Apple .Mac 5.0 [OLD VERSION]
![Apple .Mac 5.0 [OLD VERSION]](/Images/B000BX7GAI/medium.jpg) | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Use .Mac 5.0 to share high-quality photos and movies with friends and family directly from iPhoto and iMovie. There's no easier or more stunning way to show off your pictures and video online. Express yourself by creating a custom website, blog or podcast in minutes and publish it with a single click. Add content from Google Maps and even use your own domain name. .Mac Mail gives you ad-free email… Product details and pricing info |
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56 Customer Reviews Posted
- No longer for everyone
- .Mac was originally a free add-on perk that came with the purchase of an Apple computer. I'm not convinced it's worth a hundred, even though I keep succumbing to the easy temptation to renew when Apple reminds me each year. I no longer keep three Apple computers going, one at an office away from home. Consequently, the iDisk feature, the most useful part of the service, has lost its practicality. (Moreover, during prime business hours the company's webmail program was so busy that using iDisk was impossibly slow; I gave up on it and went to a one GB thumb-drive to transfer work between work and home.) The iSync feature is nice, but not worth a hundred with only two computers. It's not that laborious to go into the next room to read a calendar memo or to do e-mail, though keeping bookmarks synchronized is definitely useful. As for the other features, most of them are available free of charge on Yahoo or Google. Back-up would be nice, but 10GB is minuscule if you have 50GB of music files and write for 6 hours a day on the machine. I confess that I don't take and share pictures with family members (they're all PC users) or maintain a website (there are far too many out there), so I'm not exactly sure what the advantages of .mac are compared to, say, similar free services on Yahoo and Google. But it's easy to get pulled into the "Apple life" without carefully assessing and reassessing your needs. In my case, I know I'm not getting a return on my investment. Next year, no renewal.
I have just spent several hours trying to remove 10 GBs worth of files from my iDisc. Problems observed: the creation at one point of 2 iDisks on my desktop (one is bogus--be sure to go for the one with your name on it); laboriously, exasperatingly slow performance (I'm still in the letter C's). I've wasted more hours if not days on this worm-eaten Apple program than any other peripheral product. Get yourself a 60 GB Western Digital drive for sixty bucks, a Toshiba 120 GB or (at the present moment) a 500 GB Seagate--both of the latter for the same price as .Mac. It will reduce stress, not test your patience each time you use it, and above all save you the precious commodity of "time." .Mac on the other hand is space travel at a mule's pace. I may give up soon and just leave the clutter in some cyberspace orbit. At least, I've become more appreciative of the problems NASA is facing with its own spatial junkyard. - 2007-11-05, 33 of 43 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great Deal on Amazon, Convenient Service
- The .Mac Service has been criticized by many as being too expensive, and one can certainly get many things that the service offers in various other places on the internet for free. However, the service does justify the cost if you need the one-click convenience of publishing your iPhoto library or blog to the internet, for example. Mac OS Backup software also integrates nicely with .Mac, and the IMAP e-mail feature delivers added convenience. If you have Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), the service is even more justified, since you can now access your home Mac's screen via any other Mac running Leopard on the internet with the new Back to My Mac feature. However, I would buy the retail package from Amazon because it is a substantial savings over the $99 retail price, and you can renew your membership this way as well. Save some money and buy from Amazon, especially if you are an avid iLife 08 and Leopard user!
- 2007-11-02, 5 of 6 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- easiest way to share photos and videos
- Buying either new or renewal from Amazon usually saves a few bucks over what the Apple Store charges and is really easy to use.
I have had a .Mac account since it was free and, to be honest, have come close every year to letting it lapse, but the newest versions of iLife apps are so spectacular that I am finding .Mac more useful than ever. The integration between iLife and .Mac make such an easy to use, and professional looking presentation, that it is worth $100 a year for the .Mac account.
Yes, you can find free or less expensive alternatives for photo sharing, video sharing, web site hosting, but none of those will be as easy to use or look so good as using .Mac. - 2007-10-19, 16 of 16 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A little pricey but worth it
- This product, while a bit expensive, is very much worth the money for the many services it delivers in a seamless way. I can do many things with my .Mac account with just a few clicks that are frankly quite amazing. If you have the money and own a Mac, definitely buy this service.
- 2007-10-19, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Save by buying "indirect"
- I'm hooked on .Mac. Like many others, I think that one can cobble together the features, free, from other sources. But I've used it for years and there's enough value to justify the annual cost. When I buy it from Amazon, I save about 20 bucks over getting it direct from Apple. What I Don't like is that Amazon sends a big box. Inside the box is another box. Inside that box is a lot of paper. One of the papers has a code. All I need is that code to type in to renew. So I save 20 bucks but then feel bad about my negative environmental impact. But we tree huggers are like this. Thanks for the savings.
- 2007-10-18, 9 of 10 people found this review helpful, Rated:
