Bye Bye .Mac

wowiw, wow, wow do i share your sentiment. it angers me ever more after i spent months telling friends and family to go get a mac.com email account because it ties in so well to the OS and... it's free. ouch.

I'm pretty surprised by everyone's reaction to this. While I agree they should of kept email free (at least webmail), I totally understand charging for everything else. Like SJ said "things are different now, no more free ride." or something.

Oh fer... Jobs is going to run Apple into the ground if he's not careful. I'd say there's definitely trouble in the cockpit, but the pilot apparently doesn't see anything wrong. Apple stock slid a little yesterday on reports that earnings weren't as high as expected last quarter. I can only imagine what this is going to do to the company overall.

I imagine it was very hard for Apple to come to this decision, but it comes down to pure economics. Mac users have enjoyed a free ride on iTools for a few years now, but the reality is, running server farms costs money (maintenance, monitoring, adding capacity, power, cooling, parts replacement, etc.) and takes up real estate. On top of that, while they are profitable, sales are slow, and it costs money to develop all the whiz-bangy new features in OS X, the new iPods and widescreen iMac - and run very high-profile ad campaigns. Hardware sales alone are not going to provide a sufficient revenue stream for the near future.

It seems more that the pricing of .Mac is the slap in the face, more than anything else. If Apple had made the subscription costs a bit more reasonable, or offered a tiered "middle option" - say, 50GB of space for $50 a year - there wouldn't be such a bad reaction to it. Still, as far as 100MB web hosting goes, $8.33 a month is fairly competitive, and the consumer tools they include are quite unique and useful. It appears that merely purchasing a Mac is no longer a gateway (pun intended) to a world of unlimited updates and free goodies. Lamentable, but inevitable.

I'm stunned by the audacity. I've gone back and re-read the .mac page a couple of times to make sure it was actually true. I was using a .mac e-mail address a lot because it was really convenient. No more. I might even switch back to OS 9 just because.

Lets not all forget that unless you purchase a Macintosh between July 17 and August 25, you will have to pay full price for this wonderful upgrade.

Lame.

I am positive that Apple will be receiving boatloads of email on the Jaguar pricing (maybe more than .mac pricing) and that public pressure will reduce the upgrade price to something more reasonable... say, $69.99 tops. Sheesh, otherwise they would be, as Steve said, "jumping in that (microsoft) boat" and shafting users everytime they did something.
My plan is to wait until next month, get a sleek new G4 DP and just get Jaguar included.

I can understand their need to charge for the .Mac services, but I don't care for their sales pitch. A $250 value, but some of those items you'd only buy once or possibly upgrade every 2-3 years, doesn't quite justify their price that way. I do like having an excellant pop e-mail account, and having it for free for as long as it has been has been a steal, but that's about the only service I use of the iTools, and for $30 a year I can get pop access through yahoo, be nice if they would offer some options instead of all or nothing for their services.

I hope they offer an upgrade option for 10.2 for the rest of us. While I do think we're getting a much better OS cheaper than a MS one, I only went ahead and upgraded my G3 PB last month to OS X at all, even MS offers cheaper OS upgrades than full price for an upgraded OS. =/

It's funny. Everyone wants everything for free. Someone was telling me that McDonalds in Germany and other places in the world charges people for extra catsup. We americans scream "what are they thinking!?!" Charge someone for something that SHOULD be free? Everyone needs to make money these days. Apple isn't any better off than any other company right now. I LOVE Apple. But you can't expect everything for free anymore.

well. after really liking apple alot of 3 years. i can
frankly just say now: fuck off, apple.

i mean, what the hell are they thinking. i was already
pissed enough when they try to sell us 'quartz extrem'
as a bonus. while after all it just fixed a bug: lack of usable
performance.

my powerbook was just 1 year old, and now apple is
telling me that i have a to old computer to fix that
bug? hello?
and with their whole iWhatever familiy they can also just
drop dead. they are just the gloosy version of microsoft. more
shine, but same lame business strategy beneath..

what really find the most stupid thing though is
how apple is just style, no content lately.
with the whole 'switch' thing for example.
and .mac is even more lame. i mean, seriously,
is it a joke or what..

when it would be at least a serious concurrent
to .net (when it would be a real platform
and not just a group of random tools).. but now.
its basically just laughable..

( oh my god, excuse the bad format. hehe)

yes, you gotta pay for ketchup here..

i dont expect everything to be for free. but seriously: if you would buy a vcr and after 1 day, you would figure that for some reason the there is something wrong with it, you also want to either get the money back or the problem be fixed. no 'oh, in the next version that will be fixed. just buy the next version'

and one more thing:

ipod.. i bought one 7 months ago. now its possible to listen to audible files with it. but hey, only with the brand new ipods. even when technically it would be absolut no problem to make it possible with the old one. it would be just a firmware upgrade..

