Comments on: .Mac is .Annoying

By: Stephen Anson

Stephen Anson — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:49:42 +0000

Best Buy staff are at east not condescending like the cult-like staff at the Apple Store.

By: How Should Apple Address the Netbook? - TheAppleBlog

How Should Apple Address the Netbook? - TheAppleBlog — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:00:30 +0000

[...] a small bit of the pricing if a MobileMe contract is agreed-upon at purchase. The way Apple has pushed .Mac in the past leads me to believe that this isn’t too far fetched. Then to address further [...]

By: Karl Blessing

Karl Blessing — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:56:31 +0000

Odd, when I purchased my MacBook about a month ago (first mac I owned since the G4/733 I purchased back in 2002 and went back to PCs around that time). I was actually bugged to get applecare (which I would get but could not afford at the time). Not a word about a .Mac account at all.

However course I noticed on OSX if you click anything .Mac related, like the iDisk you will of course get all the sales pitch plus the 60 day free trial offer. I don’t know if this was the case in the past revisions of OS X, but I think they stopped pushing it (at least in the apple store near me) because the OS already pushes it in your face upon first boot, and upon clicking any of those features.

By: Thunk Different.

Thunk Different. — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:40:03 +0000

.mac isn’t that bad, well… ok it is. It is useful tho – just not $99.00 useful. Much more like $19.99 useful.

iHope their is an update, last year it was all about the igoogle and apple integration, this year NO ONE is saying it, even tho Google updated the iPhone search, gcal, and other features.

Tomorrow will be interesting…

By: EV

EV — Thu, 31 May 2007 03:15:25 +0000

I buy .Mac purely for the offsite Backup feature, but I’m ceaselessly stumped by its shoddiness. I repeatedly have to click “Try Again” because “Backup is in use” when it’s doing two things at once. Worse, the “incremental backup” feature clogs my drives, both idisk and external hard drive, with useless, repetitive saves. What is the purpose of this??? Iomega’s backup program on my PC replaces recently changed files with the new version, that’s it, and that’s all it should do. Why does Backup copy everything every single time, without erasing the previous versions and without notifying me when the disks are full? That’s considered “incremental”? Maybe I’m missing out on the Mac elegance here — if so, I’d appreciate any insight into what’s going on.

By: David Bailie

David Bailie — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:32:17 +0000

I agree with the main gripe of the article, that pushy salesmen ought to be taken out and shot, but I personally think that .Mac is brilliant. I use PC’s at work and Macs everywhere else and can get at all my documents on my iDisk from everywhere. I sync my phone to my Mac and then to my iDisk so everything is always the same. My calendars are always in sync too. My family are spread all over the country and are not computer literate at all, so dropping all of our pictures of our last trip or of the kids playing ball is easy. My wife creates photo books and slideshows and drops them on line. I like the mac.com email address too.

I gladly pay the $140 (I’m in Canada) every year. As someone else said, it completes the Mac experience for me. But as someone else said, it’s time for an overhaul.

By: Niclet

Niclet — Sun, 27 May 2007 00:28:09 +0000

That’s funny, I was in a Apple Authorized reseller last week to buy a flash drive and in the same time, I asked info about .Mac with the positive intention to buy it. The vendor was categorically discouraging me to do so. The main reasons was the (over)price and the “gadgetized” features.

I was looking for a solution to help my wife and I to live-sync our calendars and also to have a server to share big documents with others.

Mmm, I continue to meditate on this…

By: ThunkDifferent.com

ThunkDifferent.com — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:45:48 +0000

.Mac needs updating. The syncing could be much better coordinated, and of course the iweb & back-up features are really the best features of the product. It is a pity they don’t moderinze it. It is true many of the services offered with can be offered for much less.

http://ThunkDifferent.com

By: Armen

Armen — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:52:24 +0000

Overpriced, but as others pointed out, unbeatable for ease of sync and publishing, especially with the way apps like iPhoto, Yojimbo, &c. integrate with it. Also overlooked is its WebDAV access — so easy to share music and other files with Win/Linux/Mac friends. Pet peeve is inability to publish to the calendar from anything other than a Mac. Hey Steve, some of us would kill to use Macs at work, but can’t (yet)! We’re still loyal Mac users, throw us a bone and let us publish from work!

