Do You Have a .Mac Account?
May 21st, 2008, 16 Comments »
CNNET News features an article by Tom Krazit today entitled ‘Apple missing golden .Mac opportunity’. Krazit argues that Apple has missed an opportunity with .Mac, and has some suggestions for revamping the service:
For example, if $49 a year granted you access to 20GBs of online storage, unlimited photo sharing on a Web page you designed, and unique capabilities such as Back to My Mac, you might be more willing to pay the equivalent of four bucks a month. Use the same service to link iPhones and iPod Touches with Macs, and you increase the value of each device, while also giving users a reason to buy both their handheld and desk-bound computers from Apple.
Or, Apple could give away a free year of .Mac service with the purchase of a new Mac. That’s the drug-dealer strategy: the first one is free. After that, once you’ve put all your images and videos on the .Mac service, $49 a year won’t seem like much to keep that service running. Apple does provide a 60-day trial period for .Mac services, but that’s not enough to get hooked.
For the uninitiated, a .Mac account costs $99 per year, and gets you the following main benefits:
- Easy posting of photos and videos space on Apple’s servers.
- 10 GB of online storage.
- Virtual access to your Mac from any other Mac.
- Integration with the Apple iLife suite.
Do you have an .Mac account?
I don’t. I can see how it would be convenient, but $10/GB per year always struck me as exorbitant for online backup.
Besides, our requirements for online storage run to, I don’t know, 200 GB. Plus, our 5000-odd photos are already backed up on Flickr and my 8000-odd songs are backed up on MP3Tunes.
I’m still looking for a well-priced, reliable backup option for our Macs. We tried Mozy’s beta program, but it failed miserably.