© 3-19-04 Neale Monks

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• Product Name: .Mac
• Company: Apple
• URL: http://www.mac.com
• Category: Online Services
• Price: $99 per year
• Requirements:
  • OS 9 or OS X
  • Internet connection
• Rating:
  • 2 bounces for casual use - Lackluster
  • 1 bounce for power-user, business or academic use - Lustless

Apple's .Mac service started out as a free incentive for Macintosh users, iTools, launched in January 2000. In return for running the Mac OS, users would be able to take advantage of a variety of services, the most important of which were a Web-based e-mail service and a small amount of online storage space. Unlike the free e-mail services provided by Hotmail or Yahoo, the iTools e-mail service was free of intrusive advertisements and the interface was a good deal cleaner and nicer to use. In fact, the look and feel was a lot like the interface of the Mail application that comes bundled with OS X. The online storage space was much more novel, and served a variety of functions, but with a 20 MB capacity, the one thing it wasn't much good for was large-scale storage of data, music, or video. Instead, it was most useful for uploading web pages, for sharing files between home and workplace computers, or for backing up a few small but critical files.

Two years later, iTools metamorphosed into .Mac ("dot-Mac"). The primary difference was that the service was no longer free, and instead subscribers would be charged $99 per year. Those iTools users who didn't pony up the cash would have their accounts deleted. One sour point among many iTools users was why Apple did not offer the thing they used most, the e-mail account, as a separate lower-cost product. For many people, the storage space was of no particular value, and although this part of the product received a healthy upgrade from 20 to 100 MB, even at that level it was still too small to be useful. After all, virtually all Macintosh computers came with a CD burner, allowing back-ups of data to be made in 650 MB portions at under a dollar a piece. So, if the storage space isn't cost effective and free e-mail accounts are available from many other companies on the Web, why would anyone bother with .Mac?

The strongest selling point .Mac has over it's rivals is its ease of use. Only .Mac offers all the features in one tightly integrated package that works nearly transparently with the Macintosh OS. For example, a freebie e-mail account such as one from Hotmail is certainly cheaper than the .Mac one, but only the .Mac e-mail account can synchronise with the Mail and Address Book applications on your computer. Similarly, while other online data storage sites are available and compatible with OS X, only .Mac's iDisk has built in support in the Finder. Nevertheless, is that enough to make .Mac a compelling purchase for the average Mac user?

Subscribing and Setting Up

New users sign up online either going directly to the .Mac web page or by clicking on the "Sign Up" button on the .Mac panel of the OS X System Preferences. The service costs $99 a year, the only discount generally available is the educational rate of $59 a year. That price comes with some penalties though. For one thing, these accounts can only be purchased in units of ten or more, so for teachers or students who don't work in a Mac-oriented environment but wanting to buy a single .Mac account for their own use, the discount isn't helpful at all. Worse still, the discounted accounts come with a measly 50 MB of online disk storage space.

Coughing up the cash for a .Mac account is the most painful part of the process; once you've subscribed, actually getting to grips with .Mac is relatively simple. The .Mac panel of the OS X System Preferences is the main place to interact with its configuration. There are two tabbed panes, one for .Mac itself (where you enter your account details or start the subscription process), and a second for the iDisk. This panel performs a variety of functions, the most important of which is to show how much disk space you are using up. It also allows you to activate a public folder and create a copy of your iDisk on the Desktop of your computer. More about these features later on. The other applications that interact with .Mac, such as Mail, iCal, and the Address Book, do so either transparently or with a minimal amount of setting up by the user. The Finder is iDisk aware, and the iDisk can be accessed from both the main menu bar and from the toolbars built into the Finder windows.