By: Viswakarma

Viswakarma — Fri, 25 May 2007 13:25:11 +0000

We use .Mac for e-mail and iDisk which allow us to access our mails and important files from anywhere in the World without advertisements, since we travel a lot. Moreover we get 2 to 3 free songs from iTunes every week as a part of the package. The free songs themselves pay for the $99.00/yr (less than $10.00/month or $2.50/week). There is a lot more that .Mac offers for the price that we still have to experience.

By: eberlin

eberlin — Fri, 25 May 2007 06:23:32 +0000

.Mac is in desperate need of updating. I did purchase it when I was new to Macs and found it useful but I will seriously consider ditching it at my next renewal unless it can:

1) Introduce more integration by including more tools onto one personalised homepage. I now use Google personalised homepage and I would love a more stylish Apple version.

2) Increase the storage. Compared to offerings from gmail, yahoo and hotmail, .Mac is lagging behind its competitors.

It really is time that some focus is given to .Mac. Hopefully we will see a significant improvement at the same time as the launch of Leopard.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Fri, 25 May 2007 05:17:21 +0000

It does certain things very well. Syncing data between machines, seamless website publishing, backup of files. Sure, they are separate programs out there that do all this for less, but combined, they don’t do the things .Mac does as easily – with one click ease. I think it’s worth the money.

By: sjmills

sjmills — Fri, 25 May 2007 04:22:49 +0000

I don’t find it to be overpriced. A hundred bucks for a year? Big deal. It’s totally worth it to have Address Book and iCal seamlessly and automatically kept in sync on every computer in the house (plus the computers at work when I used to work in an office). I also find it much easier – when needing to make a file available to other people – to simply copy it to the iDisk rather than using some other xfer method, e.g. launch Terminal, navigate to the source folder, type in an ftp address, put, quit, etc. It’s also easier for the newbie recipient.

And since Apple writes the server side and the client side software, it will always work with all the apps that currently support it (and probably more in the future).

By: Zar

Zar — Fri, 25 May 2007 04:13:03 +0000

.Mac is great, overpriced, but great. I love it, but can’t afford it at the moment. Fortunately, there are many free options available that can be used to emulate .Mac. I use GMail for storage of photographs and files. Plaxo permits me to sync my emails for free – imperfect and a bit klunky, sure. Still it is free and what I can afford at the moment. I was never able to use iSync for my cellphones, so I use Onsync for my phone syncing. It cost me about $19.00 and that’s about what I spent with some additional time, which cost me very little.

Should I get the bucks ahead I’ll definitely re-up my .Mac subscription – will do it faster if Apple lowers the price…

By: Mark Issacs

Mark Issacs — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:30:31 +0000

I’ve used .Mac since the day it became available. I recommend it to all Mac users, especially those who have come from the “dark side” using Windows. Many of them do not know or cannot verbalize why – but the find the Mac just feels right. To those users in particular, .Mac enhances the Mac experience. Integrated email, automated back-up of critical files to your iDisk, off site but available where ever there’s a computer copies of your most valuable info. What the hell are you complaining about? The product and service are, in my opinion, worth far more than the annual cost. The $99/year for a permanent email address – especially if you have a decent one – the ability to sync and protect your bookmarks, settings, addressbook, etc., makes it all worthwhile.

$99? I’d glady pay $149 or $199 for it. This product/service package completes the Mac user experience and can save your ass on occasion. Like when I dropped my cellphone into the Grand Canyon while taking a helicopter tour. I could buy another RAZR by pulling out a credit card. But my address and phone numbers were somewhere near the shores of the Colorado as it winds through the bottom of the canyon. One five minute stop at an Apple Store in Phoenix after I’d bought a new phone and I had my numbers back into the phone with no problems, NONE. Of course if I’d not had .Mac my restore of the Razrs Address and Phones would have to have waited until I flew home to New York City several days later.

By: vanni

vanni — Fri, 25 May 2007 02:49:09 +0000

I have a .mac accoun which i love/hate. Apple needs to update this clunky/easy app. and it needs to make it a 39.00 app. 99 is S T U P I D and overpriced. iDisk is over priced. ABckup is clunky .. i could go on. But some of it’s other features are great. PS. where in the hell can one edit the iWeb pages on our iDisks?