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Yes, it is, it was the reason I did not renew.

My suggestion $29.95

Too much, of course.

May 21, 08 - 12:14 pm Comment from: makemineamac

I'm always able to find the renewal for $20 less online or so I don't really have a problem paying $70 or so.

I use it for all kinds of things like large file transfers in addition to photo sharing, downloads, work groups, calendaring and so on.

And while the service works pretty well most of the time, I worry if they opened the 'free' floodgate it might slow it down, and when it's slow, it's really slow.

In the uk, bt offer something called home vault, its half the amount of storage on line as .mac (5GB vs 10GB) no imap, no website, no leaning center, no web gallery, no back to my mac, how much of it you use determins its value to you, but its not expensive. Also We all know of other individual cheaper services offering similar things but Its very easy to set up and well intergrated, geeks take there knowledge for granted but to someone not to tech savvy ease of use and intergration are priceless.

May 21, 08 - 12:21 pm Comment from: Me In LA

I've had it since day-one, and will continue to use it.
Would it be nice if they lowered the price?
Always.

May 21, 08 - 12:21 pm Comment from: Timbo

I get a lot out of .Mac. No complaints really about the price, but hey, I wouldn't mind if Apple cut the cost down by a few bucks either.

I do appreciate the functionality improvements in recent years. One example is the ability to create and edit web galleries easily from within iPhoto.

$99 is far to much!!! I agree 100% with Rob: $29.95/year.

And for that amount, they should provide a .Mac portal website with (licensed) articles, (licensed) audio/video media content and Apple web services for business people, designers, etc. The same type you find on Harvard Business Review. The kind of articles and services and services worthwile you paying for. Otherwise, you might as well go with your Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail account.

.Mac syncing and online storage has paid for itself time and again. I have multiple Macs and having them all stay in sync effortlessly is awesome. I've even set up my own user accounts on friends' Macs and had all of my email and data (via Yojimbo) on there, as well.

Add in the email and simple backup (prior to Time Machine) and it's easily worth the money.

People will never be happy paying for packaged services when they only see themselves using a part of it.

I think Apple should provide all Mac users with a free .Mac account, and then they can add on services on an a la carte basis. That would be more flexible and affordable across the board.

May 21, 08 - 12:24 pm Comment from: HMCIV

File transfers on .Mac always seem to be very slow for me.

$110 is way too much. For some idiotic reason it's another $10.00 in Canada. I guess our electrons cost more up here!! Must be the clean air! *cough*

But I'm not bitter!

May 21, 08 - 12:28 pm Comment from: jtc

@Rob
Have you ever put up a website before? It's not free to just slap up a site on some domain. $30 would be ridiculously small though would make many happy and probably more to sign up.

You can go on amazon and get an account for $20 less if you don't like the $100 yearly. I do web development and I think 80 is a very reasonable price since thats what I paid before for a year of hosting through a place that didn't offer stuff to work with my mac.

Increased volume by offering it for free with a registered purchase only would pump their knowledgeable reachable database plus guarantee a taste of the total Mac experience. But only based upon a much improved feature rich upgrade. Lose shortterm in order to win longterm.

May 21, 08 - 12:29 pm Comment from: Cubert

.Mac should be improved and made free. That would entice MANY switchers once they see what "bonuses" they get by buying a Mac.

been a .mac member since it was announced.

$29 is a fair price.

May 21, 08 - 12:30 pm Comment from: djfred

Definitely too much. If they really want to expand their base it should be free for the first year, no restrictions, to coincide with the standard warranty.
After that they should bundle it into the Applecare Protection Plan, either as a standard feature or an upgrade over the basic plan. When it expires, consumers have the option of paying the yearly subscription fee or buying a new mac.
Many of them will use it as excuse to upgrade, making it a win/win for Apple and it's customers.

Try $135 in the UK for a SSLLLOOOOOWWWW service (£69).

If the price was slashed, and service improved, I would consider taking up the service once again.

With Apple, hasn't it always been about the hardware? Offer it for free.

