.Mac just sent my a helpful “Your
.Mac membership is up for renewal June 19, 2005 CET (90 Days) and we hope you
have already decided to renew for the coming year.” type e-mail and
well-.Mac is the
self-important Apple branded web hosting and e-mail service, for $99 (69 of my
British Pounds… why the 14 extra you bastards?) you receive a yearly
subscription to the .Mac cartel. Some web-space, integration of said webspace
into iApps, a CD of “internet tools”, an occasional trial or $25 off a $300
Apple affiliated application… and – most importantly – a “@mac.com” e-mail
address; for us, the vain, vain Jobs fan-boys – that’s what it’s all
about.Let’s start with
the webspace, when I signed on to 100MB I did think; “Callum, you’re an idiot.”
Because I knew I’d be basing my website on .mac – I wanted scalability, video,
audio
and
CGI… an Apache server! Something with bite! — all of which for ¬£65 a
year I could have had with “callumalden.com” to boot. So, I googled around and
signed on to the “give us more .Mac” protest list. Y’know what? It worked, and
three months in Apple boosted .Mac to 250MB, that’s shared between my growing
e-mail accounts and scaling blog / photo collections, so good but not good
enough.About the e-mail.
Mail App is great, it’s really nice to use and deals with Spam in an intuitive
way I’ve seen nowhere else. E-mails are all stored online, and a copy is sent to
your mac, or macs where ever they be – office or work, same e-mail account.
Perfect. So, Apple – what’s the deal with giving my one “@mac.com” address, ooh
ooh- no, wait – I can have “alias’” that is I could set up an account for my
wife – livalden@mac.com but any e-mail directed to that address would land in my
e-mail account, you can’t split alias’ and accounts. Yes, use Mail App’s great
tool to direct it to a folder, change all e-mails sent to “liv” to a nice rosey
hue or some-such, but come on – it’s still laughable. In all honesty I know I’d
offer my friends a “@mac.com” address and that’d be fine if I were given 10
accounts. I guess Apple like .Mac to have an exclusive air – but this isn’t
funny.Now- those free
Applications; Backup first. Useless, don’t use it for anything over 5MB, don’t
use it for more than 10 files… in my month of playing with it I found it
didn’t even backup. What the hell? Virex is the industry-leading virus
protection suite for Mac, I don’t care, uninstalled it’s slow mother of an App
after a few months of never finding anything. I’ve never seen a Mac virus. The
other ‘great’ free apps are all downloadable from Apple.com to non-.Mac members,
iSync is great – top-marks. Not worth
$99.The monthly .Mac
newsletter is always Apple-tacular. With iPod ads galore it’s only purpose – I
gather – is to help push that 250MB… The offers .Mac throw at their users are
laughable, as I said $30 mail in rebate for some Macromedia application which
will still set you back a Mac mini and a half. Free downloads of a screensaver,
a 2D game demo… makes me
sick.Sorry to offload
this on you iBlog. You suck less but I’m going to buy my own hosting in 90 Days.
Sorry friends, looks like I’m moving e-mail again. Go GMail!