignore mail? I pointed out very directly that with several web hosts, such as ASO, you get UNLIMITED email accounts. You can use as many as you want, give them away...it's your call. What does .Mac offer in comparison?

Mail aliases, and more reliable service.

And yes, I know the price is $21 more...but you get a TON more features.

That are only useful to a few people. And since your biggest point of contention is that .Mac is overpriced, comparing it with a service that costs more hardly bolsters your stance.

Compare the price to the features you get, and it is a better deal.

If you're a developer, or have a need for things that .Mac doesn't offer. If you use iSync, or like the .Mac hooks in to iPhoto, Safari, Address Book, and iCal, it most certainly is not a better deal.

But, .Mac is "cool", so heck...why not pay more for less...the zealots will love your for it

OH MAN YOU SURE SHOWED ME
I bet the zealots on the other side love you just as much for your rabid yammering.

I'll agree that Sync is one thing .Mac does have - but that is the one and only thing.

May be not much use for everyone, but having it is better than not having it. Your praising ASO for NOT giving you a feature? Nice.

Sound familiar?

ASO does both database backups and file backups nightly as well. Downloading a previous state/backup is as simple as clicking a link.

If you read their terms of service, they clearly state that they're not required to provide you with backups.

I understand .Mac aims to make it easy to share photos and all that...but why not use something like flickr to share your photos, and gmail for email?

Both are easy as pie, and free.

Neither offer the integration and features that iPhoto does. Free != better.

It seems like the advertising behind .Mac not only aims to make .Mac look incredibly easy, but to make any other way of doing the same thing incredibly hard.

Which, for many users, is entirely accurate.

It is a single point, where everything actually is incredibly easy. Where users don't need to point friends to the flickr site for pictures, and blogspot site for their blogs, and their hosting site for everything else.

Yes, through DNS, forwarders, and CMS, you and I could very easily accomplish that with better tools. But the fact remains: the vast majority of people are not able or willing to do that.

 

[Twinkie]

Ok I have a question maybe a few of you can clear up for me.

I'm an artist and animator. I want to put some of my work up on the web, but I don't just want to use the standard user friendly "iPhoto to web" technique .Mac offers.

Now I know one can design their site themselves and upload it in .Mac using Go Live, Dreamweaver or HTML, but what I'd like to know is what limits (besides PHP, ecommerce etc) there are to this? Can I create say a Flash based site for example for my .Mac website?

I haven't seen very many .Mac sites that are completely made by a "web designer" as such.

You don't have to use their cookie cutters. Drop the files (or folders) in to iDisk -> Sites through the Finder, and they'll be at http://homepage.mac.com/yourname/yourfile

 

[Bern]

You don't have to use their cookie cutters. Drop the files (or folders) in to iDisk -> Sites through the Finder, and they'll be at http://homepage.mac.com/yourname/yourfile

Yeah I know that Twinkie, I'm just wondering how ... er... free... I can be with my web design? I've read through the official Apple knowledge base on this subject, but as always reality can be different in these things. So I'm wondering if anyone has had some experience creating their own site using Flash or whatever and uploading it into .Mac.

 

[iMeowbot]

Now I know one can design their site themselves and upload it in .Mac using Go Live, Dreamweaver or HTML, but what I'd like to know is what limits (besides PHP, ecommerce etc) there are to this? Can I create say a Flash based site for example for my .Mac website?

Yes, you can just drag files into your Sites folder and have then work as they would on any commercial server. Flash and stuff like that ought to be fine, since those don't normally need any server-side programming to do their thing.