"But the company is letting price get in the way of a service that could be a unique selling point for its hardware: the real profit engine at Apple."

This guy said it all. At $99, Apple will never, never, never have my money. Dropping the price to $29.95 however, and adding more web services, would attract people like a magnet.

Think about .Mac providing more services than a Yahoo, a Hotmail or a Gmail account, better designed and free of those stupid ads for something like $2.49/month!!! Which Mac computer user would say no??? None!!!

Seems that those who cry for less fees on .Mac are those who only use it for storage. Geeze. If that is all I used it for then it would not be worth it. Look at ALL .Mac supplies before calling it too expensive. I would like it to be cheaper too, but not at the "expensive" of reliability.

That girl that recovered $5000 Dlls worth of electronics using the .Mac feature "Back to my Mac" sure thinks 99Dlls is very little.....
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008805090392

May 21, 08 - 12:36 pm Comment from: Cubert

"That's the drug-dealer strategy: the first one is free."

Someone needs to introduce me to these drug dealers because that's not the way it works in real life.

May 21, 08 - 12:37 pm Comment from: Not Bill

I am not sure why I need .Mac. I have a gmail account, so, email is covered. I take my notebook with me when I travel. I have a time capsule for backups. Gmail gives me almost 7M of storage for free.

.Mac seems like a hassel without a payback. What would I need it for?

May 21, 08 - 12:39 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Why not $49 per year?

Apple should include free for the first year you own a Mac.

Or throw it in with cost of AppleCare.

People will get hooked on it, then renew when it runs out.
OR just keep buying new Macs to keep their .Mac service going uninterrupted.

May 21, 08 - 12:42 pm Comment from: iamdj

Free 2.0! The way of the web.

I bought a 1 year subscription with my new mac and the first thing I noticed is that the various 'parts' of the service (idisk, e-mail) are not immediately available but take about 15 minutes to activate while in the mean time generating error messages. Very confusing.

The idisk service (file transfer) is slower than my ancient 9600 baud modem and of no use to store larger (more than 1 mb) documents. I hope that will improve.

All in all a service I find that it could be very usefull and indeed worth 99 euro's a year if it were decently implemented. As it is I'll just keep my Amazon S3 and Jungledisk, and external e-mail.

That gives me all I need (imap and idisk) at a fraction of the cost.

May 21, 08 - 12:44 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

This article sure brings up a lot of good points. I bet Apple implements some of these suggestion coming this summer.

May 21, 08 - 12:45 pm Comment from: Rich Apple person

The cost is way to high right now. First one can get an eMail account from a number of providers free of charge. Second hosting prices are coming way way down and some photo sites actually let you host shots there. Finally the storage is no bargain with the cost of external drives dropping rapidly.

Apple could add value by extending Apple Care for a few months or allowing users to download additional free tools or templates for iLife products.

May 21, 08 - 12:46 pm Comment from: jocknerd

I gave up on it a long time ago. Sure I like the email and the syncing, but not enough storage and limited web capabilities.

I'll stick with Google Mail, Calendar, and Flickr. Only costs me $25 per year.

May 21, 08 - 12:46 pm Comment from: Me In LA

@ Mac+ - we get it, stop already.

I think giving it for the first year with an AppleCare agreement is a good idea.
$49 thereafter.

Free? Don't think so - I like my AAPL thank you.

Wow, have ANY of you looked at the Apple Store online? .Mac is $30 off with the purchase of a new machine. (i.e. $69.95)

May 21, 08 - 12:49 pm Comment from: MizuInOz

The following dialogue was captured during a dma meeting (dma - dot mac anonymous)

"My name is Lenny and I am a dotMac addict. I am addicted to dot mac."

"Gidday, Lenny. Tell us about your addiction and how it started."

I have been a user since it was first introduced to me and I have not been able to curb my habit for even a day. When I realise that my addiction is about to need renewal, I do what so many of my friends do and draw a line on the glass and use my credit card to create a perfect line for another year. Even with daily use, I find that when I am offered anything new by my dealer, I pull another plastic line. I even now use it with my iPod touche' and my iPhone.