E-mail

A core part of the .Mac service is the e-mail service that can be accessed either through the Web using a browser, or by using an e-mail program such as Mail. Though the web interface is useful, most users will prefer to access their e-mail through Mail, as this allows them to filter off spam and transfer messages to additional mailboxes. Still, being able to read e-mail from a browser is very useful for those occasions when you are away from your computer for extended periods, for example on holidays or business trips. In contrast, free e-mail accounts such as those from Hotmail and Yahoo are designed to be read through a web browser only, since this is the only way those companies can ensure that you see the advertisements that pay for the service. Furthermore, you cannot download the messages to your computer to read offline, and there is a limit to the amount of storage space you have for your messages on the Hotmail (or whatever) server, after which point e-mail is deleted or lost. Most of these freebie e-mail accounts can be upgraded (for a price, of course) so that your storage space is increased or to allow a traditional e-mail program to download the messages to your computer, but otherwise they are really only adequate if your e-mail needs are very light. So while the .Mac e-mail account is relatively expensive when pitched against the many free alternatives around on the Web, it is a good deal more flexible.

Your .Mac e-mail account can be accessed through a regular browser, where the interface is broadly similar to that of the OS X Mail application.

Even so, the .Mac e-mail service has its limitations and remains a relatively expensive product. Only a single e-mail account is included in the .Mac package; additional e-mail addresses cost $10 a year each. Up to 15 MB of storage is included with the primary e-mail account and each secondary one brings in another 5 BM; more storage comes at a very steep cost: 25 MB at $10 per year through to a maximum of 200 MB at $90.00 per year. Of course, if you use Mail to download your messages to your computer and then store them in mailboxes other than the Inbox, then additional storage shouldn't be necessary. On the other hand, if you use the Web front end to collect e-mail instead of the Mail application, it wouldn't take much to fill up your e-mail quota. Newsletters and announcements from online vendors such as Amazon increasingly rely on graphics as well as text in their e-mails, and a few of these could take up a sizable chunk of your Inbox. Add a few pictures from grandma and a couple of word processor documents from your boss, and you'll soon be over the limit. So although it is a more flexible e-mail account than a Hotmail or Yahoo one, in its web-based format it is really only suitable for very modest users.

The Mail application routinely reports completely bogus error messages in situations where, for example, the server is down and it says the connection was refused; or when the transfer rate on a modem or Airport connection slows down but it instead tells you your password was rejected.

There are a couple of other problems, too. Firstly, the Mail application in OS X, while very good in most regards, has a truly annoying and potentially harmful habit of sending bogus error messages. When servers are down, it doesn't say as much in a nice clear manner but instead gives a cryptic "refused to allow a connection on port 25" message that will be of exactly no help at all to the average Mac user. Worse yet, it encourages the user to mess with the outgoing mail settings, something that is particularly insidious in a lab or office setting where all the computers have been carefully set up beforehand. Another example of this nonsense is when modem or Airport data transfer rates drop below whatever value it is that Mail requires to work. Instead of telling the user this, it returns a nonsense message about the password being rejected, and repeatedly demands the user type in the password. Again, there is plenty of potential for messing up the original settings (particularly if you cannot remember or do not know the password!).

Secondly, the .Mac server is not one hundred percent reliable. E-mail outages are not announced in advance, and there's no obvious schedule to when they will take place. It's a shame Apple cannot give fair warning of when "regular maintenance" is going to take place, and so allow users to check their mail before than happens. Oh, and if you're wondering, the small print to the .Mac agreement makes it quite clear that while "Apple makes reasonable efforts to ensure that .Mac is available at all times, Apple does not guarantee, represent or warrant that .Mac services will be uninterrupted or error-free, and Apple does not guarantee that users will be able to access or use all the .Mac features at all times".

All in all, the .Mac mail service is something of mixed bag; it's flexible and easy to use, but expensive, and if used on the Web alone suffers from very limited storage space. Used with the Mail application in OS X it is much better and the problem of storage space is avoided, but the Mail application isn't perfect, and sometimes awkward to use.

Expect to see this message every once in a while.

