Survey: is .Mac worth it yet?

I don't have .Mac. I just ordered iLife '06 tonight and I am hoping that it won't be too difficult to publish using iWeb to a standard FTP server, regardless of what the Apple Store tells me.
I am considering .Mac. We'll see.

I have been a mostly happy .Mac member since Aug '04 but am seriously considering dropping my subscription when it comes up for renewal this August. Here's my list of .Mac pros and cons:

.Mac Pros:
1. I love the conveniene of publishing photo albums to .Mac via iPhoto.
2. Easy file transfers over iDisk - and now iDisk is accessible via one's web browser, which is a great new feature.
3. One-click blog publishing with iBlog (though iBlog itself isn't free).
4. All the new functionality provided via iWeb.

.Mac Cons:
1. Expensive.
2. Most of .Mac's services are available elsewhere for free. Blogging and Email are both available free through Google in the form of Blogger and Gmail. Online storage for files can be found through a number of free services, such as Dropload and gDisk (a Google Gmail hack giving your Gmail account functionality similar to .Mac's iDisk). Online bookmarks are free via Del.ico.us. Online photo publishing is free via services like Flickr. iCards are free whether you have a .Mac account or not.
3. .Mac doesn't support PHP or SQL, and I want to start a Wordpress blog, which requires PHP and SQL.
4. The added functionality of iWeb comes at $80.

I am thinking about getting iLife '06 as I'm still using iLife '04 and am attracted to the features upgrade to iPhoto, Garageband with podcast studio, third-party compatibility in iDVD and iWeb's tight .Mac-iLife integration, overall ease of use, website content management and good looks.

If .Mac added PHP and SQL support renewal would be a no-brainer for me, as I'd be paying webhosting services about the same price for that anyway.

If I end up buying iLife '06 and really liking iWeb I'll probably keep my .Mac subscription. If I don't buy iLife '06 or buy it and don't like iWeb I will probably let my .Mac subscription expire since there will be basically nothing it can do that I can't do elsewhere just as well (or even better) for free.

Summary:
.Mac without iLife '06 is not worth the price. .Mac with iLife '06 may be worth the price.

I think the appeal of .Mac is for the beginning user. The integration it offers with iLife is a big plus for me. Publishing photos to friends and family is so simple, and I can't wait to try the blogging feature in iWeb. Coincidentally, over the past few weeks I have been searching for an easy web publishing suite and this looks like it will fit the bill. I have already ordered iLife'06.

All that said, I do think it is pricey, and the fact that you have to pay it all up front is probably an issue for some. Still, I signed up in September, and they have improved it since then. I hope they keep it up.

I have no need for .Mac. I think it's great for the normal consumer who doesn't want to go out and find things like flickr, gmail, etc and would prefer to have these services in a central place. For me, though, I use gmail, flickr (pro), and have my own server for the rest. The price for .Mac just seems so high for so little storage (who cares about bandwidth? when was the last time you saw a highly popular blog on .Mac?). Sync my music and movies and then we'll start talking, maybe.

To Scott, that would be cool (in regards to a service that captured .Mac stuff and translated them for use with another system). It would be fairly hard, almost impossible, but here's how you would do it: set up a DNS server that maps www.mac.com to your own server and have your mac use this DNS server instead of the one provided by your ISP. Then, since I believe .Mac works through WebDAV, set up webdav on your server and get it to mimic .Mac. There's probably a lot of crazy special .Mac specific server settings that you would have to hack at (authentication springs to mind), but you could do it if you really wanted. Any one want to try it out? Maybe I will if I ever have a ton of free time.

To Ario, I totally am buying what you're selling. Apple should call you because that's some good marketing there, brotha. I would buy if it were set up like this.

To BC, nothing is truly free anymore, but I get the same functionality, but done better, for everything that .Mac does for $2 a month ($24.95 subscription to flickr, everything else free plus a tiny bit of effort on my part).

To Tyler and TUAW (I guess), I thought I remember either Laurie on here or engadget report that photocasting was done using standard RSS and that you didn't have to have .Mac for it to work (though you would obviously have to have somewhere to host it).

.mac is not even close to worth $99/year. $49 might get me thinkin' about it, but probably not. It just seems a lot of features and services I wouldn't normally use anyway, except for mail, and I'm still not loving Apple's Mail client anyway. I'm happy with gMail.

File backup over teh intarweb? You've got to be kidding me. I simply don't trust my stuff to be on an Apple (or anyone's) sever.

I won't be upgradintg to iLife06, either. I hate iPhoto, and don't use iMovie or iDVD. I use Garageband every day, but I didn't see any significant improvements to 2.0. I don't podcast, and wouldn't use their simplified solution if I did. I hate to see Garageband getting feature bloat. I wish they'd done podcasting in a separate app.

To summarize:
.mac - Boo
iLife06 - Hiss.

I do use .Mac because I like the backup-features and encrypted iChat. It's not worth the money but I need .Mac as much as all the nerds out there. Btw.: Did you notice that the 1TB-traffic ad was a mistake? It's only 10gig per month...

It's too expensive, especially considering I already have many of the features both from my ISP, and from a cheaper 3rd party host. I used to have a .Mac before the price rocketed up, I saw it as really great potential Mac benefit, only to discover it was an Apple bate and switch game :-( Maybe if I had more disposable income I'd take it up, but it's not worth it currently. The .Mac hooks in the OS and apps really annoy me to the point of putting me off some upgrades, though I have ordered iLife06 as I'm so out of date now.

Great question, thanks! I'm planning to make The Switch later this year (gonna buy me a Macbook Pro, after the 1st-gen kinks get worked out) and have been debating whether a .Mac account is worth it. I have a LiveJournal just for fun, I have both a paid Smugmug AND a free Flickr account. While one-push publishing looks and sounds fun, I don't know that it's worth $99 a year. I'd love to get everyone's input. Thank you!

I have had .Mac since it was free and known as iTools, and it has been worth it ever since. There have been times that I questioned whether I would renew, but then something is added that makes it worth it.

And people who put 2 or 3 line breaks every 2 sentences, please STOP.

I am leaning towards signing up when I buy my next computer. I have my own site already with a decent host for $40/yr. But I have often wondered if I should keep my own site for proffesional stuff and have a seperate personal site for friends and family. .Mac would be great for helping me do this. Plus it is something that my wife could get into.

I would not use syncing for a while, I might use back-up for photos and such, the iDisk would be handy, I won't use the .Mac e-mail address though. Does anybody know if I can have that forwarded?