Why Don't Developers Harness .Mac?

"Why should devlopers build features into their apps just to support Apple's revenue stream." .Mac makes your app slightly more desirable, and indeed some people have said so. That's because it makes it -easy-. Yet apart from the proprietary lock-in from iSync, everything else can be duplicated by a developer elsewhere for apparently less cost; that ignores the very important service support issues. .Mac greatly helps the wide number of non-computerati, but it is not compelling for the rest of us. (and, uh, gmail users, I'd love an invitation to gmail, because otherwise Google ain't taking my money.)

.mac is SLOW, and horrendously expensive. I use it for syncing bookmarks, calendars and contacts - 60 day trials let you do this without the $$$

I'd rather that Apple opens all of these WebDAV tools to any server rather than tying them to dot-mac. Like everyone else here has pointed out in comments, or C.K. Sample does whenever dot-mac comes up, it's not a good value compared to just about anything else...

Ditto to the above statements on storage. Had a .Mac account for a year and w/o questions did not have it renewed for a 2nd year. If Apple offered at least 1 Gig of storage, I would reconsider. Only thing I liked were the freebee apps now and then.

I major problem with the .Mac is spensive, to spensive. Also the capacity is very small. I dont know if now is compatible with windows, that should help also. And last, more than 25 $ a year is to much.

One minor complaint is the "homepage.mac.com/" hierarchy. If they could slim that 'homepage' down or turn it into mac.com/user/yourname it would make the service a bit easier to use and type in on a daily basis. It would also make the url's look a tad more 'regular' or possibly even somewhat professional.

Most developers have their own web domains. If you have your own domain, .Mac offers you almost nothing. Because of this, most developers don't see the point of .Mac, so don't develop for it.

Apple should simply drop backup and all these other frivoulous functions like homepages and .mac mail from .mac. The only feature that is actually adds worth to the system is the syncing capabilty that applications use. This should be free when you buy OS X. It doesn't even have to be 250 mb when your just syncing prefrences and bookmarks. Hell just make it 50 megs, just allow syncing and call it .mac light and i might even pay 10 bucks for it.

I like the concept of .mac, but just can't seem to justify the price for both myself and my wife. I think it should have at least came free with the service plan we purchased - afterwards I probably would have paid the yearly fee (it would also be an incentive to purchase a service plan when I replace the mac). But now, I'm just going to start looking for free alternatives. Oh, and the new version of Intuit's Quicken supports .mac for back up (it encrypts first).

Why aren't more developers "leveraging .Mac"? Let's ask that question another way: What don't developers want to tie their applications to an expensive online service that someone else makes the profits on? Let me know if you're still confused.