Online Storage

The iDisk is the online storage space .Mac subscribers have to store their files, and in many ways it is the flagship feature of the suite. Once there, files can be used in many different ways. Upload HTML and media files to the Sites directory of your iDisk, and you can create your web pages. An online wizard, Home Page, allows neophytes to create simple web pages easily; more experienced designers will prefer to use their own tools and simply use the iDisk as the server. Another nifty feature is the ability to drop files into the Public folder, and allow people with the right password can easily access that folder from either a Macintosh or Windows machine and share those files (this is a great tool if you are working on a collaborative project). Images stored in the Pictures directory can be added to electronic greeting cards and sent to your friends. All of this is wonderful, and in every case the process is easy and tightly integrated with the Macintosh operating system or Apple software. Most of the current crop of Apple applications work with the iDisk transparently, for example iPhoto will automatically copy the pictures from your hard disk that you have used to create an album and publish them directly to the iDisk. One serious limitation to the iDisk is the relatively meagre quantity of disk space you get, an anaemic 100 MB with the basic package and only 50 MB at the educational pricing. Extra disk space can be bought by clicking the "Buy More" button on the iDisk panel on the .Mac panel of the OS X System Preferences. Disk space isn't cheap, through, costing from $60 per year for 200MB of iDisk storage up to $350 per year for 1000 MB. In contrast, XDrive offers about twice the disk storage space per dollar and works with both Macintosh and Windows computers. Though a bit clunky compared with the iDisk and not significantly faster, if you need storage space it might be a much better bet.

Putting aside the size of the iDisk, the biggest problem with the iDisk as a tool for making back-ups is its slowness. A good indicator of this is the amount of time it takes to create a local mirror of your iDisk on your computer; even with a reasonably fast Ethernet or Airport connection, this can take around 20-30 minutes. Copying even small word processor documents a few tens of kilobytes in size can take a couple of minutes, and once you start moving up to large graphics, MP3s, and movies, the process becomes positively laborious.

One of the nastier aspects of the iDisk interface is this window. It occupies centre stage in the Finder, and though it tells you can close the window, there isn't an "OK" button to press to do this. Instead, you need to use the red close button at top left. Contrary to the usual Apple interface, closing this window doesn't stop the process; it merely hides it. Yuk!

One workaround is to use a third party program, Goliath, which offers users significant speed increases over the Finder interface. Files are copied across two or three times faster. Regardless of whether you use the Finder or Goliath to manage your iDisk, another problem that becomes apparent is the inability to synchronise files on the iDisk with ones on your computer. Sure, you can copy files across to the local mirror on your Desktop and then synchronise that with your iDisk, but, but then how do your synchronise the Documents or Pictures folder on the local mirror with those in your Home directory? Apple's preferred solution seems to be to use Backup. More on this program later, but suffice it to say that this isn't a file synchronisation program but rather a utility designed to create and maintain archives in an idiot-proof way. You can't, for example, synchronise the HTML files in your Sites directory on your iDisk with those in the Sites folder on your computer. Programs like Fetch and Dreamweaver don't work consistently, if at all, with WebDAV protocol volumes like iDisk, and so can't be relied on to synchronise local and remote web sites properly, forcing you to find and copy across updated files manually.

Goliath offers a speedier way to manage your iDisk.

Accessing the iDisk isn't completely reliable, and becomes decidedly flaky the bigger the files you try to copy across become. An 8 KB file will normally copy across just fine, but start getting to files 100 KB or larger and the whole thing can become too much hassle to be worthwhile. During the ten days I started working on this review to when I handed in the final version, on two of those days it was impossible for me to copy large files to my iDisk, either in the Finder or using Goliath. This is obviously hugely frustrating if you plan on using your iDisk to host a web page or as a constantly available site for back ups or shared documents. The Finder interface is particularly unhelpful during periods of iDisk misbehaviour. In the graphic below, you can see progress bar that seems to suggest the file has copied across safely. What you can't tell is that the Finder has been "Closing File..." for the last twenty minutes. Hitting the Stop button does nothing, and worst of all the progress bar sometimes vanishes without telling you the copying process failed altogether! If you force-quit the Finder you'll likely end up with what seems to be a copy of the desired file on the iDisk, but open it up and you'll be dismayed to see the file is actually empty.

