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.Mac - worth it? - Page 2

post #31 of 41
8/24/07 at 8:59am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Dot Mac is fine for a new user just starting out. However as great as 10GB for $99 seems these days, head over to globat.com and get 1000GB for about $54 a year (with your own domain and unlimited email addresses).
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post #32 of 41
8/24/07 at 10:19am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by skellener
...head over to globat.com and get 1000GB for about $54 a year (with your own domain and unlimited email addresses).
1TB for $4/mo! Good gravy! I'm paying $3/mo for 10GB at GoDaddy, and that was a good price just a few months ago. (shakes head) This defies my sounds-too-good-to-be-true bearings.
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post #33 of 41
8/24/07 at 7:32pm

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by skellener
Dot Mac is fine for a new user just starting out. However as great as 10GB for $99 seems these days, head over to globat.com and get 1000GB for about $54 a year (with your own domain and unlimited email addresses).

And how easy is it to post a .Mac Web Gallery to Globat.com? Or to sync your data between machines automatically? Or to one-click publish from iWeb?

Clearly, .Mac is not about the dollar-per-gig ratio -- it's about ease of use with the included software.

I had some friends who ran a hosting company who tried to build a package for me that would do what .Mac does, better and for less money. The web pages looked far less good and the time to put things together was much longer -- the only thing I did was save money.

.Mac is far from perfect, but evaluating it purely as hosting or storage is silly, because that's not what it is. It's like evaluating a 17" MacBook Pro on it's weight alone.
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post #34 of 41
8/24/07 at 8:28pm

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Reynolds
Clearly, .Mac is not about the dollar-per-gig ratio -- it's about ease of use with the included software.
.Mac is an interesting beast. It seems great if you want a quasi-personalized email, or modest backup, an easy webpage, or some nice photo galleries. But as soon as you want to move past that, there's a hard ceiling with no room to grow.

It's also a bit unsettling, how .Mac becomes more scattered and less cohesive, as it matures. My wife complains that the former web pages system is wholly unshared with the iWeb-driven web pages. And I think the iWeb created photo galleries are unrelated to the new iPhoto-driven galleries.

None of these are reasons to not get .Mac. But it feels like a sloppy system, hastily assembled. And some of the software tools reflect that: I hope to fight with the backup software some more this weekend on my wife's computer. I spent three days on it a while back and it chronically crashed with useless, inexplicable error messages. The software looks great and promises an idiot-proof backup tool. But I've found it nothing but pain.

My wife is 90% pleased with iWeb and she won't get rid of her .mac email address. I hope the backup tool will work. Those will readily justify the $99/yr for her. But I can still wish for a more coherent, more mature, and less costly product.
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post #35 of 41
8/24/07 at 9:28pm

Re: .Mac - worth it?

.Mac web galleries are neat and aren't immediately part of iWeb -- but if you publish one, you'll notice that in the Web Widgets tool at the bottom of iWeb that you can now embed that gallery in an iWeb page, complete with skimmability.
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post #36 of 41
8/25/07 at 2:02am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

As I noted before, I only use .MAC to synch my desktop and laptop.
Beyond that I have no use for it. Still, what am I going to do? I
think this service is overpriced by $50-$60 a year.
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post #37 of 41
8/25/07 at 5:08am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

And no one mentioned iDisk (other than with Backup)-- anyone with a good internet connection can have a "disk" on .Mac always mounted on their machine, that behaves exactly like a local external drive. This is invaluable if working on a collaborative project with someone or need many times a day off-sight backup for some precious piece of work. I also really appreciate the IMAP e-mail -- where I can have multiple computers (four of them) synched locally with several years worth of e-mail.
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post #38 of 41
8/25/07 at 7:16am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Ron,
A good syncing tool is worth its weight in gold. I spent several years in grad school manually syncing home and school PC via sneakerneted Zip Disk. I never could find a good sync program to solve that problem. If I were a student today, I bet that feature would justify a Mac and .Mac.

Ted,
The new .Mac SPAM filter system plus IMAP interface could now make it a better iPhone intermediary that gMail. But it depends wholly on how good the .Mac spam filtering is. What's your experience.

For me: if .Mac had 30 GB for $99 and it was $10 / 10 GB addtional storage, I'd subscribe just for the backup system (assuming I can figure it out). The photo galleries, I would play with if I had them.
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post #39 of 41
8/25/07 at 5:24pm

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Reynolds
And how easy is it to post a .Mac Web Gallery to Globat.com? Or to sync your data between machines automatically? Or to one-click publish from iWeb?
I use Rapidweaver (realmacsoftware.com) for website stuff. It's as easy if not easier than iWeb or iPhoto. Works with all the iLife apps. Sync what between what machines? I have one Mac. If I want I can FTP into my account using Transmit (panic.com). I am not stuck with slow, unreliable WebDAV that would always lock up my Finder. FTP definitely seems much faster. I can create some space and FTP account for any of my friends that want some space. I have my own domain. I can give any of my friends an email address if they like. I can host other domains with my account (there's so much space) for $15 year. It's always up. When I had Dot Mac for the first couple of years it was down all the time. Don't even get me started on that disaster called "BackUp". Never worked for me. There's no way I could ever trust it. Want real back up? Get SuperDuper (shirt-pocket.com) and back up to a firewire drive. I applaud Apple for packaging many tools in one nifty package. I just think they don't work very well.

But please, use Dot Mac if you like.
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post #40 of 41
8/25/07 at 7:43pm

Re: .Mac - worth it?

Steve, I've been down the routes you describe. I thought the alternates I was using were good and easy, but they're not as easy as .Mac.

What kind of issues were you having with Backup? (Not disputing -- rather looking to find the source and maybe solution to the problem.)

Nothing works for me anywhere near as easily as .Mac and Web Galleries out of iPhoto -- and really, I can't imagine any non-integrated solution that can do what it does.

I'm not suggesting that it's right for you, Steve -- I was just taking issue with your characterization of it for someone who is just starting out. I had it, walked away from it and returned to find it infinitely better. I'm not a beginner at this stuff, I'm just interested in saving my own time, especially when it comes to photo sharing with friends and family.
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post #41 of 41
1/6/08 at 8:53am

Re: .Mac - worth it?

A little bump on a side note: Personal Domain.

My wife upgraded to Leopard and iLife 08, and enabled the Personal Domain feature of .Mac. It took just minutes for the changes made at GoDaddy to go through. It looks great and does exactly what it's supposed to. Her website, created in iWeb and published to .Mac, now shows no overt trace of being hosted by .Mac. It's a regular website to an outsider. This is the desired and expected improvement over domain name forwarding, the previous kludge required for using a domain name with a .Mac-hosted site.

If you use .Mac and have a domain name, definitely spend the half hour to set up the "Personal Domain" -- just click File>>Set Up Personal Domain in iWeb 08 to get going.
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