Would you guys pay $100 for .Mac
 

- poll questions from a thread started by griffman -
- several .mac threads merged into this one, which includes discussion predating the macworld expo.
- please vote again if your vote on another thread was lost

(just tidying up the place :) Phil)

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http://www.thinksecret.com/news/mwny02dotmac.html

I just read this article, it's a rumor but if it's true.....whoa!

I wonder if my mac.com email, with it's "wonderful" spam filtering will be included in this package.

Not knowing if this will happen, and if it does, what services one would be buying, it's pretty tough to evaluate.

In about 25 hours we may have a better answer to this question. :D

If this is true, it would be completely ridiculous. I thought that in purchasing a machine that costs nearly triple what a non-Apple computer would cost was enough to entitle me to iTools, or .Mac, or whatever moronic name they have for it now. Personally, I only take advantage of the e-mail address, and to pay over $8 a month for that would be stupid.

Apple has every legal right in the world to do this. But it is immoral to mislead people into thinking that they're getting a free service when it will soon cost an exorbitant fee.

David

two words:

e World

:D

http://www.vanvr.com/eworld/index3.html

ROFLOL, I think.
 

Merv, that multimedia spoof, I didn't know if I should laugh or cry (tears of joy mind you).
I never heard of eWorld before, sounds a bit flakey to me.

to quote:

"I wouldn't like to be a member of a club that would have me as a member"

Groucho Marx
:D

eWorld was apple's attempt at an AOL/prodigy type dealy. it was emptyWorld.

i worked at the apple business unit in Napa, CA when they installed eWorld circa '94-95. it was humongous. i got lost in the eWorld computer room. had to call security to find me and lead me out. it was another example of apple innovation (newton) that never got legs. multi-billion dollar ghost-town replete with tumbleweeds. but, in the long-term, i think it gave apple a couple of things. another lesson and a host of sharp people who contributed a lot to our current milieu.

-mt (empty)

Righty O!
 

Merv,

I see, so you think that .Mac will be the bas***d cousin of Apple's eWorld initiative.

A virtual world where Macheads can convene, shut out reality and imagine Apples aren't harmful to you unless someone throws a ton of them on your head :D

On an entirely different note, I've been thinking of turning to Linux soon. Yellowdog has just come out in 2.3, I played with it on a TiBook and had a marvelous time. Maybe this belongs in another thread but I'm getting quite annoyed at the price of software these days. If 10.2, .Mac etc. costs an arm and a leg I'll wait until I buy a new Mac late 2003.

OS 10.5 anyone :)

well, if .mac looks anything like apple's current incarnation of net services, they're going to have to pay me to look at it.

i'm a bad subject, tho. those services don't provide me with anything.

do let us know about yellowdog, eh? (what a horrible product name)

Maybe this belongs in another thread

Yeah well then this does too! :D

I'm running YellowDog 2.3 on my iBook, and I must say it's very nice.
If nothing else, it uses a bootloader that pops up after the chime, and allows me to press X for OSX, M for 9, or L for linux.
I like that feature on it's own, as I sometimes can't decide what OS I want to boot into until that last second.
YDL & KDE run very smooth with only 384 MB of RAM to work with, and seeing my buddies drool is SO worth it!

Yaboot
 

Although I haven't installed it yet, I was wondering how yaboot works with the open firmware password.
At home I can't see this problem, but at work I've installed it for some added protection on the Mac.
I suppose if you restart with "apple+O+F" it should allow you to do the keystroke to get yaboot, if not I'm gonna wait until there's a way around it. Or maybe I'm just :confused:
Can yaboot be configured with a password?

I'm going to install YDL 2.3 on my TiBook along with 10.1.5 and 9.2.2 and play with it this weekend. YDL on a friends TiBook was a dream to behold, so simple (like X) and in the background I just couldn't help thinking that this is a free OS and the plethora of programs are pretty good, even alternatives for my scientific work. I was sold. I'll keep OSX for the slow chewing eye candy moments ;) and those so called "killer apps".