Sometimes the iDisk works, sometimes it doesn't; the moral of the story is use it, but don't rely on it.

Probably not an issue for most users but potentially one for those who create and sell intellectual property such as art or music, Apple reserve the right to use anything you put in the public areas of your iDisk space (such as the Sites and Public folders). According to the .Mac agreement, you "hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish any such public area Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the area on which such Content is posted". In other words, Apple might use your work to advertise their product: a strange proposal for a company that likes to identify itself closely with the creative industries.

Software and Other Goodies

Backup was mentioned earlier on, and provides one of the key tools for managing your iDisk outside of the system software itself. Backup is relatively straightforward to use, and works as well with recordable media or removable drives such as Zip disks and iPods as it does with the iDisk. What it doesn't do is synchronise folders or documents in the way the System 7.5 utility File Synchronizer did. Backup is free to .Mac subscribers.

Backup creates an archive into which valuable files are stored; these can then be copied back if you lose or damage the originals.

There are various other software tools that have .Mac functionality; iCal is one of the best known. It publishes your calendar to your iDisk and then sends you an e-mail with the Web address you need to enter into your browser to access it. The Address Book can also publish to the Web, so that you can get at e-mails of your friends and colleagues from the Web interface of your .Mac e-mail account and not just through the Mail application. The OS X utility iSync will automatically synchronise Address Book contacts and your iCal, as well as keep a copy of your Safari bookmarks on your iDisk if you want it to.

iSync offers automatic Address Book and iCal synchronisation.

Among the .Mac goodies are extra Keynote templates, system add-ons such as sound effects, and free or discounted programs. When the iDisk is mounted, a Software directory appears that doesn't actually consume any of your 100 MB of disk space. Inside here are Apple and third party products offered exclusively to .Mac users. Virex 7, an OS X anti-virus program, is perhaps the most useful of these and the one most people will want to download even if only for peace of mind. It's a nice enough program, and if you're really paranoid about viruses infecting your computer, it might go a long way towards sweetening the .Mac deal. But Mac viruses are rare, and you could easily enjoy years of happy computing without any sort of virus protection. As for the other free programs, these are a bit eclectic, running from games to serious productivity tools, but none are compelling.

Conclusion

The individual components of the .Mac service fit together neatly and into a package that is easy to use and tightly integrated with the Macintosh operating system. But is .Mac good value? Unless having a .Mac e-mail account is worth $99 a year to you, then the short answer is no. The e-mail account is better than the freebie ones and much more flexible, but if you can live with the limitations of a Web-based e-mail account, there are plenty of alternatives at much lower or even zero cost. Although technologically impressive, the iDisk is too small to be useful for keeping back-ups unless your needs are exceedingly modest, and far too slow to be integrated into the workflow of businesses in the same way as a traditional FTP server. It is possible to get better performance from the iDisk using third-party software such as Goliath, but if aren't going to use the Finder and OS X's built-in support for the iDisk, why not use another online service that is cheaper per megabyte than .Mac? Without a file synchronisation tool, updating the Sites folder on the iDisk so it keeps up with the changes you do with the copy on your computer is a hassle, making the iDisk an awkward place to keep a complex web site that requires regular changes.

The other bits and pieces that make up the package are all too trivial to really make a difference one way or another; if you like publishing a calendar on the Web, that's great, and .Mac will help you do that, but otherwise this is a meaningless feature. It's very difficult to point at any one aspect of .Mac that screams "I'm a must have feature". At best, all that can be said about .Mac is that it works largely as advertised and shows off a lot of the integration of operating system and applications than make the modern Macintosh so impressive. But there isn't anything you can't get elsewhere for free or at lower cost.

- Neale Monks

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