Apple makes its money selling computers. Emulating the tactics of Yahoo, a company that makes its money with pop-unders, is a bad idea. iTools, like all those other 'i' apps adds value and enhanced user experience to mac owners. Apple could probably charge thirty bucks for iTunes and make money from it, or fifty bucks for iMovie and make money from it. But they don't for good reason --to add to the mac experience.

all,

wow.

i hadn't really thought about things until you put it into perspective like you all are. i don't like paying for things and love itools. check out http://homepage.mac.com/tangerinecow for some of my fotos.

i don't like that i bought os x in december and have to pay $129USD for another copy. if at least that was free there'd be some happy people i'm thinking. with windows people who can now use ipods (not sure how they expect to get people to switch if they let them share instead..) they should be making tonnes of money. i'm not very impressed - and i'm the guy everybody talks to re: apple stuff 'cause i love it soo much. ugh. boo.

i have enough things to pay for i think. a .mac account isn't going to be one of them. maybe, niether is jaguar. i don't think they're going to keep many customers with these moves. when i start up super new mail and can't get an apple account w/o paying for it after i start paying for web access after i start paying for etc., i'll just use entourage or hotmail and have one for free. sure it's mad shit spam in there, but it's fucking free. apple shoud ad-up with mac dealers and sellers to save some money and put ads on the web version of that. include a monthly newsletter that announces products from resellers, etc. a great idea! make the deals come from resellers close to you. that'd be sweet.

fuck, too much to say and too flustered to continue.

-mathew

I was under the impression that M$ had ALREADY proven that consumers aren't into subscription based services. Most users want to pay for their ISPs and litle else...I think this will be a classic Apple backfire scenario.

Apple's idea of value added features are off the mark. While I love the iapps that let consumers deal with common media formats, Apple still doesn't understand that the average consumer hates to be hit with anything that resembles a hidden cost. I mean damn, it's the same mentallity that keeps Apple in a niche market. Consumers don't want to spend alot of money on computers. Period. The free iApps are a good start, but who wants to pay for another email account? Fuck that.

Bleh... I'll be SERIOUSLY dissapointed if the 10.2 user experience consists of dealing w/pay-for service ads that pop up everywhere like in XP.

Here's the iTools petition:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/iTol/petition.html

It's the apple way... piss us off while making us stare in awe at their innovations. Love-hate.

I understand charging for the new and enhanced features, but the charging for email has got to go. Can't they make a .mac lite, where it has just the capabilities of the old iTools, and .mac will be a subscription service?

I was upset to hear of beginning to be charged for iTools, but not incredibly so: I didn't really use the account that much.

What angered me extremely — to a point where I have almost lost all of my Apple loyalty (hopefully a temporary measure) — is the fact that any prior user of Mac OS X literally has to rebuy the operating system in order to get Jaguar.

(And yes, I confirmed this independently by speaking with an Apple Up-To-Date Operator. You can too: get the toll-free number off of http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/.)

That absolutely bites, and may be inspiring a new "Switch" campaign ... in reverse.

I had already purchased an upgrade to aquire more space on my idisk ($50/50MB per year) a couple months ago. I just recieved an email from apple today that I am being grandfathered into the .Mac service for a year because of my payment. So I am basically happy, as I find the idisk and homepage extremely useful. With this I also get the backup applicaion, and 100MB of space to use it.

As for the Jaguar pricing, can anyone confirm that there will not be a reduced price for current users? I have seen conflicting info about this in several places.

All I gots to say is please give it back its real name (iTools).

Even though the 10.2 upgrade is full price, for me it is worth it because now I can get on a Windows network without Dave. This should have been done long, long ago. The other stuff may seem like fluff, but I bet you will soon be wondering how you lived without it!

> As for the Jaguar pricing, can anyone
> confirm that there will not be a reduced
> price for current users? I have seen
> conflicting info about this in several places.

You can hear it with your own ears by calling the Apple Mac OS X Up-To-Date Program at 800-335-9258.

The "good" news is that they're 'soliciting comments' on this at that same number. Once you hear it with your own ears, ask them to log your opinion, and proceed to rant in an extremely courteous manner. :)

Hello,

the short version: $100 is too much and the .Mac site is a fucking mess to navigate through. I think I'm leaning towards Jaguar being priced "alright" as there is a lot in there that I'm wanting, like Ink. I'd love to have an upgrade option for 10.1 users, but its not a breaking point for me. .Mac is another story.

The long version:

I went here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac/pm.html to make my complaints known. This is what I had to say -

Hello,

Let me first state this: I don't mind paying.

