Comments on: Apple .Mac membership looking less attractive

By: Jaime

Jaime — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:10:39 +0000

Thanks for the input. I as well was looking to get a .Mac membership. After reviewing their services, I certainly wouldn't pay $100 for a yearly membership.

I could understand if it was a family account, with a lot more added features, but for an individual user, that's just plain absurd. Its not like I could even see myself downloading my backed up disk from the internet.

I think affordable idea would be to just buy a USB Flash Drive and use that to sync up with Time Capsule. The flash drives are getting quite cheap as well. I just recently saw a 4gig Sony MicroVault on sale at CircuitCity for only $19.

Also, in terms of syncing bookmarks I also use the foxmarks plugin with firefox. Add a 6.6 gig email account with google, what more could you need?

.Mac has certainly not sold me on the reason to pay an annual fee of $100.

Hopefully they'll reduce the cost as they see more free options being added to google services. I'm sure they Apple could use .Mac to create an even greater loyal customer base by reducing costs, and using it to advertise their products to the users. But I'm sure they have the marketing scheme all figured out...

By: iryne

iryne — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:35:50 +0000

Thanks for this post! I was going to purchase a .mac membership and decided to do some research beforehand. Definitely sounds like .mac membership would be pointless for me. I really hope apple changes the trend because I bet they are losing valuable money this way! Goodluck n thanks!!!!

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:53:00 +0000

Is there an alternative way to backup a MacBook to a USB external drive

Yes, there are alternatives.

By: freewheeling

freewheeling — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:54:48 +0000

Is there an alternative way to backup a MacBook to a USB external drive, other than Backup 3.x? That's really the only reason I tried the trial membership, and they limit it to 100MB or something, for trial members. Who's system just uses 100MB nowadays? Also, charging an annual fee so that you can use a piece of backup software seems a bit much. There must be other alternatives?? I can't believe this product is the only option for backup. If so, this is absolutely the last time I'm buying a Mac. (It's also the first.)

BTW, I had to dig quite a bit just to find out that .mac membership costs $100 per year. I can see some nominal rate similar to what I pay for a web-based email account, but $100 per year?

By: kenjoy

kenjoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Good point, well made. I hadn't really stopped to consider, but will probably continue with it for the time being; my .Mac e-mail has become my default, but I certainly don't use the service to the full. Maybe they should heavily discount iLife for .Mac subscribers (or include it in the price) - that would be a winner.

By: Paolo Sordi

Paolo Sordi — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think i'll remain a .mac user (mail reason, mainly), but you're right, Bruce, also they should have produced a much cleaner version of the iWeb: I saw the HTML code and it's a very mess up, even if formally standard. I don't understand why they can't be able to put some Blogger-like tool, with comments, etc. Ok, their target is our mom, but this is not a reason.