PDA

View Full Version : Why .mac?


bmdbaseball
2007-07-06, 12:15
Is there any real reason to have a .mac account. Google and many other companys offers many of the same services for free? Ive seen where apple is going to update/change it but what could they do?

torifile
2007-07-06, 12:19
Currently .mac is purely a convenience for people. You can cobble together a number of (free) services that do the same thing the whole .mac package does - except for syncing multiple computers. Keep in mind that you get IMAP with .mac, something you pay for with Yahoo! and Gmail doesn't provide AT ALL.

Leopard is supposed to bring vast improvements to the whole .mac experience. I've been a .mac user since it was called "iTools" and it was free. I grudgingly pay my $100 a year (or $69 if you buy it with your computer) just because it's so convenient. Hopefully there will be more value added to it when 10.5 comes out.

jdcfsu
2007-07-06, 12:58
There's the whole "back to my mac" thing that was hinted at in the WWDC keynote. Still not quite sure how it works or what it is, but it's an announced example of a new feature for .Mac when Leopard comes out.

digitaldave
2007-07-06, 13:15
I've been a .Mac subscriber for a couple of years now, but I doubt I'll renew in October. I've switched to Gmail for my email, and I've used Flickr and Picasa Web Albums for putting pics online for others to see. But .Mac puts it all in one place, plus provides the extras like syncing as torifile said. Personally, I don't feel it's worth the money at the moment, but 10.5 may bring features that make it well worth the money. I'll probably still ditch it though.

FFL
2007-07-06, 15:12
except for syncing multiple computers. That's pretty much all I use it for - and it's well worth $8 a month to keep my desktop and notebook calendars and contacts in sync.

torifile
2007-07-06, 16:33
That's pretty much all I use it for - and it's well worth $8 a month to keep my desktop and notebook calendars and contacts in sync.
I think the same thing except when .mac sync is fucked up as it seems to be pretty often. Just now I got a ".mac bookmarks cannot be synced because of an inconsistency in the data. You should consider resetting from a good computer" or something like that. I get these types of errors WAY TOO OFTEN for something that should just work.

Souflay123
2007-07-08, 14:57
the reason I went with a .Mac email account is to get my name. both gmail and yahoo had reasonable versions of my name taken. So I went with .mac :) sounds stupid yes I know, but i do very much like my .mac now. it has some good features.