Just a thought
Ok it sounds like you have all researched this a lot. But I'd just like to throw something out there. I like to do this at home about everything. Kind of a devils advocate thing from a total outsider.
First let me tell you that I am a switcher. Out of the 12 computers we have here, at the present time, only 4 are Apple products. I could go on forever about my windows woes but that's another story.
I came to this site to find out just what this me.com thing was. Yes it sounded really cool and exclusive when I got an email( from my Pastor no less) with this address. I had no idea it was from Apple
I found out from Apple's site it was a subscription service.
So what was the advantage over gmail, that I would want to pay for it? You folks gave me that information.
Here's what I thought off the cuff.
Yahoo's mail used to be completely free (in all fairness we always got it free from our ISP). Then you had to pay for certain services.
Gmail came along, completely free. Yes, it was by invitation only, but with 100 invites and the ability to invite yourself and get 100 more, it wasn't hard to get one.
Now, I do more research into things than the average Joe, so when I saw that Apple was charging for this, the first thing I though of was; This is a mistake.
Yahoo is struggling and Google is taking off.
When I push Macs to my PC friends the first thing they say is, "Yeah but it costs more." Since some of my PCs work great, I can only assume that this the case with some of my friends . I can just hear them say. "It figures. Apple charges more for everything" . And then watch them walk away.
I agree, you get what you pay for, or I wouldn't have purchased my Mac. Others don't always think that way. I guess it's good that Apple doesn't seem to want to take over the world from MS. Just scare it a little/alot.
Just random thoughts here.