I can now use and appease my addiction wherever I go!"

Thanks for listening.

By the way, I do not feel 27¢ a day is too much to feed my addiction!"

"Thank you, Lenny"

Names have been changed to protect the iDentity of the .mac user.

I just love stories like these. We might as well be swilling Jack Daniels and shooting a 9mm in a darkened room. Without any access to Apple's books, none of us, including the writer, have a clue about how much revenue and profit Apple makes with .Mac - or not.

I'm not of the "software wants to be free" camp. Just look at the train wreck from the dot-bomb era to see how that worked. While the freetards and penguinheads keep crowing about free this and free that, ask yourself how profitable they are.

I thought so.

Look, I agree I'd like to see .Mac cost less. But I get a ton of value from it. It's handy, if not a bit slow, but incredibly easy to use. I know of no similar service on the PC side with the array of useful conveniences. (Okay, I'll wait for some smartypants frigtard to respond to this email with the standard, "well if you use this, this and this group of free services, you can do the same thing!" BS. Well, Mr. smartypants frigtard, did it ever occur to you that these are all scattered on a bunch of unrelated, hard-to-use sites? And these twits keep multiplying...)

We'll see. One thing I've learned is never to second guess THE Steve. Just when you think you've outsmarted him, it usually means that something you've thought about is in late beta.

And ask yourself: if the hack who wrote the story referenced above is so friggin' smart, why doesn't he run a company?

I thought so.

IF the rumored .MAC upgrades show up at WWDC08, THEN .MAC will be really something. I'm referencing the rumored push email service / calendar syncing, contact / to do list, with an iPhone. This service would effectively compete with a Blackberry server environment.

Without an iPhone, I am not sure the utility is there, particularly for the most technical user.

$100 is way too much, I have always felt that way about .Mac. I don't think I would use some of the tools that .Mac provides like Back to My Mac. Although, I would probably use some of the iWeb and iPhoto integration tools.

I'd pay $50. I pay $120 for my personal website, that provides 5x the storage, many times the monthly bandwidth, databases, nearly unlimited e-mail accounts (at least for my purposes), and a slew of other web development tools.

Just on that comparison .Mac costs too much. .Mac should be more of a loss leader to get people to purchase some Apple products, and to pay for upgrades, which are otherwise meager feature wise. For instance, the last iLife upgrade wasn't very significant, and some actually thought a retro-grade in terms of iMovie. Most of the changes were with .Mac integration. Yawn.

May 21, 08 - 12:54 pm Comment from: NCIceman

While I like the idea and services .Mac offers, the cost has kept me away. Something like $39 or $49 would be much more palatable....

May 21, 08 - 12:55 pm Comment from: Demon

Other then myself who remembers the Free .Mac days.
It was basically a crap hole with little point. The Free email with the cool @mac.com address was the only reason to use it. Apple upset many, many Mac users when they started charging for .mac but, in charging for it they've been able to expand and improve the features and increase the reliability. While many and yes most may think Apple is charging too much for .Mac I'd argue that Apple isn't charging enough for what services and features they are offering.
It's really about perceived value. I'd guess that most people that try it don't find the value because they don't really look at everything that .Mac offers. Apple is working it add education of .Mac to experience but most users will never take the time to get educated on how to use .Mac and all of it's features.

May 21, 08 - 01:08 pm Comment from: The Dude

.Mac.... Great service, great integration, easy enough for my 5 year old to upload photos too. Would I like to see it a few bucks cheaper, sure.... the yearly price difference between what people are bitching about and what they want to pay is less then a latte a month. So common guys, stop the latte, and drink the cool-aid.

The Dude abides.

