Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Internet, Internet Tools
.Mac Bandwidth Cap
As a .Mac user, my initial thoughts on seeing that Apple had decided to implement a cap on previously uncapped .Mac bandwidth centered around one question: Is this going to make the service better or worse? Macworld is spinning the story as .Mac offering a "higher-bandwidth option" as a 3GB cap is being placed on regular .Mac users, but people, like myself, who have purchased a full GB of .Mac space will get an expanded, premium cap of 10GBs of bandwidth. Not too shabby.
MacMerc, on the other hand, posts an entry on this switch entitled, Bandwidth of .Mac accounts limited to 3GB per month. This is an entirely different spin than the Macworld story, as it points out that a cap is being put on in the first place where there was none before (although, in the past, Apple has been known to contact .Mac users when their bandwidth has reached ludicrous speed*).
Since I'm reaping the benefit of having the slightly muscled out 1GB .Mac account with 10GBs of bandwidth, I'm not really sure which spin I should be taking on the topic; so, I'm opting to take a wait-and-see based on my original thoughts. What if the reason that the .Mac service has been so spotty has been the lack of any sort of cap? There are some days when my iDisk is the slow beast that grinds my Mac to a halt and others where it performs fair to middling. What if capping people who have been abusing the service suddenly improves the service for everyone involved? If the performance remains shaky, however, then I'll most likely see this as Apple yet again taking away something that had previously been free and repackaging it behind nice buzzwords like "high-bandwidth option". Time will tell, I guess.
*Note: I realize that bandwidth is not equal to speed. It's a joke.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew Kaufmann said 4:22PM on 7-20-2005
If you're pushing the bandwidth limit, then I think it's probably time to move off of .Mac.
.Mac is great for its conveniences and integration with Mac OSX, but not really a "power user" choice... for instance, www.dreamhost.com has some great hosting plans, as do other companies. Dreamhost offers WebDAV -- which is what .Mac is based off of. If you've got WebDAV support on your host, then you've got pretty much everything .Mac can do -- it's just not quite as "click and use" easy. There's a little bit of setup required.
(I'm particularly fond of dreamhost, they've given me good service with prompt email replies and nice limits. They also give pretty nice referral bonuses.)
If 10gig limit is a problem, though, then it really is time to move off of .Mac. I'd look into other hosting options.
(I won't put my referral code here, that's too close to spamming. but if anyone does decide to sign up, I won't be upset if you contacted me and asked for that referral code! ;)
Reply
Robert Knight said 4:27PM on 7-20-2005
With Podcasting going mainstream, bandwidth is now like gold bars.
My $99/year (1Gb storage) web host gives me a 30Gb monthly limit. The truth is, I've never come close to it. My site is not popular and I usually run .5Gb per month.
So, I'm guessing that the average .Mac user is ok. But seeing as how .Mac is also meant for your home movies to be delivered over the web, anyone with a number of movies might be in some trouble.
I think 3Gb is bit meek.
Reply
Jeff Barlow said 6:40PM on 7-20-2005
Whatever happened to those .Mac widgets we were promised with Tiger?
Reply
narco said 7:59PM on 7-20-2005
I've been a .Mac user since iTools and sometimes I feel as if the only reason I even have .Mac these days is because a) I hate changing my person address and b) I get that cool little "@mac.com" address.
iDisk is a total joke, in fact, most of it is a joke considering I'm paying $99/yr. I especially love how they don't even contact me anymore about renewing, they just remove the $107 from my account automatically.
I think Apple should either lower the price (I'd be happy with $69/yr) or really do an overhaul of the entire thing. When Tiger came out, it actually gave the illusion that Apple really cared about .Mac, but since I haven't seen anything new I'm beginning to wonder.
The Transmit widget is awesome though -- iDisk is still slow, but a tad faster than doing an option+command+i.
Fishes,
narco.
Reply
Ryan Groat said 7:51PM on 7-20-2005
I'm not fond of .Mac; my subscription ends in 12 days and I don't plan on renewing it. I signed up with bluehost.com (4GB space/100 GB bandwidth/$95 a year/free domain/20 subdomains/yadda, yadda, yadda) and I'm loving it so far. I get 200 Kb/sec upload speeds with FTP, which was but a dream when I was using .Mac (especially since they don't support FTP.) My wepages also seem to move MUCH faster than .Mac. It's cheaper than .Mac too, so there's no reason not to dump .Mac for something better.
Bluehost has this thing called Fantastico which will install lots of web app things for you. 1 click was all that it took me to install Wordpress. (killergerbil.com) The same goes for the nice gallery program I use. (photos.killergerbil.com)
Reply
random said 9:17PM on 7-20-2005
Do you honestly think that .Mac didn't monitor bandwidth before?
It's in the Terms and Conditions. They just didn't give us a solid number before.
Cut and pasted from the TAC:
".Mac has been designed for personal use and is not intended to be used to host e-commerce businesses...The features, accounts and services which make up .Mac are limited in terms of the bandwidth for network traffic and disk utilization for storage allocated to them, as described in the .Mac feature pages. Exceeding any applicable limitation of bandwidth or capacity (for example, iDisk or e-mail account space) is prohibited. If there is excess usage on your account or any sub-account, Apple reserves the right to temporarily disable access to information available from your account through a URL"
Reply
Thresher said 7:34AM on 7-21-2005
Something that was once unlimited is now limited. I don't see anything positive about this for the end user.
Comparatively speaking, .Mac just isn't that great a deal anymore.
Reply