It’s Nearly .Mac Renewal Time Again
Posted September 30th, 2006 @ 09:41am by Erik J. Barzeski
I'll argue right alongside nearly everyone that .Mac is far from being worth $99 annually.
Except for syncing.
In my opinion, and for me, syncing my bookmarks, my address book, my keychain, etc. is worth $99/year all by itself.
Barely worth it, mind you, but on the proper side of the "renew or not" divide. Still, I would welcome some new features, some improvements, and some perks (though I agree a revamped webmail won't mean squat to anyone). .Mac was ahead of its time when it first came out (or at least even with the times), but Google Mail, free or inexpensive disk space from other competitors, a fairly horrible blogging interface (sure, they look nice, but that's because everything's an image), etc. have all been passed by competitors.
I'll renew again, but c'mon, Apple: $129/year (almost) for the OS, $99/year for .Mac, $99/year for Pages, which I still hate more than AppleWorks. iTunes may not be a subscription, but too many other things from Cupertino are, and currently, many are falling short of expectations.
Donate Life
Posted 30 Sep 2006 at 11:33am #
There are a number of ways to get the .Mac at much cheaper price, such as buying .Mac pack with a new Mac or getting it from retail shops.
I recently bought a .Mac retail pack for AU$30 (that's about US$23).
Why do you need US$ 99/year for Pages? I am still using iWork '05. (Okay, I am not that kind of person must use the latest version of whatsoever software available.)
Posted 30 Sep 2006 at 12:09pm #
You can get it more inexpensively, yes, but it's rare. Most people must pay $99/year and have little way of getting around that. The family pack is another good way to save, but that's only if more than two people are actually going to USE .Mac.
I needed the graphing iWork '06 introduced, basically. I never use Keynote, either.
Posted 30 Sep 2006 at 12:59pm #
I think apple should release a Premium .Mac subscription that includes FREE or maybe just discounted software updates....
i would pay $150 or $200 a year for .Mac Premium if it meant that i'd always have QT Pro (no matter what version comes out) and a free or cheaper OS - why not throw in a free download from the iTMS once a month (or 12 a year) to sweeten the deal? giving me a few free downloads generally gets me to spend more than i was planning at the store anyway. 🙂
.Mac ends up just being email and the (hopefully not useful) backup of address book etc. like you, it's almost not worth $8 a month, but only almost.
Posted 30 Sep 2006 at 1:16pm #
I suspect I probably wont re-subscribe to .mac this coming year, but that's probably because I only use one machine now (not including servers, of course).
However there is something really nice about knowing that all I need to do to make a mac "basically mine" (ie. email settings, bookmarks, keychains, etc.) is to enable .mac syncing.
Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 12:46pm #
It's $79 at Amazon - how rare is that? (Anyone who wants to buy .Mac should be able to figure out how to get it from Amazon.)
And iWork lists for $79, not $99 (and is $70 at Amazon).
I agree with you on .Mac - it's worth it just for syncing between the desktop and notebook. But I never pay retail for it.