May 21, 08 - 01:10 pm Comment from: Ferf Muckmeyer

It may seem a bit steep, but think about what you are getting. 10GB space. Full email capability. Web gallery for iPhoto and iMovie. Sync capabilities with iCal, Address Book, Mail, etc. Back to My Mac. Also, some of this is going into development, and from what was mentioned a week or so ago, .Mac is undergoing a full upgrade that should make it a lot better than it already is. I think cutting the price a bit (let's say to $69) would be a good move to entice more users, but still at $99 I think it's a good value.

For $49 it would be A LOT easier to convince recent switchers to pay for .Mac

Price has always been the thing that keeps me from subscribing to .Mac. I would love to use it, but I can't justify the annuall fee for a 10GB internet HDD and some (intriguing) bells and whistles. Even the suggested $49 in the article would likely sway me to subscribe, $29 even more so.

May 21, 08 - 01:11 pm Comment from: kirkgray

Anybody remember the "Free for Life" Mactools where you got a .mac e-mail address and some other goodies?

Nah, I didn't think so.

How about they work on making it work properly and offering real support for that money.

It is ridiculous that they have no phone support yet charge $99 a year. And the shit breaks all the fucking time. And back to my mac used to work all the time... and now does not. WTF?

May 21, 08 - 01:21 pm Comment from: DLMeyer

There were no "Free .Mac days" ... it was free iTools. And I remember them. That's when I joined. Then the first year was $49(?) before it jumped to $99(!). I've made good use of the service - me using the e-mail and my wife using the storage (backups) - and feeling grateful for each freebie thrown our way. Well ... many of them. The latest - $30 off iLife'08 - was rather late and rather modest, but ... Anyway! I was thinking about cutting the chain a year or so ago - then they boosted the storage and added other toys. They have about another year before I get back to that point. Less money and/or more service.
They are charging almost half what I pay to play WoW! How unreasonable is THAT?!?!?

May 21, 08 - 01:22 pm Comment from: kirkgray

It has been a while -- it was iTools not Mactools.

May 21, 08 - 01:24 pm Comment from: alansky

Honestly, if I didn't rely on my .Mac email account, I would ditch the service in a minute, For me personally, synching has never worked correctly. Never, not even once. I'm also not thrilled that Apple provides no telephone tech support at all for .Mac problems. Email and chat are the only options, and the responses I have received in the past did not inspire confidence in the technical expertise of the .Mac support staff. .Mac really could be a key component of the overall Mac experience. As it is, it has always been, and continues to be, a neglected step-child that is definitely not worth $100 a year.

May 21, 08 - 01:27 pm Comment from: What?

@Cubert
First one free only works if they know you have never tried it before.
Like in 4th grade maybe. You are not going to get any free drugs, sorry.

May 21, 08 - 01:27 pm Comment from: alansky

Hummer:

You should wash your mouth out with soap and water, dude. Your words make you look like the piece of trash.

Look for educators it's a little less.
If they could add a domain protection for that price - better.
Using iWeb to make my school website - priceless!
If you haven't used this service with .mac - your missing out!
If your just buying .Mac for email only- might as well go somewhere else.
Offer this for free?- You can't be serious!

May 21, 08 - 01:29 pm Comment from: Demon

That was it "iTools" with the .Mac email address, iDisk of some less the really usable amount and it seems their was another service or two that was part of it.
I only remembered the .mac email address and that it was free.

May 21, 08 - 01:31 pm Comment from: Spark

.Mac is worth the money if you use all the features. I keep it primarily for a second email address, the Syncing and now for Back to My Mac. I keep telling myself that sometime I will use the other features, but... you know. I think his Steveness could have called .Mac a "hobby" up until now. But I agree with those that predict we are about to see .Mac go on steroids to become a must-have cloud port for all our computing. So, I think we will soon see either a more robust .Mac at the same price, or a reduction in price if Apple keeps .Mac unchanged. It is obvious that Apple would see a far greater adoption if the price was lower. What is often left out of the disussion is that "free" services come with advertising of some sort. It's a trade-off.

I hear you- the canned responses to your .mac issues with days passing in between... LAME. $100 for that?

ARe you fuckin kidding me?