I love my iDisk ( and now there is more to love) and use it constantly. I didn't have virus software for X yet, so Virex is a plus. When iCal is released, I'll make use of the publishing functions. My @mac.com address is a good second address to have, and when I finally stop procrastinating and design it, I have a great idea for a website that will use the hosting service.

But $100 a year? This seems a little steep. Since I was already an iTools member, I've only had to pay $50 for the next year (I signed up this afternoon after the initial shock wore off). $50 a year seems reasonable, $100 a year is cringe-inducing.

iTools has been one of those things I could brag about to PC-using friends and co-workers. "Apple gives you 20M of drive space free!" "You get an email account free!" "Look at this website of my daughter's birthday pictures that I had up and running in five minutes thanks to templates!" Things change ó I get that. I'm not going to stop using iTools/.Mac, but I don't know if I'll still be bragging about it.

As someone who does not want to see iTools/.Mac go the way of eWorld (yes, I used that too) because no one uses it, I ask that Apple please reconsider the pricing for the service. $100/year is too much. As I said above, I don't see a problem paying $50/year and I would like to think others would agree with me. The services can't be free anymore, but there has to be some middle ground.

good day,
jkb

i don't mind paying for services that i use. i think it's unreasonable to expect apple to give away all of its .mac services for free forever to anyone who wants them, especially with no limit to how many accounts and, thus, how much web space you can sign up for.

the problem i have is that it's an all or nothing deal. personally, i don't use anything but the email. i might have considered using the web hosting if i didn't already have that, but they don't even offer .ftp access. and the big complaint i have, is that when they introduced the mac.com email addresses, their postitioning was: keep the same email address for free, forever. because of that, i have used my mac.com email addresses for everything, personal and professional. i would be happy to pay a fee for using the email address, but to tell me that i have to give them $100 a year for nothing but email forwarding is a huge slap in the face. bullshit, indeed.

I totally agree on the all-or-nothing argument. There should be a free/cheap bare-bones offering, especially since (as far as I can tell) the new iChat and iCal apps in Jaguar seem to rely heavily on .mac membership (for your iChat screenname and for iCal publishing) it sounds like the big features Apple are pushing for the update are useless without a $100 membership.

However I think the big news of the day is the charge for the 10.2 update. I'm more than happy to pay for the upgrade, especially since they've been pumping out significant upgrades to the OS for free so far, but there should be an upgrade option for those already on OS X. Having to pay full price for the upgrade is a slap on the face to people who've bought, tested and adapted to the early versions of X.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/MUAMW/petition.html

There's a discussion for my local MUG going on right now about the mac.com addresses. An employee of Apple is saying that they're able to keep their e-mail addresses for $10 per year, but not sure if that applies to the general public.

I'm not too terribly worried about the .mac pricing. Yes, I do think it should be cheaper. $50 would seem more fair to me, but then again, I don't know what it costs Apple to offer the services.

The thing I am PISSED about, however, is the upgrade price on Jaguar. It is completely rediculous to charge over a hundred dollars for software that works as it is intended to. Right now, my 450 mhz G3 runs os 9 faster than my 800mhz G4 iMac runs os X. That is ludicris.

I don't give a rat's ass about any of the new features in 10.2 except for extreme quartz or whatever the hell they want to call how the operating system should work. I love OS X, but I don't love it's piss poor performance.

I refuse to pay $129 for a bug fix. I will be pirating Jaguar. That is what I suggest you all do. Let's send a message to Apple that they can't dick us around. If you don't know where to pirate mac stuff, use Carracho. It's a lot like Hotline, but without the bs.

As a die-hard Apple user, I was dissapointed and upset with both .Mac and Jaguar.

>>iTools/.Mac
When I first puchased my iMac in April, the salesperson used iTools as a selling feature. While it didn't make me decide to buy my mac solely (I had already made that decision) it did open me up to a whole world of a *nice* company. I loved using the iDisk option, to post the occasional photos and such on my website. I don't use it or my mac.com email address enough to purchase the whole package - but I do use it enough to *miss* it.

>>Jaguar
I am unbelievably dissapointed that an upgrade price for Jaguar hasn't been announced - and I will call and vocalize it. I just got my iMac in April. I want to buy Jaguar, but $129 USD is out of my league - I can afford $50 to upgrade my OS, that's probably it. and you won't be able to use iChat , etc. Until you have Jaguar.

I think Apple, a company that has apparantly prided itself on being good to its customers is screwing itself over. And to those of you who are consider purchasing .Mac/Jaguar - wait. I bet you with enough negative feedback Apple will listen to it's customers and change the configuration of pricing.