I know all of the above probably doesn't belong on this forum, but the following does.
In a strange way using OSX is made me consider Linux as well, I wouldn't have dreamt of using Linux whilst I was happy with OS9. Now I am, mainly because of my interest in the Unix underbelly, and discovering open source. I was ignorant of all of it.
I've been using Macs happily since '91. A switch back, eh Apple :D

back to the actual topic.

Oh dear apple. Let's hide tha money grab behind some nice features, shall we? £100 for 10.2 and $49 for the first year (and $99 thereafter) just so I can use my mac.com email address? I assume this means they're taking the iDisk integration out of the core OS. Or are they now going to pop up a "Hey, you can buy this if you want" ad every time I look at system prefs?

Urgh. Not good. Nice tech announcements, but ".mac"? Come on guys, what were you smoking?

Well, now that it is a fact .net will cost $100.00, I give an emphatic NO as my answer. Nor am I likely to pay $129.00 for OSX 10.2. I'm not sure I'll buy 10.2 anytime soon even if the upgrade costs half that! Wow, what a way to start my day, I'm mad!:mad:

Back to the topic
 

No, I don't think so. I might try the one year at $49 for a single account for our business, but I switched anything using my mac.com mail account to point elsewhere, and cleaned out the iDisk.

It remains to be seen if any of my customers will use .Mac. I can see where it might be useful for a few of them, who travel a lot.

This is absolutely ludicrous! I have no problems with Apple generating capital through this means, etc. What I do have a problem with is giving all these people e-mail addresses that they rely on and then tell them two years later they have to pay for them. That is ridiculous! I feel they should leave people's - email alone. iTools = free e-mail and thats it...you want server space,etc - you pay. I could live with that. Also - I feel like the price we pay for new Mac's is high enough to cover the cost of iTool (.mac). Will they lower the price on Macs after September? I doubt it....

...Not to mention the fact that everytime we send an e-mail or give someone our address, we advertise for Apple.

I do think that there should be varying levels of service, corresponding to different yearly prices. Heck, I would even pay a nominal fee for the e-mail alone (free POP mail is hard to find these days).

Anyway, I think I'll pay the $50 for the first year--seems worth it to have an e-mail address that is not tied to an ISP that I might change. After one year, I'll see how I feel about paying $100 for another.

What's really gonna hurt is the price of Jaguar--my goodness. But between iChat, iCal, iSync, Sherlock, I don't know if I'll be able to resist it. Anyone know if there is an educational discount, and how significant it is?

David

I have heard rumors that the upgrade for Jaguar will be $20. But those are just rumors -- and they're new ones, released this morning. If that's the case, I'll upgrade.

I'm torn about the .Mac garbage, though. I use my mac.com email a lot.

From the FAQ:

Don't forget the spam filter
 

...which you can't configure for $100. Or even turn off or have a mailbox set up for it. I've several emails lost in the ether because of it.

wayneyoung, what's your big objection to 10.2? Just wondering.

As for .mac, it just seems to me that Apple has decided that the PR benefits of iTools no longer justifies the expense they're putting out for it. And now that "everyone else is doing it" (making money), well, why not?

If we were starting with no prior history of iTools, it might seem a bargain, of sorts. But "taking back" a free service is what rubs the wrong way, for sure. I wish they could have continued with a free option (one web email only) and "Plus" option (POP email plus expanded web storage), charging for the latter. That would have been better.

When I consider that a lot of ISPs charge $2.00 - 5.00 a month for an extra email address and give only 5 mb of storgage per account, it's not a bad deal, really. I'll be keeping one of my mac.com address because I really like it and use it, but allowing a couple of others I've set up to lapse. (Yes, I did have more than one! ;))

BTW, what are the other options for free POP email now? Not many, I don't think.

Phil

That's if you buy a new Mac between now and Aug. 24th. I was expecting $99, so this one doesn't surprise me too much. 10.2 Server will be the full price too.

The option I have chosen is to further rely on the PC I pulled out of a dumpster, installed Linux on it, and setup qmail mailserver for my internal LAN of Mac OS machines - all my own and no one to tell me what to do with it. This of course could be accomplished with OS X also. See recent tips on Hints page - search for qmail.